Sitting here in our safe European home

On the most important kind of 'freedom of movement'

Two weeks ago, at a festival to celebrate the 650^th anniversary of the German city of Solingen, three people were stabbed to death by a man who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. The Syrian suspect had come to Germany in 2022 as a refugee; his claim was rejected and he was due to be deported to Bulgaria, where he had already claimed asylum, but the authorities had been unable to locate him.

Solingen was not an isolated incident; in May a police officer was murdered in Mannheim after a jihadi launched an attack on a right-wing gathering. This week shots were fired at the Israeli consulate in Munich.

With this upsurge in violence, it is not surprising that the Overton Window has seemingly shifted so much that the likely next German chancellor this week said that knife attacks and gang rapes have become a daily occurrence, and that ‘this is the reality of Germany and we must end it.’