Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on Known as a stalker and cyberbully.
Eugyppius has become a go-to for his cogent explanations and analysis of Germany’s socio-political peculairities, written in English for an international audience. He has gathered a sober accounting of the facts of this case as we yet know them without any real editorialising (though he makes some conclusions and opinions known in a few replies to comments), and it is well worth reading if you are truly interested in this incident.
The suspect seems to be severely mentally disturbed (perhaps ironically, or perhaps only to be expected, as he is a psychiatrist himself). It is incredibly unlikely that he is a sleeper agent for a Jihadist organisation, given his long history of vocal activism and his stated motivations for the attack (some of which were automatically posted minutes after the attack itself took place, and which, as Eugyppius notes, border on incoherence). He does not seem to be an active AfD supporter, but given his antipathy for the islamicisation of Europe he has probably seen them as an ally of convenience or has been well-disposed to some of their policies or public statements. (Whether any of this is enough to classify him, his deeds, or indeed the AfD itself as “right-wing extremist” is another topic. It suffices to note that the German media will trumpet any connections, and perhaps invent them, in order to make the AfD somehow cuplable. That is itself a shameful rhetorical game that nobody should give any credence to.)
But, as Richard notes, trying to find a coherent narrative or an active conspiracy is likely a fool’s errand. Whatever demons drove him to murder five people and injure hundreds more, on very nearly the eighth anniversary of the first such attack on German soil, the effect is no less a tragedy for those involved and for the nation as a whole. And however the German media wish to tar him or the AfD, it is a stark fact that an immigrant from the Middle East has yet again committed mass murder because the German government did not conform to his expectations, which has in the last decade become a regular occurrence (notwithstanding that the method of murder, driving a heavy vehicle into a crowd of people, has only happened twice now in this country).
The last such incident, at the end of summer in Solingen, saw a young man whose asylum claim had been denied but who had nevertheless been negligently allowed to remain stab several people to death at a “Festival of Diversity”. The incident before that happened in the middle of summer, when a vocal German anti-Islam activist was stabbed and a policeman was killed by knife-wielding maniac during a public speech against the islamicisation of Germany.
This country has done more in the last decade to save the lives of Muslims than any other on the planet has ever done for any group of foreigners. We have given housing and succour to literal millions of people from Syria (one out of every twenty pre-war Syrians lives in Germany), Afghanistan, and many other countries across the Middle East and North Africa, to the cost of billions of Euros. We have opened more mosques here than exist in the United States, and at least one major city (Cologne) has allowed the Islamic Call to Prayer to be sounded every Friday for the last two years (and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future). Every year, we allow in the equivalent of a mid-sized German city’s worth of Muslim refugees, with no end in sight. (Should Syria devolve yet again into active civil war, the influx is only going to go up.)
The ethnic and religious makeup of this country has, within a generation, permanently changed in a way that has historically only happened after losing a major war against an expanding empire…and all of this has been done of our own free will, out of the debts we owe the world and our moral conscience. (Also out of tribute to the American empire, whose wars and follies kicked off the instability which has flooded Europe with millions of Muslims seeking refuge.)
Yes, there is commonplace racism and ethnic tension. How could there not be, when millions of Muslims suddenly arrive in a dank, dark, cold country whose favourite beverage is beer and whose favourite meals all involve pork and butter? Yes, there are unfortunate cases of asylum claims being denied, there are frustrations with the grinding and faceless bureaucracy, and there is everyday discrimination in housing and employment.
But there are also schools and kindergardens where 80 percent of the children come from immigrant parents, where teachers have difficulty getting these majority-immigrant children to bother learning German, where the native German inhabitants are ostracised as “potatoes” and “Allmans”. There are quarters of major German cities where grown men will spit on you and call you a “fucking potato” if you look “too German”. There are upwards of two hundred incidents of gang rape every year (nearly one every day), half of whose perpetrators are not German citizens and, of the remainder, half of those have obviously non-German last names. (Incidents of individual sexual assault are even more frequent, with comparable demographics of the perpetrators.) And, semi-regularly, a madman murders people who’ve peacefully gathered to celebrate a holiday or town anniversary (or even the nebulous concept of “diversity” itself).
These are facts with which millions of Germans are confronted on a daily basis, and they are usually dismissed by the media and by the intelligentsia (when they are acknowledged at all) as “racist” or of being “instrumentalised” for right-wing propaganda…which, in these circles, is seen as refutation enough. Every such incident, from the everyday bullying to the near-daily sexual assault to the semi-annual mass murder, is laid at the feet of German society, as a “failure to integrate” the newcomers we have so welcomed and for whom we have already done so much.
Integration is a two-way street. Uprooting your life, moving thousands of kilometers, and finding yourself in a new culture is a harrowing and very difficult endeavour under the best of circumstances, much less fleeing a war and dealing with human traffickers along smuggling routes. It requires patience and indulgence on the part of the society, and fortitude and dilligence on the part of the individuals joining that society. I cannot for the life of me think of any way in which German society could be more patient and indulgent and accommodating than it has been over the last decade.
But that patience, and that indulgence, and that accommodation, are not limitless resources. Whatever this madman in Magdeburg thought he was doing, he has drained more of these resources, and made it just that little bit more likely that they will run out sooner rather than later.
And I shudder to think what might happen then.
Follow up comment:
Another cost Germany has incurred, which few people think about, is the continued out-migration of Jews. There are now fewer than a hundred thousand Jewish people in this country, and every year more and more Jewish people leave. Those who remain regularly face open hostility from Muslims (and even occasionally from left-wing anti-Israel activists, especially since the massacre of October 7th and the ensuing war). Every synagogue is under constant police protection to ward off an attack of the kind which occurred in Magdeburg.
Germany has a special obligation to Judaism and to the Jewish people, owing to the Holocaust. But it is far from impossible that left-wing policies and progressive cultural forces accomplish what the Nazis never quite managed to — to render Germany entirely free of Jews. That would also be a tragedy of historic proportions.
