{"id":44391,"date":"2024-05-06T18:57:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T18:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/06\/assaults-on-german-politicians-raise-election-year-worries\/"},"modified":"2024-05-06T18:57:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T18:57:30","slug":"assaults-on-german-politicians-raise-election-year-worries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/06\/assaults-on-german-politicians-raise-election-year-worries\/","title":{"rendered":"Assaults on German Politicians Raise Election-Year Worries"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/06\/multimedia\/06germany-attacks-jlkc\/06germany-attacks-jlkc-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Assaults on German Politicians Raise Election-Year Worries\" title=\"Assaults on German Politicians Raise Election-Year Worries\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A spate of attacks on German officials and politicians has brought fresh worries over political violence and a breakdown of civility ahead of several critical elections this year, including in three states where the far-right Alternative for Germany party could make significant gains.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the latest attack, on Friday evening, four people assaulted a prominent Social Democratic politician who was hanging campaign posters in Dresden, leaving him with a broken cheekbone and eye socket that required emergency surgery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The official, Matthias Ecke, is running for re-election to the European Parliament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That evening a Green Party campaigner, whose name has not been released, was attacked in the same residential neighborhood, by what the police believe was the same group of people. A day earlier, on Thursday, Rolf Fliss, the deputy mayor of the city of Essen, 300 miles west, was punched in the face by a group of men with whom he had been having what he initially characterized as a \u201cfriendly exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The violent attack on Mr. Ecke drew a sharp response from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, himself a Social Democrat, in Berlin on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cDemocracy is threatened by such things, so accepting them with a shrug is never an option,\u201d Mr. Scholz said. \u201cWe are not going to take it, and we, the decent and reasonable, are the majority\u201d in Germany, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Later, on Sunday, thousands protested against the violence in Berlin and Dresden. At the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, politicians from mainstream parties and members of civil society gave speeches denouncing the assaults.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Tuesday evening, the interior ministers of Germany\u2019s 16 states, as well as the federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, will meet to discuss security concerns in the aftermath of the attacks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The police have linked four teenagers to the attack on Mr. Ecke. On Saturday, a 17-year-old youth walked into a police station in Dresden, accompanied by his mother, and admitted to his role in attacking the politician, the police said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By Sunday, the police had raided the homes of three others, all aged 17 or 18, thought to be involved in the attack. The Dresden public prosecutor on Monday said that at least one of them had ties to far-right ideology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The recent attacks on political figures started to gain national attention last September, when a man threw a rock at Green Party leaders at a campaign event in Bavaria.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A mob prevented Robert Habeck, Germany\u2019s vice chancellor and a prominent Green politician, from disembarking from a ferry in January. More recently Katrin G\u00f6ring-Eckardt, another senior Green Party politician who is a deputy president of Parliament, was blocked while leaving an event when 40 to 50 demonstrators surrounded her car.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While most of the victims have been members of the governing Green and Social Democratic parties, the Alternative for Germany, know by its German initials, AfD, has also been a target.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Saturday, vandals attacked a stand holding AfD election material in Dresden, according to the party. A 54-year-old tending the stand was unhurt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe situation has been coming to a head for some time now,\u201d said Andrea R\u00f6mmele, a political scientist at the Hertie School in Berlin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">According to preliminary government figures, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bundestag.de\/presse\/hib\/kurzmeldungen-988578\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">2 790 attacks \u2014 physical as well as verbal or other kinds of threats \u2014 on political representatives in 2023 were registered with the police<\/a>, roughly twice as many as were registered in 2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some experts and rival parties point a finger at the far right and the AfD, saying that it has often used inflammatory language directed at mainstream politicians. In 2017, when the AfD first entered the federal Parliament, Alexander Gauland, then one of the leading candidates, promised on election night that \u201cwe will hunt them down,\u201d an apparent reference to the governing coalition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI would call it affective polarization \u2014 it means that one no longer responds to the factual argument of the opponent, but that one fundamentally delegitimizes the opponent and marks him as an enemy,\u201d said Johannes Hillje, a political scientist who studies political communication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a statement released over the weekend, the Social Democratic party in the state of Saxony, where Dresden is the capital, called the attack an \u201cunmistakable alarm signal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cViolent action and the intimidation of democrats is the tool of fascists.\u201d the heads of the state party, Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Hillje said the problem lay not only with the growing extremes of Germany\u2019s political landscape but also in verbal attacks from centrist, mainstream politicians, especially toward the Greens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe dangerous thing is that democratic forces have adopted the right-wing populist stylistic devices and thus promoted a discourse that is not in the spirit of democracy,\u201d Mr. Hillje said. \u201cThey are sawing off the branch they are sitting on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The recent attacks call to mind Germany\u2019s highest-profile political assassination in recent years, when Walter L\u00fcbcke, a conservative lawmaker and defender of Angela Merkel\u2019s liberal refugee policy <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/07\/07\/world\/europe\/germany-murder-far-right-neo-nazi-luebcke.html\" title=\"\">was shot and killed<\/a> by a neo-Nazi in June 2019. Thought to be Germany\u2019s first far-right political killing since the end of World War II, Mr. L\u00fcbke\u2019s death led to a public soul-searching.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But as shocking as that crime was, it was targeted and meticulously planned, and the assassin had a police record and was a known, violent neo-Nazi. The recent attacks seem more opportunistic, but still have drawn a strong response.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe series of attacks by thugs on campaign teams of democratic parties are an attack on the foundations of our democracy,\u201d Mr. Homann and Ms. Michel of the Saxony Social Democrats said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/06\/world\/europe\/germany-political-assaults.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A spate of attacks on German officials and politicians has brought fresh worries over political violence and a breakdown of civility ahead of several critical elections this year, including in three states where the far-right Alternative for Germany party could make significant gains. In the latest attack, on Friday evening, four people assaulted a prominent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/06\/multimedia\/06germany-attacks-jlkc\/06germany-attacks-jlkc-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33788,45480,10563,4263,4605,11040],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44393,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44391\/revisions\/44393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}