Right-wing populists and the assassin of Halle: The responsibility of the AfD

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The AfD has nothing to do with it, nothing at all. Says the AFD. Leading politicians hurried to condemn the attack on the synagogue in Halle. And they objected to reproaches, in their ranks were intellectual arsonists.

But the AfD is not that easy to get out of there. She's in it in this case, pretty deep, even though nobody says there is a direct connection to the assassin.

It's about spaces of thought and saying that are either closed or open. Some are better off because it is indecent to enter, sometimes dangerous. But AFD leaders have done much in recent years to open two of these spaces and lure others into it.

Both have to do with this assassination.

The one room is the devaluation and vilification of the alleged others. A crudely Germanism is defined and propagated in ranks of the AfD. Whoever is a refugee, who is Muslim, should not belong, is insulted, is threatened with cheating. This changes the look. You do not see the people. You can see origin, race, faith.

Björn Höcke called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a "monument of shame", a term with an anti-Semitic tendency. Nonetheless, anti-semitism is not part of the party's program. But the AfD has helped to open the room for the devaluation of the alleged others. And those who enter this room can decide for themselves whom they want to pursue with hatred and whom not.

The other room is the belittlement of National Socialism. Again, the AfD has put a foot in the door and then pressed further and further, so that the gap is larger.

Alexander Gauland called the Nazi years a "bird's shit" in German history. That the Brandenburg AfD chairman Andreas Kalbitz spent half of his life in extreme right-wing circles, played no role for the party, does not matter, does not matter.

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There is again an open space in which it is no taboo to throw a mild or affirmative look at the most terrible time in German history, a time of mass murder.

The assassin of Halle has moved in these two spaces, which merge into each other anyway. He can gain a lot from National Socialism, he apparently considers the Holocaust to be a rumor, for him the Jews are the others he hates. Then he built and shot weapons.

There were these two rooms even before the AfD. The doors were sometimes closed more or less well. Currently, they are pretty wide open and that has a lot to do with the AfD.

This is the responsibility of this party for the assassination of Halle.