Germany’s growing extremism problem

On 2 June 2019, a German politician was found lying in a pool of blood outside his home in Hesse. He had been shot in the head at close range with a .38 Rossi revolver. Walter Lübcke, the 65-year-old leader of Kassel city council, who had been a vocal supporter of Germany’s immigration policy, had been assassinated by a German member of the British neo-Nazi group Combat 18. On Tuesday, his killer was sentenced to life in prison.

Lübcke’s murder is the most extreme example of Germany’s increasingly alarming relationship with immigration, anti-Semitism, and fanatical politics. Last year Armin Laschet, the chancellor candidate for Lübcke’s CDU party, dispatched a veiled criticism against his now-outgoing boss, Angela Merkel, saying: ‘When a government loses control over the flow [of people] into its own country, you shouldn’t be surprised if people lose trust in it.’ On Monday he derided ‘immigrant anti-Semitism’ as Germany’s Jews suffer increasing hostility at the hands of angry pro-Palestinian agitators.