By Friday morning, it was overwhelmingly clear that the gunman behind a shooting rampage in western Germany was a right-wing extremist. The previous night, he killed at least nine people of migrant backgrounds in two hookah bars in Hanau, a suburb of Frankfurt. Of those slain, five were Turkish citizens. The man identified as the shooter was found dead in his home along with his mother.
The assailant, 43-year-old Tobias Rathjen, had uploaded a video and a 24-page document online, where he urged the “extermination” of “races or cultures in our midst.” Volker Bouffier, leader of the state of Hesse, where Hanau is located, saidthe attack “came out of a climate” that exists “to some degree worldwide.
The tragedy reflects a worrying uptick in far-right violence in Germany. “In June, a politician known as a vocal supporter of asylum seekers was shot dead,” my colleagues reported. “In October, a shooter tried to attack a synagogue in the German city of Halle on Yom Kippur, turning his homemade weapon on passersby and a nearby kebab shop after he failed to gain entry.” Earlier this week, they added, German police “arrested 12 members of a far-right group planning attacks on mosques and targets associated with refugees and asylum seekers, drawing inspiration from last year’s mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed more than 50 people.” Continue reading.