"It is an act of terrorism, terrorism against all of us."
Three days after the terrorist stabbing massacre in Solingen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the Rhineland city, where he called on Germany to remain a united society but also said he was "angry" about what happened and "against those Islamists who threaten peaceful coexistence between us."
Thus announcing a crackdown on the use of weapons and especially on authorized knives, but also on immigration, promising to "do everything" so that "those who do not have the right to remain in Germany are expelled". A statement, this last one, which takes its cue from the fact that the 26-year-old Syrian arrested and confessed to the massacre on Friday night, claimed by ISIS, during the celebrations for the 650th anniversary of Solingen, should have been expelled to Bulgaria - the country from which he entered the EU - last year but was not found in the accommodation for asylum seekers where he should have been.
Scholz finds himself in a difficult position of precarious balance between the humanitarian principles professed by his Social Democratic-led government and the pressure from the right that is pressing, starting with the extremists of Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), who, in the wake of the emotional wave caused by the attack in Solingen, the latest in a very long series of episodes that are putting German solidarity to the test, shouted the next day: "Germans, do you really want to get used to this state of things? Free yourselves! Put an end once and for all to the crazy path of forced multiculturalism!".
An attack on multicultural society in view of Sunday's elections in the eastern state of Thuringia: a test that the red-yellow-green government team fears, especially if the ghost of an AfD with over 30% and the largest party in the state parliament were to materialize, as many polls predict. But the institutional right is also agitating the issue, with the leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, who has called for a stop to the admission of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria to Germany, thus definitively breaking the taboo established years ago by then-chancellor Angela Merkel.
(Unioneonline/D)