If the Saudi Arabian immigrant who drove his car into Magdeburg’s Christmas market on Friday last week had been a jihadist, his all-too-familiar story would have gone something like this: Police face questions after ignoring warnings over the suspect who, after 20 years in Germany, had been radicalized by online Islamist ideologues. At least five people, including a 9-year-old boy, are dead as a result.
However, that is not quite what happened. Taleb A appears to be a 50-year-old doctor, anti-Islam activist and atheist who left Saudi Arabia after being accused of apostasy, a crime punishable by death. While in Germany, he was indeed radicalized, but in the chat rooms of the far right. He turned on his host country, because he saw it as too soft on immigration. He accused it of trying to Islamize Europe.
Taleb A was hyperactive on social media and ran a Web site dedicated to getting other lapsed Muslims — mainly women — out of their countries. He seems to have been a fan of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the German political party now polling second ahead of snap elections in February. The party has been shunned even by France’s hard-right leader Marine Le Pen for flirting too closely with neo-Nazism.
Illustration: Mountain People
In his online postings, Taleb A also defended Elon Musk, US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and British far-right activist Tommy Robinson as telling nothing but the truth. The feed on X, formerly Twitter, that Taleb A. used to promote his views is a dark hole of retweeted, anti-Muslim hate. A recurring favorite of his was @RadioGenoa, a disinformation account of murky provenance with more than 1 million followers.
On Sunday, true to form, Radio Genoa posted a pixelated video of Taleb A’s arrest with the comment: “The Islamic terrorist in Germany shouts at the second 4 ‘Allah Akbar.’ Anyone still have doubts?”
That post was among many since Friday last week that have sought to show that Taleb A’s identity as a persecuted atheist was an elaborate ruse to hide his true identify as a committed jihadist and sex offender.
A non-doctored version of the same video shows Taleb A responding “alles klar,” or understood, to the policeman shouting at him to stay down on the ground. He never says the words Allahu Akbar, the Arabic phrase for “God is great.” This is clearly a very troubled man. His paranoiac ravings on social media make that clear, let alone his actions.
Germany’s police and domestic intelligence services indeed have much explaining to do for failing to spot the threat. However, the enemies here are hate, violence and the malicious lies that stoke them. Which particular ideological tunnel disturbed, psychotic or impressionable men (it is almost always men) who turn to terrorism might emerge from is secondary.
AfD is not, as Musk claimed just hours before the attack, the only group that can save Germany. The party forms part of the vortex of lies and incitement that contributed to this tragedy. Frankly, you would think that a multibillionaire who grew up in apartheid South Africa would think twice about backing an ultra-right party to run Germany, of all nations. It was, after all, the core claim of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party he formed that only they could save Germany. Henry Ford, a Musk-scale US industrialist of his day, agreed enthusiastically, earning Hitler’s gratitude and an eternal stain on his reputation.
Immigration is a large and genuine problem for Europe as a whole, as well as the US. Governments have failed miserably to come to grips with the concerns many voters have about the rapid changes it has brought to their countries. That in turn has created an opening for racists such as Robinson — who is in jail for contempt of court after continuing to spread proven lies about a Syrian teenager — dog-whistle parties like the AfD and political chancers such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have rushed to fill.
However, as Farage’s successful Brexit campaign proves, those genuine failures across the developed world are not easily fixed. Brexit was won on the false claim it would save money and solve immigration. It failed, predictably and spectacularly, on both counts.
Net immigration is soaring, in part as the government issues work visas to non-EU migrants to replace the EU workers Brexit forced out. Farage, Robinson and Musk each played roles in stoking UK riots this summer, caused by false claims that a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, killing three girls, had been carried out by a Muslim immigrant. Farage asked out loud “whether the truth is being withheld from us,” after the police ruled out terrorism. They were correct. His attempt to throw doubt was incendiary. Robinson circulated the lie about the suspect’s identity. Musk retweeted Robinson, whose Twitter account — previously shuttered for inciting hate — he reinstated upon buying the company.
These are not mistakes. They are knowing fabrications and insinuations, promoted in the guise of free speech to drive a manipulative narrative for political gain.
The extraordinary case of Taleb A should be grasped as a teachable moment. Rarely has it been so clear that narratives about terrorism, migrants and the causes of mass killing are too complex to be neatly shoehorned into anybody’s political narrative. Extremism and violence have many motives and instigators. As of 2022, German authorities assessed there were 38,800 right-wing, 36,500 left-wing and 27,480 Islamist extremists in the country.
It is a fact that the jihadists are the most lethal of these extremists. Equally, Europe’s immigration policies are breaking down, with Hungary and Austria openly rejecting the rules and others sure to follow. It is also true that Germany’s police and intelligence agencies need to investigate how they ignored multiple warnings from Saudi Arabia regarding Taleb A’s potential for violence, given all the inculpating evidence he had provided online. To note that Saudi Arabia is a deeply unreliable witness when it comes to making claims against its dissidents is an insufficient excuse.
Among all these very real issues, though, what is most salient is that AfD, Musk, Farage and the growing industry of online fabricators who claim to expose the “truth” while spreading disinformation are not part of the solution. They are a major part of the problem.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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