Good Policing

[Husar]

Germany a succesful track record in preventing terrorism? Far from it. More correct would be: Terrorism Central. For obvious reasons, the German state has been very reluctant over the past decades in it's use of force and surveillance against citizens.

As a result, terrorist have been able to operate from and in Germany with considerable succes. Palestians, Libyans, Germans, Irish, East Germans / communists, Saudis, Turks and Kurds have used Germany as a target. Or, more frequently, as a base to operate from. And as an easy country to attack a third party.

9-11 has raised the stakes in counter-terrorism, and Germany has become more decisive and resolute in anti-terror measures.

Pff, we're just too clever, if we're the base, we're not the target.

[Louis VI the Fat]

.. but they did it with such style.

Shame on you.

Stylish in what way? Stylish murder of countless German civilians? A stylish burning of books – this betrayal of Germany’s incomparable contribution to literature and philosophy? Stylish goosestepping of millions of young men, send off to their doom in a miserable orgy of violence?

Here's what:
Nazi-fandom is a betrayal of everything Germany stands for. A betrayal of Germany’s past. A betrayal of contemporary Germany. A betrayal of humanity. A celebration of the biggest crime ever committed against Germany.

To support nazism is to commit intellectual terror against Germany. I hope Germany will deny you entrance to Germany. In no way, shape or form do you belong morally to Germany any more than these two Muslim terrorists do.

Pff, we're just too clever, if we're the base, we're not the target.

It is not about being clever or naïve. It is about German trauma with terror.

The RAF shook the fledgling German democracy. The state was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Stuck between support from within, from communists at home, East Germany and abroad. Between hatred from an only partially denazified society. Democracy and capitalism were not unquestioned, fully embedded ideologies throughout German society yet.

The German state had no answer to sensitivity about using force against leftist groups, against resistance groups. No answer to sensitivities about surveillance and the use of force against citizens.
This all within a context of partition, denazification, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, and a search for an open and democratic German society. The RAF tested the young German state to its limits. It was a very traumatic experience.

Other terrorist groups noted Germany's problematic dealings with terrorism, and jumped into the vacuum in the seventies and eighties. The IRA, the PLO, the PKK, the Turks.


I for one am happy that the use of close surveillance, and the arrest of two terror suspects, minorities at that, does not raise any political issues in Germany anymore.

To combine what I said to Panzer and you: hurray for Germany, hurray for democracy, and hurray for a mature and democratic Germany.