A few hours after the attack on the Christmas market, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen denounced an “Islamist attack” or “Islamist barbarity” while the motivations of the alleged perpetrator seem quite different.
By providing their support and expressing their condolences to the families of the victims of the Magdeburg Christmas market, Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen undoubtedly moved a little too quickly. Friday evening, just a few hours after this attack which left at least five dead and more than 200 injured, the two leading figures of the National Rally both denounced “Islamist barbarity” or an “Islamist attack”, terms that do not fit. not with the first elements known about the suspect.
“Condolences to the loved ones of the victims, to the German people, after the Islamist attack which hit the Magdeburg Christmas market,” wrote the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, on X shortly before 10 p.m. According to him, the target of the attack was “nothing to chance”: “Radical Islam is waging war on our Christian traditions, on our identities, on our civilization.”
Twenty minutes later, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the RN deputies, followed suit, deploring that “once again Islamist barbarism is sowing terror in the heart of Europe”. “This act of war against a symbol of our civilization raises hearts,” she added.
“Once again, it is our civilization that is being targeted,” said Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of the Republican Right group in the Assembly, while Éric Zemmour, the president of Reconquête, saw the symbol of a “war” waged “on everything that embodies our civilization”, the two men, however, refrained from describing the attack as “Islamist”.
In recent years in Europe, several attacks on a Christmas market have been carried out by terrorists of radical Islam. This was the case in Strasbourg, in December 2018, where five people were killed by Chérif Chekatt in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. The organization had already claimed responsibility two years earlier for the ram truck attack which left 13 dead and around fifty injured on the Berlin Christmas market.
A man described as “Islamophobic”
But the first elements on the profile of the alleged perpetrator of the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market currently indicate very different motivations. Arrested and placed in police custody, Taleb A., a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia and living in Germany since 2006, was even described as “Islamophobic” this Saturday by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. Several media also attribute to Taleb A. connections with the AfD, the main far-right group across the Rhine.
On Saturday morning, several figures from the left strongly criticized the messages published by Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen. The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, while republishing the message of the boss of the RN, advised him to “turn his tongue in his mouth seven times before delivering his prejudices whose sole purpose is to cultivate anti-Muslim racism”.
For Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of La France insoumise, the far-right leaders “threw themselves like vultures on the attack on Magdeburg to pour out their anti-Muslim hatred”. “We learn that the alleged perpetrator of the attack is a supporter of their ideas, a supporter of the AfD party. Never forget that the extreme right kills,” added the MP elected in Bouches-du-Rhône.
This Saturday afternoon, neither Marine Le Pen nor Jordan Bardella had deleted their initial message or made the slightest correction.
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