August 28, 2024 - 1:00pm
Cologne
Here in Cologne, about 15 minutes away from the city of Solingen, shock sits deep and tempers run high. It was in Solingen at the end of last week that a Syrian refugee was arrested for killing three people and wounding eight more, some of whom suffered life-threatening injuries in the knife attack.
With important regional elections in eastern Germany on Sunday, all parties are keen to be seen to respond to the atrocity. But the public doesn’t need political posturing. Voters will want to see realistic proposals to address the security risks posed by mass immigration over recent years.
Since Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, much of the immediate discussion has revolved around terrorism and knife crime. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, from the Social Democratic Party, proposed last week that the length of knives people are legally allowed to carry should be reduced from 12 centimetres to 6 centimetres, and that switchblades should be banned altogether. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Green Party also demanded stricter laws on weapons and more no-knife zones.
For many Germans, this debate looks like fighting the symptoms rather than the root of a problem which goes much further than this latest incident. In a survey last month, just over half of Germans said they still felt safe in public spaces. In 2017, it was still three-quarters. This is not just due to terror incidents. In 2023 alone, violent crime rose by 8.6%. The proportion of non-German suspects of all reported crimes rose to 41%. The last time the figure exceeded 40% was in 2016, the year after Angela Merkel allowed around 1 million migrants into the country.
Even with Germany’s generous policy towards refugees, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants live in the country, with estimates extending to over half a million. This poses an obvious security risk, but one that has rarely been discussed in public, often for fear of fuelling the rise of the far-Right Alternative für Deutschland.
Yet it’s precisely this lack of honest debate on the consequences of failing to control mass immigration that has helped the AfD gain support in recent years. In 2015, when the party — then only two years old — first gained prominence due to the refugee crisis, many voters saw no way of expressing their concerns.
Merkel, who had made and defended the decision to open the borders, was heading the Christian Democrats (CDU), nominally Germany’s conservative party. A vote for the CDU was a vote for her refugee policy; the other main parties stood with her or further to the Left. The only way to register concern at the ballot box was to turn to the far-Right of the spectrum. And so the next federal election in 2017 saw the AfD gain seats in parliament for the first time, immediately entering as the third-largest party.
Post-Merkel, the CDU has now recognised that leaving concerns over mass migration to the AfD equates to handing the far-Right party a political monopoly on an issue that is deeply important to many Germans. Following the Solingen atrocity, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has said that “knives aren’t the problem but the people who walk around with them.” In a strongly-worded public letter published on Sunday, bearing the title “Enough!”, he called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to work with him as opposition leader on introducing effective measures to change immigration policy.
One can dispute whether Merz’s proposals are realistic. He is demanding a complete refusal of asylum applications from people from Syria and Afghanistan, which may prove legally difficult. But the signal that Merz is willing to rethink immigration policy as a whole seems to have been heard by voters.
The first poll taken in the aftermath of the Solingen attack shows an increase of 1% for the CDU, meaning the centre-right party would comfortably win an election with 31.5%. The AfD lost half a point. Whether this will have an immediate impact on the regional elections on Sunday remains unclear, but the signal is worth taking on board for Germany’s established parties.
People want to talk about the fact that they feel less safe in the streets of their country, and they want to see measures taken to improve the situation. Not talking about the drastic way Germany has changed since 2015 won’t stifle the debate. Instead, it will only leave the matter to the AfD.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeCultural cohesion is a bigger refugee immigration issue for the EU than the USA at the moment. Immigration is a huge issue in both places but the USA receives most (not all of course) of the refugee immigrants from the predominantly Catholic or Christian cultures in South America. They seem to share more of the same values with the culture here. It appears the Muslim immigrants and their very different cultural beliefs present a larger problem in the EU. And may be more challenging to life there for a long while
I’m not sure people realize just how different the immigration issue is in Europe, compared to the rest of the world. It’s much easier for poor, radicalized, young men to make the trip to Europe than anywhere else.
Having said that, there are social issues at the American southern border as well, although not to the same degree. Organized crime is a huge issue in the U.S. and some countries are exporting their criminals to the U.S. The open border is also an on invitation for organized terrorists to exploit.
In Canada, we are very fortunate to have relatively few social issues associated with mass immigration – because it’s so expensive to get here. No one is taking a small boat to Canada. Immigration issues in Canada are almost exclusively economic.
50,000 young Chinese men crossed the US southern border in the space of a few weeks. Chinese. Do you know how hard it is to travel inside China, let alone leave? Americans are asleep.
I think the better term would be “Anesthetized”
No doubt. The open border is being exploited by enemies of the U.S.
Chapter and verse please
The Solingen mass murder is an obvious example of how naked the Emperor is.
How exactly does a reduction in the size of a knife that you are legally allowed to carry about your person or a ‘no knife zone’ deter a terrorist from (illegally) stabbing people? On what planet is that Green muppet living?
Planet Deflection. If the police attempted to stop and search high risk individuals for illegal knives, that would be decried as racist.
Nancy Faeser is not from the Greens, she’s from the SPD. And seemingly exists in a whole different reality going by what she comes out with.
Wanna bet she’s a white single woman with cats and causes?
I would be grateful if my stab wound was only 6cm deep instead of 12cm deep, but I would rather have no stab wound at all.
The point is, Mr Smith, (excuse the pun). Is that a 6 cm deep stab wound would be classified as a mostly peaceful stab wound when being reported on by the MSM….
You’re a dreamer then. Dream on.
