It Is Time for Germans To Get Seriously Angry

"Instead of working to protect citizens from Islamist terror, the priority of the German establishment is to warn that terror must not be "instrumentalized" by populists."

From The European Conservative

By Sabine Beppler-Spahl

Instead of working to protect citizens from Islamist terror, the priority of the German establishment is to warn that terror must not be "instrumentalized" by populists.

Early Sunday morning, Germany was hit by Islamist terror—again. Five people were severely injured, two critically, in a knife attack. The perpetrator, identified as a 35-year-old Syrian refugee, was finally tracked down and arrested by police on Tuesday, 42 hours later. He reportedly entered Germany illegally two years ago. Fellow residents at his asylum shelter told reporters he maintained close connections to Islamist circles—a claim supported by evidence found in his room during the police investigation.

Germany, that much is clear, is in deep trouble. And its establishment—though the police have done a commendable job hunting down the perpetrator—remains unable to get a grip on the persistent terrorist threat.

The country is now nearly in its tenth year of crisis. A 2017 report by the renowned American Institute for Contemporary German Studies described 2016 as “a crisis year for German domestic security.” That year, five terrorist attacks hit the country, with seven more foiled by security authorities. “The perception spread that a new age of heightened domestic security risks had begun,” the report states—a sadly prescient finding. 

Murderous attacks by asylum seekers—in trains, shopping centres, or market places—have become so frequent that many no longer even make headlines. The Bielefeld attack, for example, was treated as merely one among many news items on Monday, with no politician finding it necessary to visit the site.

This lack of attention is not so much a symptom of a dangerous dulling of the senses or resignation. Rather, it reveals the establishment’s deep fear of losing control over public opinion. There is nothing the establishment fears more than the anger and outrage of its citizens, which is why it has promoted the narrative that each attack is merely a deeply tragic event—an outlier in an otherwise stable situation (or at worst, something that ultimately cannot be prevented).

The urgent message peddled by government supporters after every major attack is that terror must not be “instrumentalized” by populists. This was the appeal after this February’s  Munich Islamist attack, which left two killed and forty injured, where the main message became that the “incident must not be used to stir up hatred.” In a speech following the attack, the trade union chairman refused to even mention the term “Islamism.”

A year after the Mannheim attack,where a suspected Islamist extremist stabbed six people at an anti-Islam rally, killing a police officer, the discussion is taking a similar warped turn. Because a policeman was brutally killed, this incident received particular attention. There will be an official vigil on May 31st, the anniversary of the incident. At the same time, however, significant pressure was applied to the organization Pax Europa—against which the attack was directed and whose members were also seriously injured—to cancel their own planned event. “The 31st of May is a day of silent mourning and dignified remembrance of our colleague Rouven Laur, who was killed in the line of duty. The fact that a group such as ‘Pax Europa’ is organizing its own vigil […] is something we consider to be irreverent and a politically motivated instrumentalization of a tragic event,” said a spokesperson for the police union.

These attempts at appeasing the public and pretending there is nothing political about the spread of the Islamist threat are as disingenuous as they are toxic. They have created the bizarre situation where the German public faces a danger it’s not allowed to openly address or confront. Under normal circumstances, one would expect the public to be seen as the best ally of those charged with combating an immediate threat. No country, for example, can wage a war against an aggressor without the support of its citizens. Yet, in the case of Islamism, the state views its citizens with fearful suspicion, believing that many of them, if left ‘unchecked,’ would lash out at their Muslim neighbors—becoming racist bigots who would lead their country down the path toward a new Third Reich.

This attitude insults the vast majority of those living in Germany—and makes the state an unintended ally of the Islamists. It has long been known that Islamists use the rhetoric of a supposed anti-Muslim racism of “the West” in their own propaganda to justify their fight against the population of their host country. It’s a sad and frightening irony that the spectre of “anti-Muslim racism” has become a battle cry both for radical Islamists and for sectors of the German elite, keen to present themselves as morally superior in their fight against populism.

There is no easy or quick solution to the Islamist threat. The perpetrators acting as lone wolves, attacking easy “soft targets,” make it impossible for authorities to prevent all cases. Yet it is also true that security forces have never been able to fully concentrate on averting the Islamist threat, as politicians repeatedly focus on fighting right-wing extremism—a campaign that has cost taxpayers millions.

North Rhine-Westphalia, where Bielefeld is located, has just opened a reporting center to combat”anti-Muslim racism”—while simultaneously being the federal state that has suffered the most Islamist attacks. It is also home to thousands of radical Islamists and was the site of one of the most alarming Islamist demonstrations last year, with thousands of warrior-like men (women walked separately) demanding a caliphate.

Another significant paradox is that radical critics of Islam, like Michael Stürzenberger of Pax Europa, have been dragged before courts and even received prison sentences—while the state regularly proves incapable of deporting failed asylum seekers with violent histories.

With such an adversarial stance toward its own population, the state will never get the terrorism problem under control. In truth, it has often been brave individuals who stepped in—often risking their lives—preventing worse harm from happening. In Aschaffenburg, a 42-year-old man was killed as he ran to help the toddlers and their carer—saving many more children’s lives, according to police reports. Equally impressive is the story of a waiter who stopped a taxi driver (an asylum seeker from Jordan) who tried to run over women in Essen and Cologne. And in Bielefeld, it was the courage and determination of football fans that enabled them to overpower the perpetrator. The attacker’s facial injuries and dropped weapons resulting from this confrontation decisively helped police make their arrest.

There are certainly some who express their discontent through anti-Muslim sentiment. There has also been vicious right-wing terror against Muslims (the National Socialist Underground murders of 2000-2007). But the vast majority of Germans feel nothing but deep disdain for anti-Muslim outbursts. 

If many agree with NZZ commentator Marc Felix Serrao’s assessment that mass migration has led to a brutalization of the country, this is not an expression of racism, but a reaction to the serious problems of recent years and the authorities’ stubborn resistance to facing them. The state’s incompetence and the elites’ fear of the masses have, if not caused the problem, certainly exacerbated it.

No country and its citizens should have to tolerate the kind of vicious attacks Germany has been experiencing. It’s time for citizens to get seriously angry.