When elected politicians ignore the people, the people will ensure their voices are heard and their will is ultimately obeyed.
Over the past several months, the German people have become increasingly frustrated with Merkel’s “open-border” policy that has allowed over 1mm migrants to flow into the country from the Middle East and North Africa. The flood of migrants has brought with it a wave of violent crime including sexual assaults resulting in a rising nationalist tension as people have turned their backs on Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union party in recent elections.
The most recent example of backlash over the migrant crisis comes from the small German town of Oersdorf in Northern Germany. The Mayor of Oersdorf, Joachim Kebschull (61), was recently beaten unconscious outside of the city’s Town Hall where the construction committee was meeting to discuss a new housing development for migrants. The mayor was apparently struck with a club from behind as he stepped out the Town Hall building to get a laptop from his car.
According to DW, Kebschull had been receiving threats for months. In fact, the committee meeting had already been postponed twice over bomb threats.
The controversy surrounded a local subsidized housing revitalization where the mayor wanted to offer apartments to asylum-seekers. “If we could also offer a family of refugees a new home in our village, we would like to take this opportunity and make a small contribution to people who had to flee their homes,” the association said in a statement on its website.
It will be interesting to see if the mayor learns anything from the experience or if he’s going to follow Angela Merkel’s lead and keep doubling down. Germany will not tolerate this invasion much longer and it won’t surprise me in the slightest if these one-off attacks – this is not the first attack on a pro-migrant politician – are replaced by a more organized campaign over the next year.
Keep in mind that this sort of violent response to an authority figure is very much a “last resort” behavior on the part of Germans. They are far more inclined to violence in obedience to authority than in resistance to it. It is a telling indicator that the German political establishment has lost the proverbial “Mandate of Heaven” and is on the verge of entering a pre-revolutionary state.
Right now, there is still the hope that the AfD will come to power and set things straight. But if they are, like the Front National, kept out of power through collusion by the major parties, or if they fail to repatriate the invaders, Germany is going to see violent civil strife that goes well beyond the Red Brigades scare of the 1970s.