Sat, Aug 01, 2026 page7

• The hypocrisy of German leaders’ response to the Berlin Pride attack

  The queer community has lost resources and protection due to decisions made by the people now mouthing solidarity in public

  • By Fatma Aydemir / The Guardian
  • • Add TT as Preferred Source
    • 
    • 
    • 

  It feels like a well-rehearsed script. First come the flowers, then the pious statements. One after another, mainstream German politicians have lined up to say that the attack on Berlin Pride last weekend was an attack on “all of us,” “our values” and “our society.”

  Except it was not. This atrocity in which a van was rammed into the crowd was, first and foremost, an attack on queer people. A vulnerable community that has been fighting for its rights for many decades; that, in recent years and all over the world, has increasingly been targeted by conservative forces.

  Of course, the script is comfortable, because it requires nothing, least of all memory. In Germany, under the center-right coalition led by the conservative German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the queer community has lost more and more resources, spaces and protection, due to decisions made by the very same people who are now expressing solidarity in public.

  

  Illustration: Louise Ting

  When Merz made the statement on Sunday that Pride-goers should not be intimidated, and that this attack was intended to divide our society, many queer people and allies wondered: Is this the same Merz who rejected the suggestion to fly a rainbow flag from the Bundestag during last year’s Pride, saying: “The Bundestag is not a circus tent”?

  Then there is German Minister for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth Karin Prien, who sees the brutal assault as an attack on diversity and therefore, on “the heart of our democracy.” Is this the same Prien who as education minister banned gender-inclusive language from her ministry and canceled “diversity” as a funding criterion for democracy projects only a few months ago?

  The list of Christian-Democrat hypocrites goes on and on. Their opportunism is so obvious that you might mistake the Bundestag for a circus, if the occasion was not so horrendous. The victims (one person was killed and 29 were injured, some in life-threatening ways) had simply gathered with their community on a warm day to celebrate visibly and joyfully in the center of Berlin. This is what should drive the national conversation, before the grief of those directly affected is drowned out by the din of competing political narratives.

  The most urgent question should be: What do queer people need now?

  Do they need more policing? I doubt it, and I am a long way from being the only one who thinks that.

  “Given the amount of police we already have, adding more won’t increase security,” said Mohamed Amjahid, a journalist who has extensively researched police violence. Amjahid’s plea that authorities re-examine the concept of security as they investigate the Pride attack, rather than hand police more access to citizens’ personal data, resonates with me.

  How about also restoring funding for projects such as Lambda, a queer youth organization that, after 36 years, has had its government funding cut due to austerity measures? Organizations that can answer crisis hotlines, offer counseling, accompany traumatized young people and provide safe spaces — in rural areas, too — are badly needed.

  Does the community need the government to ramp up deportations and enact more restrictive immigration laws? My answer to that would be: What about the countless asylum seekers who have had to flee their homes and families simply for being queer?

  The Berlin attacker, later shot dead by police, was an Islamist extremist. Islamist extremism is a real threat and this attack is not, unfortunately, the first in Germany to prove it. To pretend otherwise is not only dishonest, it is a different form of hypocrisy against queer people who have to survive every day in autocratic Islamic regimes.

  However, what is too easily forgotten is that Christian conservatives and Islamists are quite similar when it comes to their stance on queerness. They might differ in their methods, projects and theological language, but not in their hostility. Both are rooted in rigid ideas about gender, sexuality and family.

  The far-right Alternative for Germany is already exploiting this Pride attack to campaign for September elections in three federal states, accusing the government of “catastrophic migration politics.”

  However, reducing this to a discussion about migration clearly misses the point. The attacker was a German citizen: a 21-year-old man, born, raised and radicalized in Germany.

  He had recently participated in a deradicalization program, reports said.

  The more urgent question is why young men become susceptible to violent extremist ideologies in the first place, and how the government could justify cutting funding for extremism prevention.

  At the same time, Germany’s commitment to democratic values is questionable if those values become nothing more than rhetorical tools. The state’s commitment needs to be measured instead by the consistency of policy, domestic and foreign.

  A government that courts authoritarians and Islamists such as Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa must face difficult questions about the principles it now claims to defend.

  Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    First tax refunds to be deposited on Friday

  • 2

    Notes from Central Taiwan: Institutionalizing Taiwan’s tourism failure

  • 3

    Taiwan suspends visa processing for Moroccans

  • 4

    AIT hails joint coast guard operations

  • 5

    PLA building more Taiwan mock-ups