AfD uses knife attacks in Mannheim for election campaign

The AfD only needed two hours to react. Several people had fallen victim to a brutal knife attack on Mannheim’s market square on Friday afternoon. There was no reliable information at the time. However, an extremely disturbing video recording of the attack was circulating online.

Despite this uncertain news situation, the AfD’s federal office hastily sent out a press release about the “attack by an Islamic perpetrator”. The deputy federal chairman Stephan Brandner was quoted as saying.

After a sentence of wishes for a speedy recovery for the attacked Islam radical critic Michael Stürzenberger and a seriously injured police officer, the Bundestag member came to the real issue. “As a result of years of failure,” German politics has become “simply defenseless against such knife-wielding attackers,” explained Brandner.

Brandner’s words were just the beginning of a campaign on all channels to exploit the empathy for the victims and the fear of further crimes. As battered as the AfD had seemed just a moment ago, it suddenly seemed electrified. Countless AfD officials spoke out publicly. “How many more of us have to die before we find the courage to live our lives?” asked the Thuringian state leader Björn Höcke rhetorically on X.

It was also just too good a fit. A 25-year-old Afghan, whose asylum application had already been rejected in 2014 according to dpa information, had stabbed defenceless people for presumably Islamist motives and fatally injured a police officer in the process: an act that was tailor-made for the xenophobic narrative that is part of the AfD’s core brand. Or as right-wing extremism expert David Begrich puts it: “The party’s reaction was as predictable as the amen in church.”

Begrich works for the right-wing extremism department of the Magdeburg association “Miteinander” and has been analysing the strategies of the AfD for years. The social scientist points out that Alexander Gauland in December 2015 called the so-called refugee crisis . In this sense, Begrich told the star, Mannheim is now “something like a gift for the AfD”.

The AfD has not had a good year so far

This finding is all the more true as the AfD has not had a good year so far. After the large demonstrations against right-wing radicalism showed the party its limits, the party had to realize that it was facing serious competition from the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance.

At the same time, the AfD’s EU election campaign began to slip away. After various espionage and corruption scandals, the top candidates Maximilian Krah and Petr Bystron are no longer considered presentable by the party leadership around Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. In addition, there was a ruling according to which the federal party can be monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and a punishment for Höcke because he had chanted a Nazi slogan.

As a result, the AfD’s poll numbers fell ahead of the European elections, which will take place parallel to the local elections in eight federal states on June 9. In the local elections, which took place in Thuringia at the end of May, the party’s results were mixed. Even though the AfD made significant gains in district and city councils, it was unable to win any local office for the time being.

Now the terrorist act, which was followed this week – again in Mannheim of all places – by another incident. Late on Tuesday evening, an AfD candidate for the local elections was attacked with a knife. He suffered cuts and had to be taken to hospital. The AfD immediately spoke of an attack by left-wing extremists, while the police assume that the suspect is mentally ill.

Either way, the AfD’s populism machine is running hot again. The parliamentary group in the Bundestag requested a minute’s silence for the killed police officer. René Aust, the de facto EU top candidate, called for an “immediate program” including preventive detention for dangerous people. Even Bystron spoke up again and demanded that Stürzenberger become the AfD parliamentary group’s Islam representative.

Weidel does not always stick to facts

Federal President Alice Weidel also keeps repeating the Mannheim issue at rallies and on social media. At a press conference in the Bundestag on Wednesday, the slogan “Stop Islamism” was even emblazoned on her lectern.

Weidel was not always precise with the facts. After she had polemicized against Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) in a speech at a rally, she had to admit that she had referred to invented quotes. The alleged press release from the Federal Ministry of the Interior had been fabricated by an AfD member using AI.

But of course: When asked, AfD federal vice-president Brandner denied any instrumentalization of the Mannheim events. “Of course this is not a campaign,” he told the starBut if the AfD were responsible, “this knife murder” would not have happened, just like “tens of thousands of rapes and physical assaults”. Because then the perpetrator would have been deported long ago or would not have been able to enter the country in the first place. “Pointing this out has nothing to do with the election campaign.”

Sociologist Begrich knows the argument all too well. “It is the usual pattern of interpretation that the party applies to this act,” he said. “Look, we are the only ones who warned that this would not have happened with us.” It is interesting to see how the AfD, which rejects Islam as a religion, is simultaneously fascinated by its authoritarian and strictly patriarchal tendencies. This is shown, for example, by statements by Maximilian Krah about the Taliban or by Björn Höcke about the Iranian regime. “Islamism functions here as a kind of black mirror for the AfD.”

But will Mannheim help the AfD on election Sunday? Begrich thinks this is entirely possible. “That will pay off in terms of discourse,” he said. The only question is whether it will be able to mobilize voters beyond its core milieus. And: “Will it win back the people it recently lost?”