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“Ausländer raus,” meaning “foreigners out,” chanted security guards at an asylum seeker center in Suhl, Thuringia, Germany. They did so in the presence of asylum seekers, to the tune of the summer hit L'amour Toujours by Gigi D'Agostini. The racist chants were recorded on video:
Recently, the song has been often misused by right-wing extremists to express their xenophobia. This happened, for example, last week on the German party island of Sylt, on the border with Denmark, where a larger number of people performed the modified racist chorus. That was also filmed. After the photos went viral, the employers identified the perpetrators and fired them. The owners of the Pony Club, where the incident occurred, are considering legal action.
The racist version of the song appeared for the first time last fall during a meeting in a city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. A video showed the mayor's son, among others, repeating the texts. The police investigation began immediately. Although Sylt's video is now the most popular, hundreds of other videos have appeared across Germany in recent days. Most of them are on the social network TikTok.
Munich's world-famous Oktoberfest has now announced that the song is completely banned during the festivities. The organization announced that after the party's once popular song was hijacked by the far right, they no longer wanted anything to do with it. DJs who play it are banned anyway.
D'Agostino immediately distanced himself from the far-right version of his hit. He confirmed to Der Spiegel that the actual song “is about a beautiful, big, intense feeling that connects people. It's about love.”
