CSD attack in Berlin: what to think, what to do?
Berlin's Christopher Street Day parade was cut short on Saturday evening following an attack. A van driver ploughed into a crowd on the fringes of the festival and then attacked passers-by with what appeared to be a machete. One woman died and 29 people were injured. The suspected 21-year-old perpetrator was a known Islamist. He was shot dead in a police operation on Sunday.
Refuse to be intimidated or divided
El País calls for resistance to violence:
“Should the Islamist background be confirmed, it would be proof that the danger posed by this violent ideology has not disappeared since the mass attacks of the first two decades of the 21st century, from Madrid to Paris. ... In recent years, with the weakening of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the threat has mutated. The attacks are no longer complex operations designed to cause mass death and destruction but are carried out by perpetrators acting on their own initiative. ... It is freedom of expression and assembly, as well as equality, that they seek to destroy. ... The only response is to refuse to let them intimidate or divide us. That would be their greatest victory and the defeat of democracy.”
Time to name the threat
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has had enough of all the pussyfooting:
“In the wake of such acts of terror, Islamic organisations offer at best half-hearted condemnations of the violence. ... There is no willingness to promote tolerance towards sexual minorities. ... Both organised Islam and the German left must at last understand that it is not enough to condemn the deeds: they must name the perpetrators. In the gay community, the truth about who is threatening their freedom and their lives has long been an open secret. Only the official LGBT organisations still act as if the rise of the AfD were the biggest problem. ... Germans have long since realised that there are no quick fixes, let alone absolute security. But they can at least expect politicians to stop spouting platitudes and take decisive action instead.”
Public space can never be completely safe
Die Zeit counters:
“You can never provide full protection for a wild party that takes place across the city like Christopher Street Day, otherwise it would not be a parade but a high security zone. When murderers turn a car into a weapon like in the Berlin Tiergarten and then attack revellers with a machete, a street festival becomes a form of street terror that is very, very difficult to prevent. We have to live with a certain vulnerability, just as the French have demonstrated after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Bataclan nightclub in Paris, and the pedestrians on the promenade in Nice.”
Convicted Islamists belong in prison
Novinky.cz comments:
“Banning Islam would be a mistake, as it would rob us of a part of democracy – namely freedom of religion. However, Islamic fundamentalism, which seeks to overthrow our system, and the terrorism associated with it cannot be tolerated and must be resolutely combated. ... Muslim radicals are trying to impose their way of life on others. ... The incident also highlights our naivety. Convicted criminals with proven links to Islamic radicals should not be released from prison. Attempting to deradicalise young fundamentalists on a therapist's couch is a waste of resources. They won't abandon their faith or convictions, and can even reinforce them online or by listening to radical sermons in mosques.”
No one should be surprised
The attack in Berlin confirms the views of those who have long warned of the threat posed by radical Islam in Europe, writes columnist Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator:
“Some of us have tried warning about this for some years now. We tend to get dismissed as 'racist', even though Islamist terrorists come from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds. We are smeared as 'divisive', even though we are mostly very inclusive people who are united with other lovers of freedom in our opposition to those who seek to divide (and kill) non-believers in Islam. They sometimes call us 'alarmist', even though we have plenty of frequent examples to draw on for our plaintive and urgent warnings.”
Playing into the hands of the AfD
The Handelsblatt fears that this will generate new momentum for one party in particular:
“Three factors play right into the AfD's hands. According to the police, the suspect is affiliated with the Islamist scene. ... Secondly, the suspect was only recently released from a youth detention centre. This represents precisely the kind of state failure that the AfD has been denouncing for years. And thirdly, calls for a ban on the AfD started circulating in the hours following the attack. Yet the fact that the perpetrator apparently comes not from the far-right but from Islamist circles reinforces the AfD's eternal victim narrative. ... The party hasn't had to lift a finger. ... It has been handed the advantage on a plate.”