A Far-Right Attacker Kills 5 in a Christmas Market. The German Far Right Takes Advantage.

MAgdeburg, GGermany– Immediately after the attack on the Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg in eastern Germany, the far-right saw an opportunity.

On Friday night, a rented BMW drove through a crowded Christmas market driven by Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen and psychiatrist who has lived in Germany since 2006. one in Magdeburg was filled with families drinking mulled wine and browsing handicrafts as they gathered to celebrate the start of the festive week. As the black car turned into a small entrance reserved for emergency vehicles, Abdulmohsen accelerated and ducked through the crowd before emerging at the other end. Footage shows a shoulder-to-shoulder filled market, and then, suddenly, a trail of bodies strewn on the ground.

Piles of wreaths, flowers and candles grew at the church across the street from the attack site over the weekend. Handwritten sign “Warum?” (“Why?”) stood in the center of the memorial. At the time of publication, five people have died, including a 9-year-old boy, 41 people are in critical condition, and more than 200 have been injured.

Details of the attacker point to a far-right extremist. Abdulmohsen was a well-known activist in circles critical of the Saudi regime and for many years helped Saudis, especially women, who wanted to escape repression. He was granted permanent residency in Germany after applying for refugee status in 2016 due to his vocal criticism of Islam and the Saudi regime. In 2019, in an interview with a German center-right newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitunghe called himself “the biggest critic of Islam in history”.

In recent months, Abdulmohsen Posted on Xformerly known as Twitter, that he accused Germany and the “western left” of deliberately destroying Europe by allowing Muslim migrants, and his X bio says that “Germany wants to Islamize Europe.” He has also frequently expressed support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has ties to neo-Nazis and recently had a scandal when its leaders were caught discussing deporting people with a “migration background” in Germany, including German citizens.

But almost as soon as the country began to mourn, misinformation and speculation about the attacker began to spread, and the AfD took advantage.

Right-wing commentators seized on Abdulmohsen’s refugee status and his race. Germany’s answer to Tucker Carlson, Julian Reichelt, wrote on X: “An Arab who should not have been here long ago butchered the Germans. The authorities have ignored every warning, while you are prosecuted if you call a politician an idiot,” aimed at Germany’s strict libel laws that have angered the far-right when they make extreme or inflammatory public statements. He continued: “A child will no longer experience Christmas because everyone, really everyone, is allowed to stay in this country, no matter how murderous their stated intentions. THIS and only this is the story of Magdeburg.’

Dozens of far-right accounts of varying degrees echoed similar comments. Elon Musk even weighed in, retweeting dubious and misleading information as well as messages criticizing Socialist Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz and praising the AfD. On the weekend, Musk placed“The only hope for Germany is the AfD.”

Although it appears that there was some communication between the Saudi government and the German government regarding Abdulmohsen, it is unclear how much of this was related to warnings of his possible violence. Saudi Arabia has a history of attacking its citizens living abroad, especially those critical of the regime. (In a well-documented case, Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 for his outspoken comments against Mohammed bin Salman.)

Some accounts have published that Abdulmohsen was wanted for rape, which appears to have no official evidence. However, far-right media said that the Saudi government had repeatedly warned about Abdulmohsen, and German authorities had deliberately ignored them.

People were consumed by grief in Magdeburg. As piles of flowers and candles grew, residents wept. The mother was holding her daughter to her chest, and her shirt was stained with tears. A woman ran through the crowd into her friend’s arms for a deep, mournful embrace. The families noted that their child could have died as a result of the attack. Larissa, a 25-year-old resident of Magdeburg, said she was not interested in the politics of the attack. “What happened was a terrible tragedy,” she told me. “I’m here to grieve, not think about politics.”

But there was also anger.

One woman standing next to me said, “All these parasites need to go, that’s for sure.” When I turned to ask who she was referring to, she said that it should be obvious and that she didn’t want to say more. In a video interview with the right-wing extremist media Young freedom (Young Freedom), the woman said, “Tears are welling up, I’m serious.” As her voice began to rise, she said“We donate to the whole world, everything is beautiful and good for us, and this is what we get?”

Later in the evening, a far-right march swept through the city with unfurled banners calling for the “remigration” of foreigners living in Germany. According to police estimates, about 1,000 protesters gathered in the city’s central square, not far from where the attack took place.

The AfD also called for mass protests in Magdeburg. AfD chairman Alice Weidel on Monday evening promised attend the vigil for the victims of the attack. She tweeted“The discussion about new security laws should not distract from the fact that #Magdeburg would not be possible without uncontrolled immigration. The state must protect citizens through restrictive migration policies and successive deportations.”

When Scholz and Social Democratic Interior Minister Nancy Feiser visited Magdeburg to offer their condolences, they were shouted with calls to “leave” and were called “traitor to the people”.

Magdeburg is the capital of the former East German state of Saxony-Anhalt. In the last state election in 2021, the AfD came second with 22 percent of the vote, and the party is on the rise in the former East. This year, the AfD won about a third of the vote in the former East German states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, which are adjacent to Saxony-Anhalt. Scholz’s coalition government collapsed last month over budget issues as well as a debate over migration, and a snap federal election is scheduled for February 23 next year.

The far-right compared the attack in Magdeburg before the 2016 attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, which killed 13 people and injured 56, was claimed by ISIS. But it is also reminiscent of another terrorist attack in Germany in the same year. In July 2016, 18-year-old Iranian-German David Sonbali opened fire on teenagers, mostly from an immigrant background, at a McDonalds in Munich, killing 9 and injuring 36. Sonbali reportedly “idolized” far-right terrorist Anders Breivik, who killed 77 children in socialist summer camp in Norway in 2011, and the attack was carried out on the anniversary of Breivik’s attack. Sonboli also reportedly admired the AfD and was “proud” to have celebrated his birthday with Adolf Hitler. It wasn’t until 2019, three years after the attack, that Bavarian police officially classified the attack as a “politically motivated crime” that was “at least partially motivated by the perpetrator’s right-wing extremist views.”

Despite the similarities and Abdulmohsen’s self-proclaimed far-right views, German authorities were cautious about what happened in Magdeburg as an act of far-right terrorism. In a confusing message that did not mention the reasons for the attack, Interior Secretary Fazer announced the creation of a task force to investigate the failures of domestic and foreign intelligence services. Speaking to the press on Sunday, she explained that the task of the investigation was to “paint a picture” of a suspect “who does not fit any existing mold”. The statement had a surprising tone, given that the profile of Abdulmohsen — a man who praised the far right and condemned migration — fits a pattern that is becoming increasingly prominent in Germany.

As the federal election approaches, the AfD is looking to use whatever it can to gain political momentum. Despite the evidence that Abdulmohsen supports the AfD, this is unlikely to change the party’s message.

But for the people of Magdeburg, the Christmas tradition has changed forever. Horst, 67, a resident of Magdeburg, told me, fighting back tears, that the market “will always be marked by tragedy.” He wondered if there would be a bazaar next year with a fairy-tale stage built specifically for children to enjoy Christmas stories. “This is our tradition. Will it ever be sooner?”