Hanau Shooting
Yesterday, a 43-years old German targeted two different hookah lounges in Hanau, Hesse. 11 people died, in total, including the attacker and his mother. The rest of the victims were from immigrant backgrounds (mostly of Turkish origins), as hookah bars are especially popular among people with roots from the Near and the Middle East. The perpetrator, Tobias Rathjen, had a history of violence and mental instability, while he had also endorsed far-right principles and conspiracy theories, including the belief that the world is controlled by a mysterious cabal and that the populations of Western and Central Asia need to be exterminated.
Given his views and the targets of his shooting spree, it's safe to assume that the goal of Rathjen was to massacre as many "foreigners" as possible, although a possible psychotic breakdown also incited him to commit the massacre. Generally speaking, far-right terrorism shows signs of gradually becoming trendier in America and western Europe. Last year, again in the federal state of Hesse, a moderate conservative politician was murdered by a member of a British and a German Neo-Nazi group, while, in Saxony-Anhalt, an armed antisemite attempted to infiltrate a synagogue and, after failing to gain entrance, showed indiscriminately at random civilians.
In my opinion, the issue of extremist, right-wing terrorism thankfully remains relatively insignificant, despite the current increase of violence, similarly to what had occurred with Islamist attacks, after ISIL had achieved international notoriety through its brutality in Syria and Iraq. However, similarly to the case of suspicious Wahhabi preachers, the authorities should probably invest on surveillance operations, as a preemptive measure, in order to avoid the propagation of hate-speech and the radicalisation of vulnerable, politically immature and weak-willed individuals.
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Originally Posted by Himster
