After Magdeburg, the fury at the elites

Germany is still reeling from the deadly attack on a Christmas market on Friday evening. A black BMW was driven into a crowd of market-goers in the city of Magdeburg, leaving at least five people dead and over 40 critically injured. The alleged perpetrator, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was arrested at the scene. He is a 50-year-old psychiatrist who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status in 2016.

Many Germans feel deeply frustrated and angry. Their fury was palpable when chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the Magdeburg market a few hours after the attack. Members of the crowd told him to ‘get lost’. As the chancellor spoke, one man could be heard shouting, ‘How could this have happened again?’ – a reference to the succession of terror attacks in Germany in recent months and years. Scholz’s speech failed to address the public’s anger. Instead, he issued the standard platitudes about standing up to ‘hate’ and ‘violence’.

Germany’s political and media classes have suggested that the attack was driven by far-right sentiments. ‘At this point, we can only say for sure that the perpetrator is an Islamophobe’, said Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, on Saturday. Elsewhere, several commentators have pointed to the fact that the suspect said supportive things about Elon Musk and liked some tweets by the AfD. For many Germans, this characterisation has seemed a little too convenient – a clumsy attempt by the political class to try to taint their populist enemies. What has emerged since suggests this case is far more complicated than initially appeared.

At first, the Magdeburg atrocity seemed to have all the hallmarks of an Islamist attack. Eight years ago, an Islamist terrorist drove a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 70. Yet, as Rakib Ehsan explains on spiked, the Magdeburg suspect is highly unlikely to be an Islamist. He appeared to be an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam activist with a conspiratorial bent, who helped other ex-Muslims escape from Gulf states.

While the precise motivations behind Abdulmohsen’s alleged attack remain unclear, the one thing that is clear, judging by his social-media activity, is his hatred for the German state. In a series of confused tweets, he accused Germany of being responsible for everything from the killing of Socrates to stealing his USB stick, from ‘Islamising’ the country to putting his life at risk. One of his posts reads: ‘The government are criminals… The police are the criminals. In this case, I hold the German nation and the German citizens responsible.’ In a first statement about his motives, a police spokesman said ‘the suspect may have been unhappy with how Germany treats Saudi refugees’. These are certainly not the chief concerns of your typical AfD activist.

It will be up to the courts to establish the causes of the Christmas-market car attack. But there are pressing questions from the public about the deteriorating security situation in Germany. The Magdeburg attack is only the latest in a succession of deadly attacks that have taken place this year. In the summer, three people were killed and several injured in an Islamist terror attack at a festival in Solingen. By targeting social gatherings, from Christmas markets to summer festivals, terrorists are attacking German public life itself. As the anger towards Scholz in Magdeburg shows, many people are not willing to accept this becoming normal.

People are fed up with hearing politicians respond to the murder of their fellow citizens with empty talk about ‘standing up to hate’. They feel that the authorities no longer have the will or the capacity to keep the public safe. After the Solingen attack, it was revealed that the perpetrator should have been deported long ago. In this latest case, there are now reports that the authorities had been warned, by the Saudi government and others, of the potential threat posed by Abdulmohsen.

There had also been warnings made about attacks on Christmas markets for weeks. Yet the only measure the government implemented in response was a farcical knife ban. Days prior to the Magdeburg attack, videos showed groups of police searching the handbags of elderly ladies before allowing them to enter a Christmas market. Embarrassed officers were also seen telling off blameless citizens for carrying small Swiss knives in their bags and pockets, before confiscating these supposed ‘weapons’.

Despite Friday’s horror, many Germans have continued filling up Christmas markets across the county in the days since. They are not going to forego this much-loved tradition out of fear of terrorism, which is a welcome sign of resilience. But with federal elections coming up in February, the government’s repeated failure to keep the public safe will weigh heavily on voters’ minds. The Magdeburg attack could yet have a seismic impact on German politics.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.