They choke him, they mock him, they beat him again and again. In Gera, 20 Syrians and Afghans gather to torture a German schoolboy. They proudly post the video on social media. And what happens? Nothing. Bodo Ramelow—politically responsible for such excesses of violence as Minister-President—instead prefers to ponder how his dying party can somehow cling on to power in Thuringia.
When an eight-year-old girl from Ghana is tripped up in Grevesmühlen, the entire country gets turned upside down. Even when police accounts of racial violence and kicks to the face are disproven, there are still calls for demonstrations. The Minister-President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Manuela Schwesig, warned against “trivializing” anything—even though there had been no attack at all. Mind you, this was after she had shamelessly exploited the false report for her own political agenda.
What would happen in Thuringia and the rest of the country if 20 German schoolchildren tortured a foreign boy for several minutes? Television’s Tagesschau would be all over it—and so would the Minister of the Interior. Clad in a black suit, the chancellor would publish video messages while hordes of left-wing journalists made a pilgrimage to the scene of the crime and wrote articles deploring life in the “baseball bat years.”
Nothing to see here
But this? It’s just a local German. Collateral damage. It just happens. Please move on, there’s nothing to see here. This political double standard—if you can still speak of ‘morality’ at all—is of course nothing new and is in the blood of this country’s political so-called elite.
Take the government’s anti-discrimination commissioner, for instance. A woman who distinguished herself above all by defaming the locals as “potatoes.” She probably wouldn’t have it any other way. They will also shout “potatoes” in Neukölln schoolyards when the last Germans there are harassed and beaten.
Grevesmühlen here, Gera there. That is also remarkable. While the police in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are taking the precaution of publishing the worst version of the story they have heard, the beating of the boy in Gera—including the choking attacks—is described in the statement as causing a “minor injury.” After all, he is not in a coma.
Why young people vote for right-wing parties
There is a lot of discussion at the moment about why young people are increasingly voting for the AfD. There are many attempts at explanations: the climate issue is no longer as dominant; the AfD is more present on TikTok; coronavirus measures linger on; blah blah blah.
But no one seems to be stating the obvious. Reality. The reality is that schools are failing across Germany. Even in East German cities like Gera. There, young Germans disarmed by society meet their peers, most of whom have been socialized in rather broken violent societies. Where the law of the jungle applies. Where people get kicked in the head. Where twenty against one is not a sign of cowardice, but of the culturally accepted assertion of power. Malte and Stefan will probably get a spanking at home if they get into a fight at school. Their immigrant classmates, on the other hand, probably won’t.
An impotent state
“Crime prevention measures” are now to be taken in Gera. What are they supposed to be? ‘Sharing circles,’ talks with left-wing youth workers? A serious discussion? You don’t have to be an expert to diagnose the futility of this undertaking. The uninhibited perpetrators of violence encounter a justice system that is tailored to a largely pacified society in which the idea of punishment takes a back seat to all sorts of other things. A justice system in which the first rape is frequently punished with probation. None of this is a serious deterrent. In fact, offenders under the age of 14 generally get off scot-free.
This co*cktail of hypocritical politics, overstretched police, and a justice system on the verge of collapse is toxic. It turns the weak into fair game and ultimately encourages a social radicalization that will have a serious impact on this country and, above all, on all those who are not driven through the streets behind bulletproof glass and whose children cannot escape these conditions by quickly moving to “less unfavorably socially-mixed neighborhoods”—as an editor of the taz once euphemistically put it.
This article was originally published on June 20th, 2024 by Junge Freiheit. It has been translated into English and appears here with kind permission.
