Gigi D’Agostino: How a pop hit became an anthem for right-wing extremists

ANALYSIS

The song “L’amour Toujours” by Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino is actually about great love. In 2001 he stormed the charts with the electro ballad, and to date the single has sold more than 750,000 copies. The song was viewed 450 million times on YouTube and almost 410 million times on Spotify. Today, just over 22 years after its release, the hit is cult and triggers summer feelings like no other.

But now the actually harmless song has fallen into disrepute. It has become a trend on social networks to “rewrite” the chorus of the song. In response to the melody, which in the original has no lyrics, mostly young people sing the xenophobic slogan “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out”, a battle cry of the neo-Nazi scene of the 1980s.

Gigi D’Agostino’s hit has become the scene’s signature song

The song probably began this second inglorious career at a village festival in the municipality of Bergholz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania last October, as NDR reports. Several visitors were filmed shouting the same xenophobic slogan to D’Agostino’s song. The clip spread quickly on Tiktok and Instagram and made waves especially because several witnesses said they had also seen the son of the municipality’s mayor singing along to the battle cry.

Since then, xenophobic singing has become a trend and has now become a symbol of the right-wing and right-wing extremist scene – both with and without singing. The catchy melody can now be found in hundreds of videos that spread right-wing extremist propaganda or resentment.

This phenomenon can be observed particularly frequently on Tiktok. Relevant accounts there regularly share videos from parties or folk festivals where visitors sing along to the slogan. In other clips, statistics on the crime of migrants are shown taken out of context, accompanied by the original “L’amour Toujours” without slogans – a wink from the right-wing scene.

A youthful sin becomes the perfect propaganda tool

Forces of the New Right are now specifically using the resulting images of the republic’s village festivals and the catchy, xenophobic slogan to spread them across the board.

A few days ago, the right-wing extremist and long-time head of the “Identitarian Movement”, Martin Sellner, announced in a video that he wanted to cross the German border, even though there were rumors at the time that he was wanted in Germany. The Austrian presented himself as casual as usual and announced that he wanted to eat cake in a pastry shop in Passau. “L’amour Toujours” was playing casually and seemingly randomly in the background, of course without the slogans sung on it.

In any case, in the scene you immediately understand what the song means. The slogan burns into your memory along with the catchy dance hit of the early 2000s. And therefore fits perfectly into the strategy of the New Right.

Presumably ironic breaking of taboos is part of the New Right’s strategy

Unlike the martial neo-Nazis of the 1980s and 1990s, the New Right pursues the tactic of casually anchoring its ideology in society. Karlheinz Weißmann, journalist and pioneer of the movement, emphasized years ago that a revolution cannot be implemented with a “sledgehammer”. Since his analysis of the state of conservatives in the publication “Criticón” in 1986, he has coined the term “political mimicry”: the strategy of pushing the boundaries of what can be said to the right through publications, colored educational work and, at first glance, unsuspicious public relations work .

Actors like the Identitarian Movement see themselves as paving the way for a “patriotic revolution”. They are intended to infiltrate the “pre-political space”, the middle of society – beyond parliaments and parties. The assumption is that only when society has been “processed” enough and is therefore ready for a force from the extreme right can a revolution succeed.

In this regard, the abuse surrounding Gigi D’Agostino’s hit is a gift for the New Right. At first it is presumably meant to be ironic and jokingBreaking taboo. But once a habituation effect has set in, the “joke” will ultimately only remain an inhumane slogan – in the middle of society. Exactly where the New Right wants them.

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