It is never the criminal who is to blame. Too much policy and ideology depends on that being true.
You name has been taken down. You will be contacted at a future date.
It’s really not that hard Alphonse…If it is a Net Zero knife then there is no real problem. The issue is that toxic masculinity and white supremacy combined with climate change force people to do things against their will. But Net Zero knives prevent that. See?
They should go the whole hog and have a ‘no terrorist zone’. Wait a minute, isn’t that what AfD are proposing?
As my least favourite country on the planet, who benefitted so massively from WW2 I could not care less
You’d think they would just outlaw stabbing people to death.
Wish the same author would explain in an article, why all established German parties formed a political “fire wall” against the so called far-right AfD. I watched interviews with AfD leaders, read their Party Manifesto and find this Party very similar to the British Reform Party, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy or the current GOP according to D.Trump. They want to stop immigration (Alice Weidel wants an immediate stop of all immigration for the next 5 years), stop NetZero, and consider a more Patriotic approach for Germany, including to get less involved in foreign wars. But in Germany some established parties seem to be ok with building a coalition with the neo Communist/Marxist Party like BSW.
This is a hopeless wish. We must realize that the author is on the same team as those she is supposedly criticizing.
This is because it is a massive hurdle for Germans to support anything labelled as far right. The fact is that MSM has been complicit in branding the AfD as “rechtsextrem” and they have been critical of anyone who has tried to warm Germany of the destructive path that they find themselves on. A classic example is Thilo Sarrazin (from the left-wing SPD) wrote a book released in 2010 warning of the failures of Germany’s immigration policy and the dangers of Muslim migration “Deutschland shaft sich ab!” which roughly translates to Germany abolishes itself. His career was destroyed, and he left the public spotlight.
I always admired the European way of respectfully disagreeing with someone. This is long gone and it is high time that the Europeans, especially the Germans find themselves again. And drop the fear of far right.
Mass deportation is required across europe.
I’m afraid this is the truth
1) Ban all migration from non-EU countries
2) Deport all non-citizen migrants
There, fixed your problem.
This is like teaching a particularly thick child how to cross the road: if you only look right, you won’t see the dangers coming from the other directions and be unceremoniously mown down.
I think the pinnacle of stupidity post-Solingen (a city which ironically is known for its production of high quality blades for scissors etc.) was Saskia Esken of the SPD who sat on a TV talkshow and said (seemingly in all seriousness) that it wasn’t possible to learn much from this attack, since the perpetrator wasn’t known to the police or under surveillance.
I cannot believe these people are fit to be in charge of a Biro pen, let alone a whole country.
Denmark introduced sensible policies reducing the levels of immigration and improving the integration of those who are let in ages ago and all without the need to elect a far right party. Since when was doing the right thing by your own population whilst managing immigration sensibly something only the far right could do?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our government could actually learn from the Danish approach (assuming it is as effective as you suggest). Unfortunately the chance of Labour taking any sensible advice rather than plowing on their current blinkered ideological furrow are remote I fear.
This should give you an idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUCODhezYMI
This was accomplished by the Danish Left as well. It really can be done.
Exactly, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
That only worked because all agreed on the need to control the illegals scum. In Germany, there is still the welcome mat from the CDU and SPD. That is the problem – not all agree that the illegals are not working out.
“Cologne, about 15 minutes away from the city of Solingen”
Does Katja Hoyer have a helicopter? As someone who lived in Cologne, there is no way in hell you can drive in a car to Solingen from Cologne in 15 minutes.
16 minutes by train
How many ‘regimes’ have existed in history? 1000’s. Like a particularly long cricket innings, when you think they’ll be there forever, suddenly they collapse. The post ww2 regime in Europe, is so deranged and stagnant now, doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on their sacred beliefs.
The weight of the failure is obvious to everyone but themselves. The refusal to accept the titanic has been hit and is going down is their demented state of mind.
When I first heard that there had been a stabbing at a festival of diversity, I thought it might have been a Neo-Nazi. just goes to show how much diversity there will be under the caliphate.
I understand that music is forbidden in the Koran.
So are an awful lot of things, and people!
Germany is reaping what it has sown.
And it will get worse.
Maybe the AfD is the best party to lead Germany right now…
The AfD understands the problem.
Poor old Keir Starmer needs to get a speech writer who can keep up-to-date with events. In Germany, Keir said that he and Olof should join forces to defeat the “far right” because Keir thinks that the recent British riots were caused by misinformation about an Islamist, asylum-seeking knifeman. Even if Keir’s observation were correct, it sits oddly in a country that has just suffered from an Islamist, asylum-seeking knifeman.
If the pass a law to ban immigration from somewhere, it is legal to ban it.
Bring back stop and frisk.
Maybe Germans should consider whether ending open borders is really such a “far right” position after all. Shortening knives is a laughable and insulting proposal and should be labeled “far left” for its inanity.
I’m stunned by the fact that people from wildly different cultures with wildly differing attitudes and physical and cognitive attributes don’t get on well together. Just be kind. Surely?
The proportion of non-German suspects of all reported crimes in Germany has reached 41%!
Even though I loath Germany as a country, we need to take a close look at what is happening there, and in the rest of Europe as Starmerfuhrer imposes his National Socialism on the nu britn Peoples Republic of Dystopia… He is literally readying whats left of our country for potential internal revolution against his government….
Do you ever wonder if Europe will shake its head groggily and come to the realization that Islam is the enemy? No, I don’t either. Not until it’s too late.
Mass remigration now. Zero asylum.