Sounding Disruption for Germany's Future

Chapter 2 considers what democratic identity might sound like. To do this, this chapter relates stories about burping, noisemakers, and singing the German anthem that upheld or disrupted people’s right to speak. This chapter explains how these sounds intersected with debates about how to remember Germany’s Nazi past. This past is a focal point through which people identify democracy and extremism. Germans remember the Nazi past in complex ways. This chapter briefly describes this complexity to illustrate how AfD members often articulated provocative, liminal stances when discussing the past and displaying national symbols. As part of their aural engagement, members strove to promote a positive national identity that could justify a strong, independent state, a position that their critics might call a dangerous regression towards nationalism. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the sounds of the “middle.”