The Magdeburg attack happened while I was visiting family in the UK. Watching the first reports on the BBC was a surreal experience. “Experts” were wheeled on to assure us that although the perpetrator, Taleb A., had a long history of making Islamophobic and pro-AfD posts on social media, we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. One could have wished for such circumspection in the BBC’s largely uncritical coverage of Israeli war crimes.
Holger Münch, of the federal criminal police, also advised people to wait and see: “He has anti-Islamic views; of course he’s also been involved with extreme-right platforms and given interviews. But drawing a conclusion between what he says and what he’s done… it’s not yet possible to conclude it’s politically motivated.”
This was not the reaction to Halle and Hanau. In 2019, after a right wing gunman attacked a synagogue and a doner shop on Yom Kippur, the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz published an article with a subtitle: “The Jewish community in Germany is under double attack, from the far right and from radical Islam.”
One year later, after another far right German went on a shooting spree, killing 9 non-White people, police concentrated on harassing the victims’ friends and family. Keea Malin Kauhanen notes a live broadcast 2½ hours after the attack “in which a reporter shared his speculations regarding the perpetrator and motives for the attack. Terms like ‘organized crime’ and ‘protection money’ were used speculatively and related to the owners of the bars and kiosk in which the terror attacks took place.”
For the German press, politicians and media, the default reaction to public murder is to jump to one conclusion: blame the Muslims. This is not just a German phenomenon. Following the Christchurch mosque shootings of 2019, B. Moore concluded: “In over 200,000 articles on 11 different attacks, Islamist extremists were labelled terrorists 78.4% of the time, whereas far-right extremists were only identified as terrorists 23.6% of the time.”
A Saudi Fascist?
Responding to Magdeburg on German news channel n-tv, “terrorism expert” Peter Naumann opined that “in 25 years, I have never seen such a perpetrator profile”. We should remind ourselves that profiles used by criminologists do not reflect facts but widely held prejudices. Taleb A. did not fit into the straitjacket into which the media wanted to place him.
Two things appear to have perplexed reporters. Firstly, although Taleb A. had lived and worked in Germany for nearly 20 years, he was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the attack was at a Christmas market, like previous attacks in Berlin in 2016 and Strasbourg in 2018. Was this not proof that he was an Islamist?
Let’s take these objections one at a time. Firstly, it is simply wrong to believe that all fascist organisations merely comprise of white men. The Grey Wolves in Turkey and RSS in India provide examples of home grown fascism.
Closer to home, although European fascists believe in oppressing minorities, they also contain some minority members. In late 1937, 5 of the 21 Chief Rabbis in Italy were members of Mussolini’s Fascist party. Ernst Röhm, head of Hitler’s SA until 1934 was openly gay. Alice Weidel, AfD’s candidate for Chancellor in the coming elections, is a lesbian. These people have to live their own contradictions, but their existence is no less surprising than that of a Saudi Fascist.
Some online commentators have said that the fact that Taleb A. attacked a Christmas market (as opposed to what? An Eid market?) shows that he cannot be an Islamophobe. Why attack Christians? Taleb A. answered this question last August in a tweet saying: “I assure you that if Germany wants a war, we will fight it. If Germany wants to kill us, we will slaughter them, die, or go to prison with pride.” According to his warped logic, Germans who do not resist the so-called “Islamisation” of Europe are legitimate targets.
Increase in violent attacks
From historical attacks on refugee homes like Solingen and Mölln, to Hanau and Halle, the far right is far from averse to murderous violence. Just before Christmas, actual Nazis tried to march through the relatively left wing district of Friedrichshain. When they were stopped by counter-demonstrations of up to 10,000 people, they took violent revenge on an SPD stall. The Nazi threat is real and growing.
Eastern Germany was already tense and dangerous following the AfD’s recent electoral gains. The aftermath of the Magdeburg attack has made things worse. Salam, a local counselling centre for the prevention of violence and radicalisation reports “an extremely hostile mood” in the city, where Muslims were insulted as “terrorists”, “criminals” and a “pack”. Migrant organisation Lamsa says that many migrants have been hunted through the city.
Bild Zeitung reported that 24 hours after the Magdeburg attack “around 700 masked and aggressive right wing extremists and hooligans gathered and marched through Magdeburg city centre.” They shouted slogans like “anyone who doesn’t love Germany should leave Germany”, “Migration kills” and “We must take back our cities, our villages and our homeland”.
These attacks cannot be reduced to just the work of a few skinhead hooligans. All recent polls have the AfD looking likely to come second in February’s general election. Every AfD electoral success makes the street racists feel that they are not isolated, and every violent attack strengthens the fascists in parliament.
AfD try to profit
In 2016, Taleb A. tweeted: “the AfD and I are fighting the same enemy, in order to protect Germany.” This has not stopped the Nazifying party from trying to make capital from his murderous acts. While mainstream politicians were wringing their hands about how terrible things are, the far right was demonstrating in Magdeburg.
On Saturday, the day after the attack, the neo-Nazi scene attended a demonstration registered by veteran Nazi Alexander Deptolla. At this demonstration, the leader of the Heimat party (formerly the explicitly Nazi NPD) stated that the “fundamental problem” was “people who come from an alien culture and belong to an alien species.” Old NSDAP slogans like “Germany wake up!” were revived.
