An abhorrent act of violence motivated by hate shocked Germany this past Wednesday. In the city of Hanau, in the state of Hesse, nine people were fatally gunned down in successive attacks on three bars. All victims are individuals with a migrant background. Six more people were injured, one of them severely. According to the Kurdish community of Germany, four of the fatalities were of Kurdish origin, while five of the fatalities were said to be of Turkish origin.

Details of the Hanau Attack

The first shots were fired at around 10 p.m. on Wednesday. First, the perpetrator shot a shisha bar on the outskirts of downtown Hanau, then a café bar a few yards away. Afterwards, he drove to another bar and opened the fire again.

The suspect is a 43-year-old man from Hanau with German citizenship, as Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth confirmed on Wednesday. In addition, the perpetrator possessed several weapons legally as he was a sports shooter without any prior police record.

Hours after the crime, police discovered the body of the alleged killer in his apartment, who, by that time, had committed suicide. The body of the 72-year-old mother of the suspect was also found in the apartment, whether or not the gunman also killed her has yet to be confirmed. The police also searched a car on the property, possibly the perpetrator’s getaway vehicle. Weapons and ammunition are said to have been found in it, according to reports.

By now, Germany’s Attorney General has taken over the investigation in the Hanau case. The decision was made early in the morning on suspicion of a terrorist act that was confirmed later in the day.

The Suspect’s Manifesto and Beliefs

The suspect had published video messages and a manifesto online, Attorney General Peter Frank confirmed. In addition to appalling worldviews and absurd conspiracy theories, these materials contained profoundly racist and misogynist beliefs. The investigators also found a video in the apartment. The recording, which the man published a few days before the crime, contains confused theories in English including a “personal message to all Americans,” taken in a private apartment. In it, the man claims there are underground military facilities in the United States where children were being “mistreated and murdered” and where “the devil was being worshiped.” He then urges American citizens to “wake up and fight”!

The video does not contain a reference to an impending act of violence in Germany. The Federal Criminal Police Office and the Hesse State Criminal Police Office are now investigating with special commissions. While no further suspects are currently in custody, the authorities have made it their priority to establish whether or not the killer had supporters or was part of a more extensive network of white supremacists.

Merkel: The Motivation was Racism and Hate

Chancellor Angela Merkel was shocked by the events and gave a statement where she officially declared “hatred of people with a different origin, belief or appearance” as the perpetrator’s motive. Federal Interior Minister Seehofer also emphasized that the perpetrator acted out of racist motivation.

After the murder of local politician Walter Lübke and the attempted massacre in a Jewish synagogue in Halle in October 2019, the Hanau murders are the latest shocking act with a racist background within just fifteen months in Germany.

Politicians from all parties expressed their empathy and condolences to the victim’s families. Many also attended a public gathering in the evening. Calls for prevention of these cases were immediately made, especially towards oversight on the Internet, where many white supremacists communicate on well-known sites and seemingly find like-minded people. However, no concrete measures for countering this threat have been made public so far.

L'articolo Racist Murders Shock Germany proviene da InsideOver.

At the AfD’s convention, the party’s direction was supposed to get redefined. However, an anticipated coup by the hard-right did not occur. Instead, the party may have laid the foundation to become a viable government option in the future.

Party co-founder and former CDU member Alexander Gauland stepped down as one of the party’s chairs during the convention. However, not before handpicking his predecessor Tino Chrupalla, who now, together with Jörg Meuthen will lead the federal AfD. Chrupalla had several opponents and thus won with only 54 percent of the vote. Meuthen, who is also a Member of the European Parliament, received a better result than expected at just under 70 percent.

After the party has been established in all German states and remains the biggest opposition party in the federal parliament, both men communicated the next steps: the AfD needs to become a governing party and more professional.

The conundrum with this goal? All other parties continue to categorically exclude any cooperation with the AfD, never mind a coalition. The fact that the nationalist group within the AfD “Der Flügel” continues to gain momentum, makes government participation anytime soon not more conceivable.

Neither Meuthen nor Chrupalla belongs to the Flügel, however, particularly Chrupalla has continuously used a rather dubious language that carries certain connotations, e.g. “Mischvolk” (mixed race) or “Umvolkung” (ethnic replacement) when referring to Germany’s immigration policies. His calling card has been his biography. Chrupalla is East German, geographically the party’s stronghold and, due to his previous profession as a painter, has the makings to become a highly relatable person for the working class.

In terms of his vision, Chrupalla remained vague, stating only a simple message: “We now have the task of bringing our country back on a better path. Our beautiful Germany deserves a different policy. ” How this path will be reached and what a different policy would look like was not addressed.

Prior to the convention, rumors continued to circulate that either Germany’s most controversial politician and Flügel leader Björn Höcke could seek to join the leadership team and thereby push the AfD into the same direction on the federal, the party has embarked on in the eastern states, including borderline neo-nazism.

In the end, Höcke decided to not compete for any federal office. The Flügel’s influence was omnipresent, nonetheless. Moderate elements of the party (e.g. Kay Gottschalk, Georg Pazderski) and thus main critics of Höcke and the Flügel’s other face, Andreas Kalbitz, lost their deputy positions during the convention.

It displays the continuing dichotomy within the party. Moderates such as Meuthen, who try to position the party for future government positions continue to struggle with the far-right elements the highly popular Flügel offers. A quasi civil war was expected, even Meuthen could have been voted out in favor of a radical replacement (one of the candidates, though not a member of the Flügel is a well-known Holocaust denier).

However, a rebellion did not occur. This leads to the question of whether or not the party has found a consensus that would, perhaps, result in toning down the rhetoric. It would allow the party to eventually position itself as a viable coalition option of the future.

Here, the CDU remains the logical partner and given the current constellation ins Germany, where a hard-left alliance cannot be stopped unilaterally, the AfD has the chance to become an inevitable quantity for the CDU if it manages to emancipate itself from its radical elements.

L'articolo Germany’s Far-Right AfD Elects new Leadership proviene da InsideOver.