If the Saudi immigrant who drove his car into Magdeburg’s Christmas market on Friday had been a jihadist, his all-too-familiar story would have gone something like this: Police face questions after ignoring warnings over the suspect who, after 20 years in Germany, had been radicalized by online Islamist ideologues. At least five people, including a 9-year-old boy, are dead as a result.
But that isn’t quite what happened. Taleb A. appears to be a 50-year-old doctor, anti-Islam activist and atheist who left Saudi Arabia after being accused of apostasy, a crime punishable by death. While in Germany, he was indeed radicalized, but in the chat rooms of the far right. He turned on his host country because he saw it as too soft on immigration. He accused it of trying to Islamize Europe.
Taleb A. was hyperactive on social media and ran a website dedicated to getting other lapsed Muslims — mainly women — out of their countries. He seems to have been a fan of Alternative for Germany (AfD), the German political party now polling second ahead of snap elections in February. The party has been shunned even by France’s hard-right leader Marine Le Pen for flirting too closely with neo-Nazism. In his online postings, Taleb A. also defended Elon Musk, US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and British far-right activist Tommy Robinson as telling nothing but the truth.
The feed on X, formerly Twitter, that Taleb A. used to promote his views is a dark hole of retweeted, anti-Muslim hate. A recurring favorite of his was @RadioGenoa, a disinformation account of murky provenance with more than 1 million followers. On Sunday, true to form, Radio Genoa posted a pixelated video of Taleb A.’s arrest with the comment: “The Islamic terrorist in Germany shouts at the second 4 ‘Allah Akbar.’ Anyone still have doubts?”
That post was among many since Friday that have sought to show that Taleb A.’s identity as a persecuted atheist was an elaborate ruse to hide his true identify as a committed jihadist and sex offender. A non-doctored version of the same video shows Taleb A. responding “alles klar,” or understood, to the policeman shouting at him to stay down on the ground. He never says the words Allahu Akbar, the Arabic phrase for “God is great.”
This is clearly a very troubled man. His paranoiac ravings on social media make that clear, let alone his actions. Germany’s police and domestic intelligence services indeed have much explaining to do for failing to spot the threat, but the enemies here are hate, violence and the malicious lies that stoke them. Which particular ideological tunnel disturbed, psychotic or impressionable men (it’s almost always men) who turn to terrorism may emerge from is secondary.
AfD isn’t, as Musk claimed just hours before the attack, the only group that can save Germany. The party forms part of the vortex of lies and incitement that contributed to this tragedy. And, frankly, you’d think that a multibillionaire who grew up in apartheid South Africa would think twice aboutbacking an ultra-right party to run Germany, of all nations. It was, after all, the core claim of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party he formed that only they could save Germany. Henry Ford, a Musk-scale US industrialist of his day, agreed enthusiastically, earning Hitler’s gratitude and an eternal stain on his reputation.
Immigration is a large and genuine problem for Europe as a whole, as well as the US. Governments have failed miserably to come to grips with the concerns many voters have about the rapid changes it has brought to their countries. That in turn has created an opening racists such as Robinson (currently in jail for contempt of court after continuing to spread proven lies about a Syrian teenager), dog-whistle parties like the AfD and political chancers such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have rushed to fill.
But as Farage’s successful Brexit campaign proves, those genuine failures across the developed world aren’t easily fixed. Brexit was won on the false claim it would save money and solve immigration. It failed, predictably and spectacularly, on both counts. Net immigration is soaring, in part as the government issues work visas to non-European Union migrants to replace the EU workers Brexit forced out.
Farage, Robinson and Musk each played roles in stoking UK riots this summer, caused by false claims that a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, killing three girls, had been carried out by a Muslim immigrant. Farage asked out loud “whether the truth is being withheld from us,” after the police ruled out terrorism. They were correct. His attempt to throw doubt was incendiary. Robinson circulated the lie about the suspect’s identity. Musk retweeted Robinson, whose Twitter account — previously shuttered for inciting hate — he reinstated upon buying the company.