The haunting of the wolf: Nature,nationalism,and violent inheritance

Abstract

Wolves have been extinct in Germany for 300 years, but they have been returning to Eastern Germany since the 1990s. The return of wolves has been exploited in election campaigns by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which is targeting the rural population in Eastern Germany. In 2019, AfD politicians demanded the introduction of an 'upper limit' for the wolf population and the legalization of the shooting of this strictly protected species. They constructed a narrative of migrating, non-belonging wolves, rhetorically paralleling this situation with the perceived 'invasion' of migrants into Germany. Racialised fantasies of violence lie at the heart of the far right's 'wolf politics'. This essay explores these violent wolf-related fantasies and argues that they exist within a social context and have a history that comes back to haunt us.