Germany went to bed with a very heavy heart last night and wakes up this morning in mourning. Among the two victims who died in the car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg were a young child and an adult. And more than 60 injured, some in serious condition. However, the rush of ambulances, in this small, usually calm regional capital, had not yet stopped, when the scale of the possible political consequences of this tragedy was already being felt.
The first details on the unusual profile of the alleged attacker had barely emerged – a Saudi doctor, who arrived in Germany in 2006, in a legal situation, and arrested very quickly after the attack – before an avalanche of comments hatred towards immigrants and Muslims were sweeping social media in all directions. If on “, other members of his party bombarded messages demanding “an iron fist against terrorists and a clear no to violent migrants, most of them illegal.” Even the American tycoon Elon Musk got involved, calling for the resignation of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, “an incapable idiot”. A few hours earlier, he had called the AfD “the only savior of Germany”.
No political respite
Faced with the pain of families and loved ones, four days before Christmas, there will have been no political respite. On the contrary, this attack has the potential to disrupt the very short current electoral campaign, as the Germans renew their lower house, the Bundestag, in just two months. It is a very safe bet that this drama will put the themes of immigration and the fight against terrorism, which had lost their intensity in recent weeks, back at the heart of the debates. With an air of déjà vu. Last August, a knife attack, perpetrated by a Syrian refugee in Solingen, refocused national debates on the fight against illegal immigration and contributed to the success of the far right in regional elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. .
Except that this time, this drama could come back like a boomerang in the face of the AfD, so quick to react last night. We learned during the night that the attacker, non-Muslim and opponent of the Saudi regime, is a supporter of the German extreme right and a policy of exclusion of Muslims… The political debates promise to be more complex than expected .
