The terrible attack in Magdeburg appeared to be the act of an Islamist because of its target. It reminded us of the 2016 attack by Anis Amri on the Christmas market in Berlin. But since the identity of the 50 year old murderer has become known, we know that he was a fan of Geert Wilders, Elon Musk, and the AfD. He hated Angela Merkel, Muslims and Islam. His online profile on X is ideologically unambiguous. Because he believed that Germany was promoting the “Islamisation” of Europe, he wanted to punish the country and to kill as many people as possible.
With such perpetrators, you always ask yourself: how did they become radicalised? Which preacher of hatred influenced them? Who shaped them ideologically? In which circles did they move? In this case, unfortunately, you can find the relevant literature in every German book store. Radical variations of this way of thinking is available on the internet, in movements like Pegida, and in parliament with the AfD, who gained 20% of the votes in Sachsen-Anhalt [translator: the State containing Magdeburg]. Their conspiracy ideologies go from a “great exchange” of the population towards the infiltration of the country by radical Muslims — ideas which the murderer in Magdeburg clearly shares.
It would be a euphemism to bestow the title of “Islam critic” on the perpetrator, as some media are doing. We are clearly talking about a paranoid hatred of Islam. With his attack, he locates himself alongside those right wing terrorists responsible for terror attacks in 2011 in Norway, 2017 in Canadian Quebec, and 2019 in New Zealand. In the case of Breivik, these consisted of attacks against public authorities and a social democratic youth camp, in the other two cases against peaceful Mosque communities. The murderer in Hanau also acted from anti-Muslim/racist motives, when he shot nine people dead in two Shisha bars in February 2020.
Extreme Right Wingers Deny their Ideology
Because the perpetrator of Magdeburg originally comes from Saudi Arabia, and he targeted a Christmas market, many people do not want to believe that he might be a radical Islam hater. But people from mainly Muslim countries or who were themselves once Muslim can be prone to such ways of thinking. The murderer of Munich, David Sonboly, who in 2016 killed 9 largely young people because of hatred against Muslims had an Iranian background. The writer Akif Pirinçci who appeared at the anti-Muslim Pegida demonstrations and spread hatred against Muslims, comes from Turkey. There is a simple reason why former Muslims in Europe can take on extreme right wing attitudes: they receive applause and confirmation for it and that strengthens them in their delusions. A pinch of self-hatred is possibly also there.
The ideological closeness of the right wing extremists, from the AfD to Nius, from Martin Sellner to Elon Musk, to the murderer of Magdeburg is naturally uncomfortable. Some of them claim that he merely had “psychological problems” and therefore went on a “Amoklauf” [crazed action], not a terror attack. Or they deny that the perpetrator is an ex-Muslim and AfD supporter, and accuse him of simply pretending.
They speculate that the perpetrator must have always been an Islamist sleeper. They believe: once a Muslim, always a Muslim. The fact that the murderer attacked a Christmas market is enough for them to imply that he could have acted from different motives than those which he falsely claimed. The fact that he comes from Saudi Arabia is enough for them to once more denounce a “wrong migration policy”. In other words, right wing extremists are using the act of a right wing extremist to continue to disseminate their hatred.
The Murderer was a Public person
But the most important question is: why could the attack not be stopped? Because the murderer was a public person. On X alone, he had over 46,000 followers and many contacts in the international radical anti-Muslim scene. Journalists also followed him and he gave interviews to several media outlets in recent years. He was known to many authorities, his profile picture shows a machine gun, and he had announced many times that he wanted to commit a spectacular act and to use violence. There were warnings, but they remained unheard.
The authorities and his milieu underestimated his radicalisation. The question is: why? One possible albeit uncomfortable, answer to this question is that the perpetrator did not stand alone with his hatred against Muslims. His beliefs are so prevalent in Germany that he did not appear to be peculiar. He was one of us — until on Friday evening when he drove a car into a Christmas market.
This article first appeared in German in the taz. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.
