by SUZANNA KHOSHABI
Scattered across seven years, seven cities, and seven professions, nine of the victims of the ‘Doener murders’ had one thing in common: a shared status as immigrants in Germany.
It took the German authorities what many consider to be a surprisingly long time to connect these politically motivated murders. The press, on the otherhand, were quick to connect the Turkish ethnicity of 8 of the victims as they named the murders after the popular Turkish Doener dish served at snack stands around Germany. The reasons for the tenth and final murder of a German policewoman are still under investigation.
Beate Zschaepe went on trial this month as the last living member of the neo-Nazi cell known as the National Socialist Underground, allegedly responsible for the murders. The case is bringing up recurrent issues in Germany that have been especially delicate and difficult to confront.
However, these issues of neo-Nazis and xenophobia are not unique to Germany.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama considered Europe to be the continent closest to crossing the ‘End of History’ finish line: liberal democracy, he argued, was the conclusion of man’s political evolution. Fascism, then, could have been explained away as a small stumble on the path to utopia—except that extreme right-wing parties are currently seeing a revival again in many European countries.
Focusing primarily on issues of immigration, national identity, Euroscepticism and economic policy, these nationalist parties have recently gained an increase` in voters and support. Although in some cases, parties on the far right still remain on the peripherals, in others they represent a significant fraction of the electorate.
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(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)