The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Attack in Halle: The storm we warned you about

2019-10-10T21:32:21.462Z


Germany is a country in which hatred of others easily passes from annihilation to annihilation. It is not enough to provide some security cameras - we need an anti-fascist consensus.



guest Post

Yesterday I sat stunned in front of my laptop in Buenos Aires, where I'm just for a lyric project. Not surprised. Stunned. On Wednesday, a terrorist in Halle hunted down Jews. Armed with a rifle and a protective vest and four kilograms of explosives in the trunk of his car, the man ran to the synagogue. According to the municipality, there were between 70 and 80 people in it. But he did not come to the synagogue because the door did not give in when he shot at her. And two people were killed by him anyway. Honor her memory.

In Buenos Aires, in 1994, Argentina's worst bomb attack hit the headquarters of the Jewish community, when over 80 people lost their lives. Yesterday, only one stable door protected us from possibly the worst attack on Jews in Germany since World War II. That's a great luck. We should not trust it again.

It is clear what will happen now: the security in front of the synagogues will be strengthened, as the chairman of the Jewish Community in Halle (Saale), Max Privorozki, has demanded. The Jews are once more treated as if they were valuable porcelain, which needs special care in Germany, I know that. All my childhood and adolescence, I went to a school with a security fence and a thermal camera. That was normal for me and my friends and girlfriends. Although that as a condition, of course, is not okay at all. After Halle it will be unavoidable to install more cameras, to commission building protection and to build better security doors in the synagogues and Jewish schools. I can not think of anything better.

But what is this condition?

In a statement shortly after the attack, the CDU chairman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer spoke of an "alarm signal". But that's no alarm, that's the disaster. Alarm signals were when half pig pork throws were thrown in front of the synagogues, mobbing people in the street or a politician spoke of a bird's shit. This is the storm we warned you about. And we, those are the ones who have for years underlined the danger of right-wing attacks, which signaled the NSU, the assassination of Walter Lübcke, the rise of the AfD, the chase from Chemnitz and the burning asylum shelters as a sign.

Once again, this most German of all refusals reveals that right-wing assassinations such as Halle may be the attack of a single man, but not a single offender. Alone, because the terrorist wore a helmet camera, so the attack transmitted to the Internet for a real audience. Nazism and hatred of others, who effortlessly move from the electoral cross to annihilation, belongs to this country. Other things are difficult to learn from history until today - until Halle.

There is no option to court Nazis

The video of the helmet camera of the German assassin of Halle shows how the man scolds several times about "Jews" and "Kanaken" and shoots two people, one of them in a kebab shop. Am I the only one who thinks of the NSU, of the neo-Nazi murders of migrants that have remained unrecognized for years? We should once again show what a right-wing extremist has clearly demonstrated here: the new-old racists also mean Jews. Who wants a Germany without Kanaken or Muslims, wants one without Jews.

It is now up to this insight to align policies and alliances. Halle has made it clear that the new right, whose clearest symptom is the AfD, poses a threat to all people who do not live up to their idea of ​​Germanism. That does not happen by chance, but it has a long tradition in Germany. But at least that's the length of the tradition. I can see that in the reactions to Halle as well.

It is not an option to simply leave the field to the Nazis and people because they are more violent. It's also not an option to woo and trivialize them and then be surprised every time they shoot. "When they rush in their rooms, / say:" Yes and Amen - but gladly! / Here you have me - beat me in scraps! "/ And beat them, so praise the Lord." - Kurt Tucholsky has already said everything in this poem "Scattering roses on the way".

more on the subject

REUTERS / NEWS2SHAREPhilosophist Jason Stanley "Right Antisemitism is the Bigger Threat"

The response to Halle must of course be more than dismay. It needs concrete ideas of what needs to change so that it does not repeat itself. This also manifests itself in an insight that may have been more widespread among East German Jews than among West Germans: that after the Shoah, it is not enough to provide a few security cameras and thick doors so that things do not repeat themselves. But that it needs a different society.

The view that anti-fascism and anti-racism must be part of the raison d'être of the state after 1945, that left and right are by no means equidistant from the bourgeois, post-Nazi center, is today not the prevailing political attitude. But she should be.

Because if this country is not based on an anti-fascist consensus in 2019 - then I do not know what.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2019-10-10

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-27T10:15:46.316Z

Trends 24h

Life/Entertain 2024-03-28T17:17:20.523Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.