The sovereigntist and anti-Islamification Alternative for Germany accused the political establishment of cynically using the gay pride terror attack to push for their own censorship agenda.
A known Islamist extremist was shot dead by police in the aftermath of a combined automobile and knife-type terror attack on a Berlin gay pride parade on Saturday, but the supposedly conservative German Chancellor has leant into an emerging trend of minimising the apparent attack profile to talk about wider society instead.
Speaking at a church memorial service on Sunday before an altar bedecked with rainbow ‘progress pride’ flags on Sunday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats — Germany’s long-standing post-war centre-right-globalist ‘conservative’ party — paid tribute to the victims, but also expressed a worldview that Islamist intolerance of gay lifestyles is a product of German society. The Chancellor said, per a transcript offered by German broadsheet Die Welt:
I would also like to address a very personal word to the queer community. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not only an attack like last night that endangers our freedom. Intolerance, exclusion, discrimination, stupid remarks, bad jokes are already part of such violence – not just what we experienced last night, and what you had to endure.
Therefore, I want to say something to you: We, the representatives of state institutions, will do everything in our power to protect the freedom of our country and our society – everything. And to all those who believe they can divide our country with their words and actions, sowing hatred and discord, I want to say: We will do everything, with care and great determination, to prevent precisely that. Our state authorities will apprehend the perpetrator(s). They will be held accountable.
The decision to explicitly link “bad jokes” with a deadly terrorist attack drew a damning response from Germany’s right-wing sovereignist Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, Afd), with party leader Alice Weidel — an economist who is in a gay relationship with her Sri Lankan partner — accusing the Chancellor of being afraid to speak the truth.
Weidel said: “The Chancellor mocks the victims of Islamic terror. He equates ‘bad jokes’ with murderous violence. Instead of taking up the fight against terror and migrant violence, he celebrates dinner parties. Merz is silent on Islamism – we are ready to act!”
The AfD fleshed out these points in a broader statement, which accused the governing Christian Democrats of “shirking responsibility” and rushing to push through the censorship on the whole of society the party wanted anyway, despite Islamist homophobia not springing from the whole of society. One of the greatest threats to German society is now those holding the border open to migrant arrivals with Islamist views, the AfD said, adding:
“The act of a police-known [Islamic State] supporter is seized upon less than 12 hours later as an opportunity to demand the creation of a new surveillance agency.
The CDU Berlin’s domestic policy spokesperson, Burkard Dregger, envisions a state agency that ‘actively seeks to combat propaganda, hate, and incitement.’ In doing so, the CDU ignores the fact that it is their policies that make acts like the one in Berlin possible.
The problem is not ‘hate and incitement on the net,’ but rather a far too lax approach to Islamist threats and all those who have been massively endangering the lives and security of citizens in Germany for eleven years now—let into the country by the CDU.”
As earlier reported, Germany’s permissive environment for Islamists has also been criticised by the centre-right Free Democrats, a minor party that could feasibly be a partner in a future right-wing coalition government. Party Chairman Wolfgang Kubicki linked the Berlin attack to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and stated that Islamism is the “biggest threat to a liberal, open society”.
Noting Islamist extremists had also attacked the broader German culture, Kubicki went on: “It is true for women, too, many of whom feel less safe travelling home alone at night. And it is true for anyone who has paused before visiting a Christmas market, festival or other public event and wondered whether it is really safe to go… There is nothing tolerant about making common cause with those who fundamentally reject and seek to destroy every form of openness”.
On Sunday, Berlin police shot dead a 21-year-old male of Lebanese heritage identified as ‘Abdul B.’, who was suspected of being behind the attack on Saturday’s Berlin Gay Pride parade that killed one and injured dozens. It is understood that Abdul is a known Islamist previously detained over extremism concerns, including an alleged attempt to join the Islamic State.