The Atlantic: Does Germany Hold the Key to Defeating Populism?

Meanwhile, others around the world are embracing right-wing populism, from the Britons’ stunning decision to leave the European Union to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian policies. Trump’s election has appeared at times to inject fresh energy into the right-wing parties of Europe. As some countries there brace for national elections this year, the prospects for these parties look bright. In France, for example, far-right National Front party leader Marine Le Pen is expected to advance to the second round of balloting in April’s presidential elections; recent polls show her beating scandal-ridden conservative candidate Francois Fillon in the first round. [...]

But despite hysterical headlines claiming that the AfD’s presence augurs a “return of the Nazis,” support has remained tepid at best. In recent elections in Lower Saxony, the party garnered only 7.8 percent, below its stated 10 percent goal and far less than the CDU’s 34 percent. In an election last weekend in the Saarland, the CDU won over 40 percent of votes. The AfD won only 6.2 percent, barely clearing the threshold to take seats in the regional parliament. [...]

And there are stark attitudinal differences between Germany and other Western countries, as reactions to recent terrorist attacks highlight. Whereas French President Francois Hollande stated that “We are at war” and declared a state of emergency in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, Merkel’s reaction to the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack was quiet, calm, and comforting. While Trump used the occasion of the Orlando Pulse massacre to congratulate himself on his own doomsday prognostications, the German people have “refused to panic.” [...]

Germany’s commitment to atonement is most obviously and creatively expressed in its passion for monuments. In 1992, for instance, the German artist Gunter Demnig began laying small stones capped with brass in front of buildings where Jews had lived. These stones are engraved with the names of those who had lived there before being deported and murdered by the Nazi regime. In the decades since, tens of thousands of so-called Stolpersteine have been laid; all manufactured by Demnig, but put in place by various people, they are a common sight in most German cities.

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Deutsche Welle: French presidential candidate Macron praises Merkel's refugee policy

The most popular of France's presidential candidates, Emmanuel Macron, took a stance against anti-refugee sentiment in an interview with German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was published on Monday.

The 39-year-old politician voiced admiration for Angela Merkel and Germany for their handling of the refugee crisis.

"Chancellor Merkel and the German society as a whole were up to the mark of our joint values," he said. "They saved our collective dignity by taking in refugees and providing them with accommodation and education." [...]

Macron quit Hollande's cabinet to run for president in April this year. Although he is very popular among the voters and has a roughly 35-percent approval rating, the former investment banker would need to contend both with competition from the well-established parties and Marine Le Pen, who is running on the far-right Front National ticket. [...]

Macron, who resigned as economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande in August, called for boosting Frontex, the agency responsible for protecting the EU's outside borders. He also chided Berlin and Paris for not supporting Italy during the early years of the refugee crisis, when thousands of immigrants started pouring onto the island of Lampedusa.

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Political Critique: The Berlin attack, Czech-style

It seems that terrorism in the age of information has deployed a new and interesting type of bomb: the explosion occurs in a place and time – reality, even – vastly different from the one where the actual violence took place. The blast wave does not travel in a sensible physics-based trajectory either; as it happens, it seems quite capable of vanishing without a trace only to suddenly reappear in force in a location that no perceivable reason would point to.

By way of explanation: the German President’s reaction was an urging for peace: “The hatred of those who committed this crime shall not lead to hatred on our side.”

When it comes to giving condolences, the Czech President, Miloš Zeman, and his sock puppet PR, Jiří Ovčáček, just love to express their support for mourning states – they are such softies that they even send condolences to the dictators of countries that they’d most likely have problems finding on a map. So when a major terrorist attack hits one of our neighbors, one – at least someone sufficiently naïve enough to expect some degree of civilized behavior from their President – could reasonably expect the utterance of a few choice words; after all, dignified sorrow tends to go down very well with the voters. Alas, that was not meant to be. “Regarding the terrible crime that took place in Berlin, the President can only regret that his repeated warnings about the risks of terrorism have come true,” stated Ovčáček, who has apparently become a hybrid between a prophet of inevitable doom and an advertising agent. He even proceeded to become a forensic expert by adding, “The perpetrator being a refugee just reinforces the President’s stance: no refugees shall set foot on Czech territory.” Wait, what? [...]

His mistake is symptomatic of the atmosphere of today, which is saturated and perpetuated by the media. It turns out that nationality and religion are now valid replacements for the motive of a crime. For contrast, let us take a look at another crime that took place on that day: the shooting in Zurich, where the police went out of their way to confirm that the suspect “is Swiss and we don’t know anything about the motives”. Yet for the Czech Government, the information received that the Berlin suspect was Pakistani was quite enough to judge, condemn and triumphantly announce his capture. One rather suspects that if it were an option, Chovanec would jump at the opportunity to display the suspect’s head mounted over his mantelpiece, or, more traditionally, on a pike; after all, the presumption of guilt is such a quaint medieval tradition.

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The Huffington Post: Blaming Terrorist Attacks On Refugees Isn’t Going To Make Europe Safer

Terror arrived in Germany long before the Berlin incident. But it was the first in recent times that caused such significant casualties. This is very tragic, but to exclusively blame it on Syrian refugees defeats the purpose of trying to understand how to combat terrorism and prevent future attacks from happening. The suspect, Anis Amri, who was killed in a shootout with police near Milan today, was a Tunisian who came to Europe in 2011, entering through the Italian island of Lampedusa. This was back before the Syrian civil war had become the regional conflagration that it is today; it was also during the aftermath of the Arab Spring, when order in some countries in northern Africa was on the verge of collapsing. How many asylum seekers came to Europe then with bad intentions? How many of them were already eager and keen to become terrorists? The honest answer is: we don’t know.

But the right wing’s take on the Berlin attack is shortsighted. As a matter of fact, when southern Europe groaned under the pressure of refugees, the rest of the continent was indifferent about it. Europe’s refugee policy is flawed. The continent needs to get its act together: the regions around it may most likely remain in upheaval and turmoil for quite some time. Not having done so yet has nurtured the rise of anti-establishment activism, right-wing parties and xenophobic violence across the continent.

For now, Angela Merkel’s fate depends on how she handles the crisis in her government and the reaction of her electorate unfolding after the Berlin attack. Politicians from her Bavarian ally party, the Christian Social Union, already toured TV and radio stations showing little solidarity with the chancellor. Their fear is that the AfD may gain voters from the CSU and Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in the federal election next fall.

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The Atlantic: The Terrifying Simplicity of the Berlin Attack

The type of terrorism on display in Berlin leaves societies with three choices: 1) Try to secure public spaces by heavily fortifying them, thus transforming people’s way of life; 2) Try to stop would-be attackers by dramatically expanding the government’s surveillance and investigatory powers, thus increasing the state’s intrusions into people’s lives; or 3) Try to minimize the frequency and lethality of terrorism, while learning to live with the threat of attacks and to be resilient when they inevitably occur.

Those choices are lurking behind debates in Germany right now about how to better protect public places (there are a variety of design and technological solutions); control immigration (far-right politicians have been quick to blame the country’s generous asylum policy for the attack, even before the identity of the assailant was known); and broaden the use of security cameras (state surveillance is a touchy subject in the country, owing to the legacies of the Nazis and the Stasi). They are the subtext of Merkel’s refusal to be paralyzed by the fear of evil. [...]

“There is nothing new about terror strikes against soft targets; what is new is that the baseline threat is now so high in so many countries,” the Soufan Group noted in another brief earlier this year:

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