A 43-year-old German who posted a manifesto calling for the “complete extermination” of many “races or cultures in our midst” shot and killed nine people of foreign background, most of them Turkish, in an attack on a hookah bar and other sites in a Frankfurt suburb, authorities said Thursday.
He was later found dead at his home along with his mother, and authorities said they were treating the rampage as an act of domestic terrorism.
The bloodshed came amid growing concerns about far-right violence in Germany and stepped-up efforts from authorities to crack down on it, including last week’s detention of a dozen men on suspicion they were planning attacks against politicians and minorities.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the shootings exposed the “poison” of racism in Germany, and she pledged to stand up against those who seek to divide the country. “There is much to indicate that the perpetrator acted out of far-right extremist, racist motives,” she said. “Out of hatred for people with other origins, other faiths or a different appearance.”
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Germany’s federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, said that all nine people killed were of foreign backgrounds and that six others were injured, one seriously…
Frank identified the gunman only as Tobias R., in line with German privacy laws, and confirmed he had posted extremist videos and a manifesto with “confused ideas and far-fetched conspiracy theories” on his website.
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Among the documents posted to the website was a 24-page, rambling manifesto in German detailing, among other things, fears that he has been under government surveillance for years. He blamed the surveillance for his inability to have a relationship with a woman.
“We now have ethnic groups, races or cultures in our midst that are destructive in every respect,” he also wrote. He said he envisioned first a “rough cleaning” and then a “fine cleaning” that could halve the world’s population.
He wrote: “The following people must be completely exterminated: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the complete Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Usbekistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines.”
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German police were also examining a video he may have posted online several days before the attack in which he detailed a conspiracy theory about child abuse in the U.S., dpa reported. The authenticity of the video couldn’t immediately be verified, but the YouTube account was under the same name as the website containing the gunman’s manifesto.
In the video, the speaker warned Americans that “your country is under control of invisible secret societies.” In a slow and deliberate voice in accented English, he said there are “deep underground military bases” in which “they abuse, torture and kill little children.”
He made no reference to the far-right QAnon movement in the U.S., but the message was similar to the fringe group’s central, baseless belief that President Donald Trump is under attack from “deep state” enemies and that satanists and cannibals are running a child sex trafficking ring.
In his manifesto, the gunman made one reference to Trump, writing: “I doubt that Donald Trump knowingly implements my recommendations.” He suggested that “mind control” might be at work.
With all that’s going on, I don’t know if people are even aware this happened. It’s just another mass killing by a far-right loon, inspired by internet wingnuts.
What this guy meant by “mind-control” being at work is unknown, but the mere fact that he thought the president wasn’t “knowingly” implementing his recommendations says it all. Let’s just say this nut believed he and Trump were on the same wavelength. And he wasn’t wrong.