This, of course, is something of an election campaign gimmick. During the 2013 campaign, a video that quickly went viral showed Merkel angrily taking a German flag away from a fellow party member who had tried to wave it while standing next to her. This year, the flags are back, and the flag colors get a mention on Merkel's list. Her Christian Democratic Union is trying to reclaim the patriotic ground from the Alternative for Germany populists. Affirming the German Leitkultur, lead culture, is one of the CDU strategies. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a Merkel ally, published his own "Top 10" of the Leitkultur's features in April, and it included Christianity but not any other religions; the Judeo-Christian tradition makes an appearance on Merkel's list, too.
But, for everyone who might think she regrets letting in more than a million refugees into the country in 2015 and 2016, Merkel's list also includes "Muslims" and "migration background" -- something that 21 percent of Germany's residents have today. In that, Merkel echoes a campaign speech by France's new president Emmanuel Macron in Marseille, in which he held forth on how French national identity is driven by its diversity of immigrants: "Armenians, Comorans, Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Malians, Senegalese, Ivorians." It amounted to a challenge to his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.
The way these two leaders see national identity is a step away from the slogans of diversity, multiculturalism and supranational federalism. They're talking about a deep-rooted, old culture taking on some new flavors without straying too far from its traditional mainstream. It only looks progressive compared with the alternatives -- for example, the stump speeches of Le Pen or other nationalists across Europe.
At the same time, it's somewhat similar to the vision of Russian national identity that Vladimir Putin laid down in a 2012 article. He described ethnic Russians and the Russian culture as a "binding fabric" for historically multiethnic society. Putin quoted Ivan Ilyin, his favorite emigre philosopher whom many consider an early fascist ideologue (despite his troubles with the Nazi regime in Germany): "Not to eradicate, not to suppress, not to enslave outsider blood, not to strangle foreign and non-Orthodox life but to let everyone breathe and give them a great Motherland; to watch over everyone, make peace, let everyone pray in their own way, work in their own way and involve the best from everywhere in building a state and a culture."
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