Shortly before the European elections, Germany is experiencing a week of violence and destruction. But politicians seem to have learned nothing from such events.
The police officer Rouven L. was stabbed to death by Sulaiman A. on a market square in Mannheim. In Upper Bavaria, a fireman drowned in the floods. The two fathers of families died while working for others, for the common good. They risked their lives for us, just people, and both men worked even though they did not know what religion, party, beliefs or origins the people in the general public belonged to.
The death of these two people who contributed to the common good did not, however, lead to nationwide unity and spiritual reflection, as nice as that would be. The flood and the knife attack seemed to deepen the divide even further: It was a bit as if the disasters of this week had sent us through a political person-separation system.
The Greens’ domestic policy spokeswoman, Lamya Kaddor, first pointed out in a post on X that the knife attacker’s immediate target was an “Islam critic” “who makes derogatory and hateful statements about Islam.” This may be clumsy on the part of Kaddor, whose father was killed by Islamists in Syria – and yet it is what the Greens describe in other situations as “victim blaming,” as the classic: yes, that was rape, but she was also wearing a short skirt.
There was laughter
Phew, there was laughter. This time not in the flood, but in the Berlin state parliament. SPD Interior Senator Iris Spranger used the somewhat clumsy phrase “The terrible death of Mannheim”, and Green Party MP Tuba Bozkurt called out: “Mannheim is dead?” and laughed audibly. This is recorded for all eternity in the minutes of the meeting. Eva Högl has already seen such frivolity. crashed to his feet and, as is well known, sank Armin Laschet’s campaign. But it never seemed as infamous and ice-cold as it did here.
Björn Höcke asked how many of “us” still had to die, which was probably meant to sound melodramatic, but seemed even more grotesque with his current “Pride Month” sunglasses profile picture.
At least there was one thing that everyone could agree on: deportation, deportation, deportation! The Chancellor is also at the forefront of this, he was planning to do it anyway, as we know “on a grand scale”. It is not clear what all this has to do with Sulaiman A., because he has not committed any crimes so far. Even if he is released after a possible prison sentence, it may not be possible to get him back to his old homeland: he is married, has two German children and there are no negotiations with the Taliban so far – even if people in Kabul reacted with great joy to the Chancellor’s announcement.
Deport – or postpone?
Deportation therefore seems to be primarily about postponing the debate – the real causes are delicate and supposedly more complicated, so one has to look at the role of political Islam and take on a whole range of associations and institutions.
After the attack in Mannheim, FDP leader Christian Linder warned against “false tolerance”. What did he mean? The tolerance towards Afghans? Do we tolerate Islamists? Perhaps: Although even top Green politicians have been calling for the closure of the Islamic center in Hamburg for years, the Federal Ministry of the Interior is not getting off its feet.
Top politicians have also failed to find any sensible answers to the flooding. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder was genuinely surprised by the situation. “Nobody could have expected this or expected it” – except, yes, actually anyone who has followed the climate debate of the past forty years through binoculars.
And anyone who thought that the country was back on the path of political reason after Putin’s attack on Ukraine was disappointed by the SPD’s EU top candidate Katarina Barley: When asked about her role model social democrat (m/f/d), she named – of all people – Manuela Schwesig. That is, the politician who used a Russian-funded matryoshka to trick people into securing the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. In her election campaign, she calls herself “Katarina the Righteous”, among other things, allusions to Catherine the Great – the Russian tsarina who annexed Crimea. Does that ring a bell? Armin Laschet, on the other hand, undauntedly claims on “Miosga” that the country has never been dependent on Russian gas.
More than just minor errors
Apparently not much has changed in this changing era. These may all be small communication errors, but taken together they raise an unpleasant suspicion: will major political events such as Ukraine, Mannheim and the flood not lead to a learning effect?
Disasters can actually set a country on a course, at least for a while. September 11, 2001 showed that. The knife attack in Mannheim has a lot in common with the terror of that time in terms of its visual impact: 9/11 probably gave me the first opportunity in my life to watch a person on the way to death. A small human silhouette fell from the burning towers and it was clear that this person was about to die. Anyone who watched the widely distributed videos of Suleiman A. ramming his knife into Rouven L. will have felt something similar.
The sheer aggression of the 9/11 terrorists, the visibility of the deaths had an astonishing effect on the American people: people stood together for a short time, showed their flag, literally, they trusted the government as never before in forty years. They also trusted the media more than usual, just imagine: In November 2001, the ratings for the professionalism of media companies were higher than ever. All of this then turned around with the next catastrophe, Hurricane Katrina – but for a while America stood together. Mannheim is not New York City, it is, among other things, smaller. And the year 2024 has little in common with the year 2001. Nevertheless, one would have expected something other than undignified cacophony, especially after the death of the hero Rouven L.
Land without vector
Does Germany still have a vector, a momentum? The deportations now being called for are failing because of the Greens. Natural disaster insurance is failing because of the FDP. Some aid to Ukraine is failing because of the SPD’s peace campaign. Olaf Scholz is a weather vane: The fact that he decided on Friday to throw the TU President out of an advisory board after her anti-Semitic likes was not a sign of leadership – it was simply a matter of course.
Of course, politics has never had the effect that its protagonists promise us. Climate, economic growth and wars are pretty much beyond our control. But these limits of effectiveness could be digested through communicative leadership. But as we know, there is none: Olaf Scholz said a sentence about the flood that lies in the text like a dead animal on the side of the road: “We will not be allowed to neglect the task of stopping man-made climate change.”
Germany is trundling through the 2024 election year with a vacant pilot seat. I hope the sovereign doesn’t do anything stupid at the ballot box on Sunday – if he goes.