AFTER years of denial, delusion and deceit, Europe’s political establishment can no longer conceal the savagely destructive impact of mass immigration.
Across much of the continent, the public is paying a brutal price for the systematic collapse of proper border controls and the wholesale import of cultures that are utterly alien to our democratic, liberal traditions.
Shocked crowds pay their respects in Magdeburg last night[/caption]
The Magdeburg market was left in tatters following the deadly drive[/caption]
The bonds of mutual trust that once held our societies together are weakening.
Solidarity is giving way to segregation. Unity is being corroded by toxic identity politics.
That grim reality has been exposed by Friday night’s terrible atrocity in the German town of Magdeburg, where a Saudi Arabian national — who had been granted asylum eight years ago — drove a BMW at high speed into a large crowd of innocent shoppers and revellers at a Christmas market.
Cherished symbol
At least five people, including a nine-year-old, were killed. More than 200 were injured, many of them seriously.
The only massacre in modern Germany that exceeds its death toll was perpetrated in Berlin in 2016, when Anis Amri, a failed asylum seeker, drug abuser and Islamist from Tunisia, drove a lorry into a packed Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people.
But the Magdeburg horror does not appear to fit the usual template of a jihadist assault on European civilisation.
For, the man detained by the German police, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, presents himself as the very opposite of an Islamist, using social media to trumpet his support for Israel, his hatred of Muslim fundamentalism and his belief that the German authorities had failed to tackle the hardliners.
Nor was he a lone wolf operating in the shadows.
On the contrary. He revelled in his self-made image as “the most aggressive critic of Islam in history.”
His pose as a warrior against jihadism may be an elaborate cover to disguise his real motivations.
If he was really so anti-Islamic, why did he choose as his target a Christmas market, an enduring and cherished symbol of Europe’s Christian heritage?
Yet there is a danger in becoming too bogged down in the minutiae of Taleb’s often contradictory self-justifications.
The bigger, more urgent question is why did the German authorities approve Taleb al-Abdulmohsen’s asylum application when he was wanted in his native Saudi Arabia?
In truth, his case is a parable about Europe’s catastrophic open-door approach, which has allowed division, bigotry and extremism to flourish.
Revolution was imposed
This weekend Europe’s politicians, led by the ineffectual German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, shed their tears over Magdeburg and offered their “thoughts and prayers” for the families of the victims.
But they should hang their heads in shame rather than sorrow, because their border anarchy has replicated in Europe the lethal discord of the Middle East, with its alphabet soup of terror groups, its anti-semitism, its intolerance for normal, pluralistic democracy, and its rampant misogyny.
This revolution was imposed without any mandate from voters.
Between 2015 and 2016, after Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel opened the floodgates in response to the refugee crises in Syria, Libya and Iraq, more than 1.2 million new arrivals settled in Germany.
Suspect Taleb al-Abdulmohsen[/caption]
Rescue workers hug following Friday’s Christmas market atrocity in Magdeburg[/caption]
Firefighters attending memorial service in the cathedral yesterday[/caption]
Berlin’s rulers were so enamoured of this policy because they felt it offered an escape from the nightmarish legacy of Hitler’s Third Reich.
By turning their country into a safe haven for refugees they felt they could achieve a form of redemption from the Holocaust by parading their anti-racism credentials.
A pariah after the war, Germany under Merkel became a moral leader.
In globalist circles, her slogan “Wir Schaffen Das” — translated as “we can do this” — appeared to capture a mood of optimistic generosity.
Open door failure
But this was just wishful thinking. In truth, there is nothing compassionate about the migration free for all.
Instead, across Europe, citizens no longer feel safe as the dark catalogue of terrorist incidents lengthens.
The rise of the right-wing AFD party — the Alternative for Germany — which wants to get tough with immigration and Islam, is a direct result of the open door failure.
It is a bitter irony that the soft-touch stance, which was meant to boost tolerance, has achieved the exact opposite by fuelling hostility to migrants.
“When will this lunacy end,” said AFD’s leader Alice Weidel after Magdeburg — words echoed by many Germans.
Britons will be asking the same question.
Fortunately we have yet to endure any incident as complex as the Magdeburg atrocity, but immigration here is certainly out of control, reflected in the record-breaking numbers crossing the English Channel and in the rise of net legal migration to over 900,000 a year.
With Britain losing its identity and cohesion in the face of this demographic upheaval, sectarianism and ethnic conflict now rear their ugly heads, as seen in clashes at recent pro-Palestinian protests, and in the unrest between Muslims and Hindus in Leicester in 2022.
George Orwell wrote in 1941 that “the gentleness of English civilization is its most marked characteristic.”
We will never get back to that ideal without strengthening our borders.
Magdeburg should be a clarion call for action here as well as across the rest of Europe.