Two days later, it was the AfD’s turn. Speaking at their demo, Weidel said: “we finally want something to change in this country, and that we must never again mourn with a mother who has lost her son in such a senseless and brutal way.” As Weidel demanded that “we can finally live once again in security”, the 3,500-strong crowd responded with chants of “Deport, deport, deport!”
Weidel tweeted: “The state must protect its citizens through a restrictive migration policy and consistent deportations!”. The head of the AfD in Sachsen-Anhalt, Martin Reichardt, blamed “political and religious fanaticism that has its origins in another world”. Local AfD politician Hans-Thomas Tillschneider called for a “roll-back of globalised migration flows” to fight the arrival of those who are “culturally other”.
Brandenburg councillor Dominik Kaufner wrote: “millionfold migration is the problem and millionfold remigration is the solution”. The word “remigration” is a dog whistle to the AfD’s Nazi base following last year’s conference in Potsdam where AfD politicians met Identitarians to discuss deporting millions of people “with a foreign background”. Such deportations would not be possible without extreme violence.
German politicians react
Interior minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) was quick to react. Initially, she followed the accepted discourse, remarking that Taleb A. “acted like an Islamist terrorist although ideologically he was clearly an enemy of Islam.” But then she went slightly off-message, saying it was “clear to see” the suspect held “Islamophobic” views, and that “every attempt to instrumentalise such a terrible act and to abuse the misery of the victims is repugnant.”
This continues a strategy which the SPD has taken since the government fell — of portraying the AfD as violent extremists and a danger to democracy. After the AfD announced that their own election strategy will concentrate on trying to win disillusioned SPD voters, the SPD has slightly shifted from accommodating to the AfD’s racism to mild confrontation.
In a so-called “fairness agreement”, all parliamentary parties except the AfD and Buendnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) agreed that “there will be on no account cooperation with parties which do not stand on the group of the free democratic constitution”. In their election programme, the SPD argues that Germany is a country of migration and that they consider diversity to be an asset.
This is good as far as it goes, but is undermined by the experience of the SPD and the Greens in government. One year ago, SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared on the front cover of Der Spiegel next to the headline “We have to Deport People More Often and Faster”. SPD MPs gladly voted for the “Antisemitism Resolution” which lawyer Nadija Samour believes will “cement the use of migration law as a form of persecution”. They also recently voted to freeze asylum applications by Syrians.
Not like the other parties
A recent AfD post on X (formerly Twitter) said: “the AfD stands for the interests of the broad public, not for elites and lobbyists. A real people’s party, which fights for you. Time for change. Therefore vote AfD on the 23rd of February.” The idea of a people’s fight against the establishment is one that has been recently pushed by right wing demagogues from Victor Orban to Donald Trump, who recently welcomed guests from the AfD.
Most worrying is the gradual take over of the AfD by Björn Höcke and other former members of Der Fluegel (The Wing). Höcke has been convicted and fined for deliberately using banned Nazi terminology. Another court ruling in 2019 found that calling Höcke a Nazi is legitimate as it has a verifiable, factual basis. He is still one of the most powerful members of the AfD, leading the party faction in the Thüringen parliament, where they recently topped the polls, with 32.8% of the total.
In March 2020, Thomas Haldenwang, chief of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said that Der Fluegel violated “characteristic features of the free democratic basic order, human dignity, democracy and the rule of law”. Haldenwang explicitly referred to Höcke as a right wing extremist. The next month, Der Fluegel was officially dissolved, following a request by the AfD leadership. Yet in 2021, the Tagesschau called it “stronger than ever”.
Weidel is scarcely more liberal. The Guardian recently noted that she “has recently been attempting to rebrand the party’s image in a Marine Le Pen-like fashion.” For some, this is reassuring. Le Pen does not say the quiet things out loud like her antisemitic firebrand father Jean Marie. But this does not mean that she has moved one millimetre from his fascist ideology.
A recent report found that at least fifteen deputies from Le Pen’s National Rally party have been part of a racist Facebook group for the last 7 years. Posts in the group include: “Go back to your coconut tree, bamboula” or “You call that a human being? Even my dog behaves better. They are really harmful, these Blacks.” RN also maintains close but discrete links with the identitarian organisation Génération Identitaire.
Stop the AfD Party Conference on January 11
The AfD’s instrumentalisation of hatred and murder makes it more necessary than ever to close them down. Höcke, like Le Pen, is trying to build an organisation which is both electorally attractive and has a physical presence on the streets, as we witnessed in Magdeburg this week. Because of its fascist nature, we must physically confront the AfD, and separate people who vote out of desperation from the hardcore Nazis.
On January 11th, the AfD is holding its party conference in Riesa, where they hope to celebrate possible gains in the coming election. They will not be unopposed — Aufstehen Gegen Rassismus, Widersetzen, and other anti-fascist campaigns have called blockades against the Riesa conference. Buses will also be travelling from Berlin, and 1,500 anti-Nazi students have already promised to be on them. If we want to avoid more violence like that in Magdeburg, as many people as possible should join them.
