1.
"Brown terror," it is said, occurs when German right-wing extremists, operating underground, in their fanatical xenophobia, deliberately kill Turkish kebab shop or kiosk owners for more than a decade and then disappear again, without explicitly claiming responsibility in letters of responsibility that every Turk or Greek living in Germany is one too many for them. Therefore, there can be no talk of terror, especially of "brown terror," when, in the course of democratically legalized immigration policy, a "wall" is being built around Europe, intended to prevent the influx of unwanted foreigners, and where hundreds of foreigners die miserably every year – on land, but especially in the waters of the Mediterranean. Even there, there can be no talk of "brown terror" where the lives of people with foreign nationality are made so difficult in this country on the basis of the Aliens Act that they either voluntarily return to the regions where they had to fear for their lives or commit suicide. After all, it does not fall under "brown terror" when people who are staying here illegally are first concentrated in foreigners' barracks, then transferred to deportation centers, and finally flown back in handcuffs to where their lives were not safe. These cases are not "brown terror" because, firstly, all these measures, carried out ruthlessly against the lives and limbs of foreigners, are not evidence of fanatical xenophobia, but of politically calculated xenophobia on the part of the democrats; secondly, because they are enacted according to law and order; thirdly, because they do not take place underground, but in public, within the police's upper echelons; and fourthly, because they are regularly accompanied by "claims of responsibility," which can be read in all German daily newspapers as information from the interior ministers about new measures to protect the homeland from illegal immigrants and as statistics on their successful implementation.
2.
The public and political outrage surrounding the right-wing extremist group's murders is therefore primarily focused on the question of how it is possible that such a trio, already known to the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was able to disappear before their planned arrest and then, for years, unaccounted for, pursue their self-chosen mission of decimating foreigners in their German homeland? Which agency failed in this case? Which leads were not given any importance, and why? Or whether the Office for the Protection of the Constitution might even have had a hand in it? All of these are questions that alone address how right-wing extremist lawbreakers were able to slip through the fingers of our otherwise well-functioning executive branch for years. With this neat shift in the topic, the media, from BILD to Spiegel, from FAZ to SZ, are engaging the public: How effective are our constitutional guardians? How well-equipped are our criminal investigation departments? To what extent does federalism prevent the state's instruments of force from acting cooperatively and in a coordinated manner?
What interests them less, or not at all, is the question of the reason for such fanatical xenophobia on the part of those domestic citizens who are neither authorized to arrest, detain, or deport foreigners, let alone to use violence against them. That's why it doesn't occur to the protagonists of the ongoing public debates that perhaps these are well-educated Germans who have learned from their governments that "the boat is full," that too many foreigners are "racing through the German people," who therefore consider the slogan "Better children than Indians" to be fashionable and who ultimately agree with those representatives of democratic parties who not only express reservations about dual citizenship, but would prefer to reject all integration efforts, etc., that these well-educated Germans, in their nationalistic disappointment over what they consider to be inadequate protection of the German people from foreigners by German politics, may have taken this matter into their own hands; following the example of those Germans who once burned down foreign hostels and apartments in Hoyerswerda, Mölln, or Solingen. It was simply planned and organized from the underground, knowing full well that private citizens are not authorized to kill foreigners. They certainly feel they are in the right: as Germans, who for years have been confronted with the judgment that foreigners actually have no place here and that, therefore, every exception must be debated at length before it is meticulously implemented into legal regulations.
And that is why they also share the viewpoint of so many German patriots who have translated this suspicious attitude toward everything foreign into a question of guilt: The blame for unemployment and impoverishment, for drug-related crime and "parallel societies" that cause disorder, neglect, and national disruption in Germany lies, firstly, with the foreigners, and secondly, with German politicians with their misguided immigration policies.
3.
Critical democrats like Prantl (SZ) or Cem Özedmir (Greens) immediately come up with a distinctive variant of this annoying shift in the topic: They see the reason for the state executive authorities' failure in their "blindness in their right eye." They present themselves as supporters of using state power against politically undesirable groups – only it must be done fairly. They complain that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and police have both eyes open against anarchists like the Red Army Faction (RAF) and other leftists who dare to take on the government and state power. This is fine with them, but it makes it necessary to bestow the same state attention on right-wing extremists. The fairness of access to the law against left-wing and right-wing deviations from the democratic consensus is their variant of the topic. And unmoved, they join the call for a renewed motion to ban the NPD – "if it is truly the case that this party promotes acts of violence" (Prantl, SZ, November 14).
Is this friend of Justice aware that by advocating for a ban on all political parties that do not bow deeply to democracy, he is recommending a state-sponsored approach to dealing with political opponents that was commonplace in the system whose new representatives are currently infuriating him?
And has he ever considered who all would have to be banned if he took seriously his own dictum, according to which a ban should affect all parties that "promote acts of violence"? But probably his legal mind was misleading him. He meant to say that such a ban should only affect those parties that unjustifiably promote acts of violence.
Of course, they are not authorized perpetrators of violence, but rather defenders of freedom all the way to the Hindu Kush, protectors of the homeland against the enemies of the state, safeguarders of (European) borders against unwanted foreigners, preservers of domestic order against all its critics, guardians of private ownership of capital, advocates of the rule of law, fighters against unjust states, etc.
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