Bluesky

Magdeburg, Germany—Immediately following an attack on a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, the far right saw an opportunity.

On Friday evening, a rental BMW plowed through a crowded Christmas market, driven by Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi national and psychiatrist who has lived in Germany since 2006. Christmas markets are a beloved holiday pastime in Germany, and the one in Magdeburg was filled with families drinking mulled wine and browsing the handcrafted goods as they gathered to celebrate the beginning of the holiday week. As the black car turned into a small entrance meant for emergency vehicles, Abdulmohsen accelerated and plunged through the crowd before exiting at the other end. Video footage shows a market packed shoulder to shoulder, then, suddenly, a scar of scattered bodies on the ground.

At the church across from the site of the attack, piles of wreaths, flowers, and candles grew throughout the weekend. A hand-written sign “Warum?” (“Why?”) stood in the center of the memorial. As of publication, five people have died, including a 9-year-old boy, 41 people are in critical condition, and more than 200 have reported injuries.

The details emerging about the attacker reveal a far-right extremist. Abdulmohsen was a well-known activist among circles critical of the Saudi regime and had spent years aiding Saudis, particularly women, who wished to escape repression. He gained permanent residency in Germany after filing for refugee status in 2016 due to his vocal criticism of Islam and the Saudi regime. In a 2019 interview in Germany’s center-right paper of record, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he called himself “biggest critic of Islam in history.”

In recent months, Abdulmohsen posted on X that he blamed Germany and the “western left” for intentionally destroying Europe by allowing Muslim migrants to enter, and his X bio says that “Germany wants to Islamize Europe.” He also frequently expressed support for the far-right Alternative für Deutshland (AfD) party, which has neo-Nazi ties and recently had a scandal in which its leaders were caught discussing the deportation of people in Germany with “migration backgrounds,” including German citizens.

But nearly as soon as the country began to grieve, misinformation and speculation about the attacker began to spread, and the AfD took advantage.

Right-wing commenters seized upon Abdulmohsen’s refugee status and his race. Germany’s answer to Tucker Carlson, Julian Reichelt, wrote on X, “An Arab, that shouldn’t have been here for a long time slaughtered Germans. Authorities ignored every warning, while you are persecuted if you call a politician an idiot,” targeting Germany’s strict defamation laws that have irked far rightists when they have made extreme or inflammatory public statements. He continued, “A child will no longer experience Christmas because everyone, really everyone, is allowed to stay in this country, no matter how murderous their declared intentions. THAT and only that is the story of Magdeburg.”

Dozens of far-right accounts ranging in influence repeated similar comments. Elon Musk even weighed in, reposting dubious and misleading information, along with posts criticizing the Democratic Socialist Chancellor Olaf Scholz and praising the AfD. Over the weekend, Musk posted, “AfD is the only hope for Germany.”

Although it seems that there was some communication between the Saudi government and Germany’s government regarding Abdulmohsen, it is unclear how much if any of it was related to warnings of his potential violence. Saudia Arabia has a history of targeting its citizens living abroad, particularly those who criticize the regime. (In a well-documented case, Saudi Arabia murdered and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 for his outspoken comments against Mohammed Bin Salman.)

Some accounts have posted that Abdulmohsen was wanted for rape, a claim which seems to have little official evidence. Nevertheless, the far-right media has said that the Saudi government gave repeated warnings about Abdulmohsen and that German authorities deliberately ignored them.

In Magdeburg, people were consumed by grief. As the piles of flowers and candles grew, residents wept. A mother held her daughter to her chest, leaving her shirt stained with tears. A woman ran across the crowd into the arms of a friend for a deep, mourning embrace. Families remarked that it could have been their child killed in the attack. Larissa, a 25-year-old resident of Magdeburg, said she had no interest in the politics of the attack. “What happened was a horrific tragedy,” she told me. “I’m here to mourn, not think about politics.”

But there was anger, too.

One woman standing next to me said, “All these parasites need to leave, that’s for sure.” When I turned to ask her whom she meant, she said it should be obvious and that she didn’t want to say more. In a video interview with the right-wing extremist media outlet Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom), a woman said, “Tears come to me, I mean it.” As her voice began to raise, she said, “We donate to the whole world, everywhere we are lovely and good, and this is what we get?”

Later in the evening, a far-right march took over the city with a banner held out front calling for “remigration” of foreigners living in Germany. Police estimate that around 1,000 protesters gathered in the city’s central square, close to where the attack occurred.

The AfD has also called for mass protests in Magdeburg. On Monday evening, AfD chair Alice Weidel promised to be present for a vigil for the victims of the attack. She tweeted, “The discussion about new security laws must not distract from the fact that #Magdeburg would not have been possible without uncontrolled immigration. The state must protect citizens through a restrictive migration policy and consistent deportations.”

When Scholz and the Social Democratic Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Magdeburg to express their condolences, they were heckled with calls to “get out” and were called “traitors to the people.”

Magdeburg is the capital of the former East German state of Sachsen-Anhalt. In the most recent state elections in 2021, the AfD came in second, claiming 22 percent of the vote, and the party is on the rise in the former East. This year, the AfD won around a third of votes in the former East German states of Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, which neighbor Sachsen-Anhalt. Scholz’s coalition government fell apart last month, over budgetary issues as well as debates over migration, and snap federal elections are planned for February 23 next year.

The far right has compared the attack in Magdeburg to the 2016 Christmas market attack in Berlin, which left 13 people dead and 56 injured and was claimed by ISIS. But it also bears resemblance to another terrorist attack in Germany that same year. In July 2016, 18-year-old Iranian German David Sonboly opened fire on fellow teenagers, mostly from immigrant backgrounds, at a McDonalds in Munich, killing nine and injuring 36. According to reports, Sonboly “idolized” the far-right terrorist Anders Breivik who murdered 77 children at a socialist summer camp in Norway in 2011, and the attack was carried out on the anniversary of Breivik’s attack. Sonboly also reportedly admired the AfD and was “proud” to share a birthday with Adolf Hitler. Only in 2019, three years following the attack, did Bavarian police officially classify the attack as a “politically motivated crime” that “was at least partly motivated by the right-wing extremist views of the perpetrator.”

Despite the similarities and the self-declared far-right views of Abdulmohsen, German authorities have been wary to label what happened in Magdeburg as an act of far-right terrorism. In a convoluted message that evaded the roots of this attack, Interior Minister Faeser announced a task force to investigate the failure of the domestic and foreign intelligence services. In remarks to the press on Sunday, she explained that the task of the investigation was “to paint a picture” of a suspect “who does not fit any existing mold.” The statement struck an odd tone, given that Abdulmohsen’s profile—a man who celebrated the far right and condemned migration—fits a mold that is increasingly familiar in Germany.

As the federal elections approach, the AfD is keen to use whatever it can to gain a political boost. The evidence that suggests that Abdulmohsen supports the AfD will hardly change the party’s messaging.

But for the residents of Magdeburg, the Christmas tradition is forever changed. Horst, 67, a resident of Magdeburg, told me, holding back tears, that the market “will always be marked by tragedy.” He wondered if the market, with its fairy-tale stage built especially for children to enjoy Christmas stories, will be there next year. “This is our tradition. Will it ever be the same again?”