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Sascha Lobo on Hanau: The anger of migrants can no longer be ignored

2021-02-17T13:28:13.270Z


One year after the murderous attack in Hanau, an uncomfortable question arises: How serious is the white German majority society with its anti-racism?


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Completely unacceptable to speak of »lone perpetrators«: memorial event in Hanau

Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa

When the murderous, racist attack in Hanau celebrates its first anniversary on February 19, it will also be a symbol of marginalization.

Not that everything is bad in Germany when it comes to social progress against racism.

After all, an awareness has grown that hardly existed in this form fifteen years ago.

But Hanau stands for everything that is bad.

The perception of many migrant communities is that Fatih Saraçoğlu, Gökhan Gültekin, Ferhat Unvar, Hamza Kurtović, Kaloyan Velkov, Mercedes Kierpacz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Sedat Gürbüz and Vili-Viorel Păun are seen as second class victims of terrorism.

Many, perhaps most of the knock-out Germans, have not yet understood how deeply, how radically, how shockingly Hanau has burned itself into migrant heads, as otherwise only the NSU terror series, including the catastrophic attempts by the police to investigate the victims, were killed.

Sascha Lobo, arrow to the right

Photo: 

Urban Zintel

Born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant with a focus on the Internet and digital technologies.

In 2019, Kiepenheuer & Witsch published his book “Reality shock: Ten lessons from the present”.

In his debate podcast, Lobo responds to responses to his columns.

No coincidence, of course not that the father of the Hanau mass murderer calls the victims "perpetrators" and sees his son as the "victim" of a conspiracy.

The perpetrator-victim reversal is one of the most important tools of the racist, who interprets the mere existence of non-white people as an attack on himself and his worldview.

Against which he only defends himself.

The bereaved have filed a complaint against the father for complicity in murder.

The son was almost a slave to his father, a psychiatrist spoke of a "psychotic disorder lived in pairs".

There are many indications of a possible complicity - at least ideally - of the father, who like his son has a clearly racist worldview.

In his testimony, he got entangled in partly outrageous contradictions that were uncovered by witness statements.

Gunsmoke traces were found on the father's clothes and he could even be involved in the murder of his wife, the mother of the assassin.

Nevertheless, the public prosecutor did not want to start any further investigation.

Which, in turn, dramatically increases skepticism: Would a similarly irritating result have been found for victims with the names Schmidt, Meier, Steinhausen?

It doesn't really matter how you answer this guess.

The mere fact that the question arises in such a way and that so many people affected by racism are convinced of this disadvantage, indicates an underestimated feeling of the masses: anger of migrants.

An anger that has reached a new level due to the racist terror of Hanau, the restrained echo in the German public that followed and the inadequate, almost half-hearted explanation of the authorities and their possible failure.

It is an anger that can take many forms, ranging from a quiet simmer to eruptive outbursts.

It just won't go away by itself, because it is primarily a reaction to racist structures, racist experiences, racist people that many of those affected encounter again and again.

Of course, it is also nonsense to view the parts of society that are dominated by migrants as a monolithic block that graciously has to fit in with its victim situation.

An attitude that, by the way, often occurs on the left and means roughly the opposite of meaningful integration.

But that doesn't change the fact that in Hanau the choice of the crime scene and the victims were obviously racially motivated.

Whereas intra-migrant diversity cannot do anything about it.

more on the subject

  • Icon: Spiegel PlusAnschlag from Hanau: "I found out from Steinmeier that my brother is dead" An interview by Özlem Gezer and Timofey Neshitov

  • Icon: Spiegel Plus Survivors of the attack report on their alienation from Germany: The Hanau Protocols by Özlem Gezer and Timofey Neshitov

As we know from the writings and videos left behind by the perpetrator, the Hanau attack was partly triggered by a mixture of racist conspiracy theories.

Corona has made it clear how disturbing the willingness among White Germans is to regard such racism as tolerable.

That is why pseudo-left anti-vaccination opponents or pseudo-liberal anti-corona measures take to the streets together with Nazis.

Immigrant anger feeds on precisely such insights: When in doubt, you don't really mean your anti-racism.

This also means that the white majority society presents the racism problem as less serious through a large number of small, often not even deliberate tricks.

In recent years, for example, there has been a lot of talk about "hate online."

Unfortunately, this phrase often serves to cover up, because in most cases there is actually a triad of misanthropy, consisting of sexism, anti-Semitism and racism, behind "hate online".

But hatred is a feeling, while racism is based on social structures.

Whenever open racism is referred to as "online hatred", the white majority society takes itself out of responsibility.

When I talk about Hanau today with people who feel anger from migrants, then behind this anger I am also stunned.

It alternates between the poles »Where does this dull rejection come from?« And »Are you actually fucking kidding me?« Hanau has become a sign that racism in connection with web-based conspiracy theories and the lack of sensitivity of the white German majority society can become murderous at any time.

The fact that an officially known mentally ill racist can have two gun ownership cards at the same time contributes enormously to this.

Just like the sound of the word "shisha bar" in quite a few parts of the media, where the supposed ambiguity oozes out between the syllables, with the stale aftertaste of "somehow your own fault".

What the short skirt is to the sexist, the shisha bar is to the racist.

In the deep brown corners of the net, the assassin is laughed at as a "crazy individual perpetrator" because he has uttered extremely crude, presumably pathologically based absurdities in his manifesto.

But at the same time Hanau is seen there as a model of an ethnic cleansing fantasy.

Which is why it is completely unacceptable to speak of »lone perpetrators« because it suggests that there is no connection between Hanau and socially widespread racism.

How should people affected by racism not get angry?

As early as 1991, the Dutch anthropologist Philomena Essed described in her study "Understanding Everyday Racism" how humiliating such a multitude of disadvantages can be.

How deeply racial discrimination has engraved itself into thinking, beliefs and actions.

When you are white, you have to be very, very attentive to even notice a tiny fraction of it.

If you don't know, there is a better chance of having to experience the racist structures inevitably, sometimes in surprising places.

One of the examples that struck me as most convincing, especially for skeptical whites, is the racist soap dispenser.

The white hand is held under the touchless soap dispenser and immediately receives a full jet of foam.

The black hand is not recognized as a hand and is ignored by the machine.

To describe a more recent, very specific dimension in Germany: Bayerischer Rundfunk and SPIEGEL examined the rental market in 2017 in the study »Hanna and Ismail«.

Landlords received absolutely identical apartment applications - except for the respective names, which were among other things bright German, Arabic or Turkish.

Nationwide, for example, a sometimes dramatic discrimination became visible, in Munich applicants with foreign names received 46 percent fewer invitations to view the apartment.

How can you not get angry, especially when you suspect that similar mechanisms, from job application to lending to treatment by state institutions such as the police, are likely to be at work?

Migrant rage can also be seen as an opportunity - as an opportunity to be seized for the white German majority society.

Because so the flow of responsibility is reversed, so far, racism was a problem especially for non-whites and therefore often invisible to whites or better: ignorable.

The immigrant anger, however, as it has been massively discharged gradually through Hanau, appears so clearly as a reaction to racism that to overlook it is no longer a real option.

Unless one finds a tiny bit of racism somehow acceptable, even if it's only as a »lesser evil«.

As a result, the immigrant rage forces the white German majority society to position itself.

If you then get excited more about the immigrant rage than about the murderous racism like in the Hanau attack - you show where you stand.

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Source: spiegel

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