In the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s car attack in Munich, it wasn’t clear whether the suspect had a political target. The driver – said to be a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan – rammed his Mini Cooper into a crowd of hi-vis-jacketed protestors at a rally for trade union ver.di, injuring at least 28 people. Yet according to Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann, it seemed “that the target group … at this ver.di demonstration, were more of a coincidence”. Nor were his actions obviously linked to the Munich Security Conference beginning the next day. In short, initial reports claimed that he struck this crowd just because it was a crowd; his possible Islamist affiliation was unconfirmed. Yet this attack, just days ahead of the 23 February federal election, is bound to have a strong political echo.
Many politicians have responded by emphasising security and its connection to asylum. Herrmann, a conservative, told media that the suspect, named as Farhad N., had “probably” already had his asylum application rejected and that despite past shoplifting and drugs-related offenses, “he cannot be deported at the moment and he was therefore allowed to stay in our country”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social-Democrat, insisted that the attacker must be both “punished and forced to leave” Germany.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition Christian-Democrats, called for new leadership: “Everyone must feel safe in our country again. Something must change in Germany.” Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), said that “this can’t go on forever” and insisted on a “change on migration.”
Weidel used a word for change — Wende — historically associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but now routinely used in AfD propaganda to call for the removal of the established parties. Strongest in the former East but also rapidly rising in the former West, the AfD is more popular than ever, today polling around 20 per cent nationally, double its 10.4 per cent score in 2021. It is putting up fierce right-wing competition to Merz’s Christian Democrats, damning the party’s former leader Angela Merkel for opening the borders to refugees.
The political reaction to the Munich car attack mirrored the response to a string of incidents involving attacks on German civilians, including most recently a double stabbing by a 28-year old Afghan man in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, on 22 January. That attack on a kindergarten group killed a two-year-old child of Moroccan background and a middle-aged man who apparently intervened to protect the children. The Munich attack also echoes the Christmas market killings in Magdeburg on 20 December. After a Saudi national drove an SUV into the crowd — a three-minute rampage which killed six people and injured over 200 —AfD figures denounced the practice of “tak[ing] in madmen from all over the world” and held a memorial rally. Revelations that the attacker was an anti-Islam activist who had previously expressed support for the AfD — not the “Islamist” Weidel depicted in her speech at the rally — had little bearing on the political fallout. AfD support has risen almost uninterruptedly since last summer.
Merz — whose Christian Democrats poll almost 30 per cent and is the frontrunner to become the next chancellor— has ruled out a coalition with the AfD after the election. Yet earlier this month he relied on the far-right party’s support for his non-binding motion to harden border controls, pitched in response to the Aschaffenberg attack. Merz’s move was widely seen as breaking the much-touted “firewall” on not relying on AfD votes (though, in reality, some cooperation with the party has existed in local politics for some years). The European Council on Refugees and Exiles damned Merz’s proposal to close the border and carry out “pushbacks” – expulsions – as illegal under German and European law. Yet the motion apparently had a more propagandistic intent: Merz has promised an end to “ten years of mistaken policy” on migration in a clear attack on his predecessor Merkel. His effort to stake out this position, however, backfired when some dissident Christian-Democratic MPs refused to support his separate “Influx Control Bill”.
Yet hardening positions against immigration are not only found on the right. Scholz’s ruling Social-Democrats have emphasised that foreign criminals are unwelcome in Germany, and in August resumed deportation to Afghanistan. While the Social-Democrats voted against Merz’s motion, the further-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a movement created by a 2023 split from the Left Party, abstained. Wagenknecht’s election posters call for a halt to “uncontrolled” immigration, yet her so-called “left-conservative party” has failed seriously to eat into the AfD vote. The harsh national debate on migration and identity, and the unease that this has stirred among progressive opinion, instead seem a likely reason for the Left Party’s recent modest polling recovery.
That harsh debate could soon get uglier. At the time of writing, the Munich attack had not caused any confirmed deaths, but some victims were reported to be in life-threatening condition. With just ten days to go before the federal election, the attack is bound to ensure that migration remains at the top of the political agenda.
[See also: Labour must heed the warnings from the German election]
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