The Magdeburg attack electrifies the early legislative campaign

The time of contemplation will hardly have lasted. Twenty-four hours after the carnage in Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt), where a crazy driver left five dead and two hundred injured on Friday evening at a Christmas market, a black force spread through the streets of the city bruised. Hooded and gloved, groups of young nationalists converged from across the country to demonstrate their rage.

Disciplined like a paramilitary guard but carrying crates of beer, the 2,000 neo-Nazi activists, guided by the leader of the Die Heimat (“Homeland”) party, Thorsten Heise, chanted slogans. « Germany, wake up »a motto once proclaimed by the SA, and « Germany, you love it or you leave it » rang out at night on Place Hasselbach.

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The intervention of law enforcement squads dispersed the activists coming from Dortmund or neighboring Saxony. Armbands on their biceps or flags in the black, red and white colors of Imperial Germany in their hands, they were surrounded by navy blue uniforms near the station. A helicopter monitored the hovering operations.

Shameless recovery attempt

The Alternative for Germany (AfD), some of whose leaders publicly want a « remigration by the millions »calls on his supporters to demonstrate on Monday evening in the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. « They will come and demonstrate every 48 hours », predicted a Frenchman living in Magdeburg, Alexandre Mochée, who works to welcome foreign minors. In the aftermath of the tragedy, leading German politicians went there to show their compassion. Each to convey their message, each in their own way. In front of the wooden chalets, Olaf Scholz called on the Germans to « shield against hatred ».

The conservative right candidate for the early legislative elections on February 23, Friedrich Merz, judged « unbearable that we can't get together and celebrate carefreely. We have to stop this ». AfD candidate Alice Weidel tweeted that this « madness » had to « stop ».

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His alter ego at the head of the far-right party, Tino Chrupalla, came to place a wreath of white roses on the square in front of the Saint-Jean church, which has become a place of contemplation. A shameless attempt at recovery, according to their opponents, because the author of the deadly raid displayed his sympathies for the AfD, applauding Alice Weidel as a « fearless politician ».

A senseless gesture

The Magdeburg drama broke out in the German electoral campaign, a prelude to the renewal of the Bundestag on February 23. The Islamist attack in Solingen at the end of August, which caused the death of three festival-goers, led to a debate on the closure of German borders and the expulsion of foreign criminals. But what political lesson can we draw from this new carnage?

The investigation, still in its infancy, struggles to shed light on the reasons for the senseless gesture. The Attorney General of Saxony-Anhalt put forward as a hypothesis the « discontent » by Taleb Jalal al-Abdulmohsen « faced with the fate reserved by Germany for Saudi refugees ». The medical student arrived in his host country in 2006 to specialize in psychiatry.

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Ten years later, he was granted political asylum under Article 16a of the Constitution after reporting alleged death threats made by the Saudi cultural attaché. In the meantime, he renounced the Muslim religion. In an interview given in 2019 to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitunghe proclaims himself as the « the most virulent anti-Islam fighter in history ». His eruptive and uncontrolled character gets him into trouble with his work colleagues and the law. In 2013, a court in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania fined him 900 euros for threatening an attack on the regional medical association. Reason: non-recognition of the equivalence of his university diploma.

250 messages per week

Social networks serve as a favorite place to let off steam for this obsessive subscriber, capable of writing 250 messages per week. His profile banner on X features a photo of an assault rifle. On August 13, he posted in Arabic: “ If Germany wants war, it will have it. » On several occasions, the person who claims to be persecuted, convinced that the German government is fomenting a creeping Islamization of the West, directly threatens the ex-chancellor. « How come in Germany, asks the newspaper's editorialist Bild, justice meticulously tracks down and criminally prosecutes citizens who make insulting or even simply satirical comments about politicians ? But not when they talk about “killing Merkel” ? »

Last month, an army retiree was visited by two police officers after calling Green Minister Robert Habeck a« professional asshole ». On three occasions, the Saudi embassy had warned Germany against the radicalization of its national. However, the federal and regional criminal police offices concluded that the man did not represent « no concrete danger ».

Even if a country cannot guarantee absolute security to its citizens, has the time come to reform the domestic intelligence system and the functioning of justice?

However, the country has already experienced in its own flesh the terrorism of a Muslim of origin who hated his co-religionists. In the summer of 2016, a shooter of Iranian origin and admirer of Anders Breivik executed nine people of color in Munich. In Magdeburg, a flaw in the security system around the Christmas market allowed the driver to slip through the emergency route, eight years after the Berlin truck attack.

Even if a country cannot guarantee absolute security to its citizens, has the time come to reform the domestic intelligence system and the functioning of justice? Should we review the network of psychiatric establishments, dismantled after years of austerity? Or even better regulate social networks, responsible for the radicalization of terrorists like the murderer of the policeman in Mannheim, last June, or the author of the attack against the synagogue in Halle, in 2019? Candidates are asked to find concrete answers to the “Warum?” » (“why?”) from their voters. Questions that a disoriented population is asking itself, and not only on the banks of the Elbe, in a country cultivating the fear of chaos.