Far-Right Terrorism in Germany: Shooting Exposes Lapses in Security Apparatus

A Major Turning Point

The attack in Halle marks a major turning point. It’s the second right-wing extremist murder to happen in Germany this year, following the slaying of Walter Lübcke, a conservative Christian Democrat. Lübcke was the first German politician to die at the hands of far-right extremists since 1945. This week, the country only barely avoided a massacre of Jews at a house of worship. It would not be hysterical to describe this as a dangerous escalation — and an unacceptable situation: Jews in Germany must fear for their lives once again.

On the evening of the attack, German Chancellor Angela Merkel hurried to a vigil in Berlin at the New Synagogue, which burned on Kristallnacht in 1938. A sign on the building’s façade warns: “Never forget!” On Thursday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Josef Schuster, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, visited the crime scene in Saxony-Anhalt.

The deadly crimes committed in Halle are proof that what the federal prosecutor general described as a dark prophecy has actually been reality for some time now. The danger from right-wing extremists is on the rise and there are new forms of radicalization. Even the crimes themselves differ from past attacks — livestreams give them the feel of a macabre reality TV show.

As Wednesday’s attack demonstrates, German security authorities are ill-prepared, despite noticeable efforts in the months since the Lübcke murder to make up for lost time. A high-ranking official within Germany’s domestic intelligence agency expressed his deep concern: “The security authorities alone will fail in this task.”

Anti-Semitic violence from the far-right didn’t disappear entirely after 1945. It has existed in Germany in the form of everyday hostility, assault and insults.

The number of anti-Semitic criminal offences has risen to the tens of thousands since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. Property damage, arson and bomb attacks on synagogues and memorials, desecration of Jewish cemeteries, assault and, although it is often overlooked, murder.

For example, shortly before Christmas in 1980, an unknown perpetrator, believed to have been a member of the “Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann,” a paramilitary and neo-Nazi group, rang the doorbell of Shlomo Lewin, a Jewish publisher in Erlangen. When Lewin opened, the assassin fired a Beretta submachine gun at Lewin and his girlfriend, killing both. A few years later, a far-right terrorist shot Jewish cloakroom attendant Blanka Zmigrod on the street in Frankfurt’s Westend neighborhood.

It’s probably only a matter of luck that there haven’t been more killings. When, for example, neo-Nazis threw Molotov cocktails into an entrance of the Lübeck synagogue in 1994, five people were sleeping one floor above. The only reason no one was harmed was because the fire was discovered so quickly.

It’s also possible that the discovery of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) eight years ago in fact prevented the murders of Jews. Investigators found 233 addresses of Jewish institutions on the killers’ hard drives.

A New Quality

And yet, there was a new quality to the violence in Halle. It expsosed a type of far-right terrorist against which the German authorities seem powerless, one who draws his ideological inspiration from anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic forums online and takes cues from mass murderers like Anders Breivik in Norway or Brandon Tarrant in New Zealand. This new type of terrorist may even feel like part of a larger global movement that has expectations of him. At the point Balliet realized that his plan to commit mass murder wasn’t going to work, he apologized to his virtual audience: “Sorry, guys.”

Like Tarrant, Balliet also livestreamed his attack. Like Breivik, he wore a helmet and combat gear. And like his far-right extremist role models, he posted a multi-part “manifesto” on the web, in which he devoted 16 pages to detailing his plans for the attack.

“Significant that attacker wrote and published manifesto in English,” Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at London’s King’s College, tweeted in response to the attack. “Clearly shows that he wasn’t trying to impress local Neo-Nazis, but that his ‘audience’ was on message forums like 8Chan and his heroes were people like Breivik and NZ, El Paso attackers.” In other words, it was directed at an international audience.

The manifesto and the video of the attacks are both peppered with references to the far-right internet and gamer subculture, in which anonymous haters in forums like 8chan call themselves “Anon,” share cynical anime images, and create hit lists for racist killings: the higher the death count, the higher the score.

‘Kill As Many Anti-Whites As Possible’

Balliet clearly wanted to immortalize himself in this alternate online universe in which games and true brutality blur. According to his manifesto, his goal had been to “Kill as many anti-Whites as possible, Jews preferred.”

Balliet hadn’t even been on the radar of the German police or the domestic intelligence agencies tasked with tracking terrorists and political extremists. He had no criminal record. An internet search turned up only a few articles about chess tournaments he participated in as a child and a teenager.

On Wednesday, Balliet sat in his car in a parking lot near Halle’s Paulusviertel neighborhood at 11:54 a.m. He played around with his smartphone and laptop a bit. A few minutes passed. The rest is on the video.

In it, he could be heard saying that the livestream had begun.

Balliet then panned the mobile phone camera to himself and made a statement in broken English he had apparently prepared in advance for the far-right community, which could watch the video live on the computer gaming platform Twitch. He agitated against feminism and mass migration. “The Jew,” he says, “is the root of all these problems.”

Part of his arsenal of weapons could be seen in the footwell on the passenger side: a homemade shotgun and a self-built submachine gun, a so-called “Luty.”

In the background, Balliet played the song, “Mask Off,” by the American rapper Future. He then started the engine. The synagogue in Halle was only 150 meters (492 feet) away. As the perpetrator waited at a red light, he said: “Nobody expects the internet SS.” Then he laughed.

By this point, Balliet had mounted his smartphone on a German army helmet. He filmed the crime as if it were a first-person shooter game.

Balliet drove past the wall to a cemetery. He got out of the car and stood in front of a heavy wooden door. A sign read: “Jewish Congregation of Halle (Saale),” with a star of David on each side.

Balliet had apparently scoped out the synagogue complex in advance, because in his manifesto, which he apparently posted online before the shooting began, he described his target in detail. He explained where surveillance cameras were installed, the number of doors and the security precautions in place. “If I won’t get lucky and they have a door standing open, I need to force my way in or lure the rats out,” he wrote. He also said he chose that particular synagogue because it was the nearest place where so many Jews could be found — and he appeared to be aware of the fact that the police don’t guard the building around the clock, but only patrol it from time to time.

At 12:02 p.m., Balliet threw a homemade explosive device over the wall of the Jewish cemetery. “Maybe they’ll come out,” he mumbled.

Inside the synagogue, parishioners and guests, including 10 American visitors, were gathered for Yom Kippur prayers. One person in attendance was Jeremy Borovitz, who lives in Berlin and works as a rabbi.

They heard the explosion and saw clouds of smoke rise outside the window. Then there was a second bang, followed by gunfire.

‘Everybody Get Out!’

The cantor was the first to react. “Everybody get out and go to the adjoining room!” he shouted. From there, people, including many elderly, went to the kitchen on the first floor and sat down on the floor. On the ground floor, Max Privorotzki, the chairman of the local parish, notified the police. At 12:03 p.m., officials received the emergency call, which accidentally went to the fire department dispatcher because the wrong number had been dialled. Together with other people inside the synagogue, Privorotzki barricaded the doors with furniture.

Outside, Balliet rattled the gate to the cemetery, unable to open it. He cussed and went back to the car, which was filled with homemade fragmentation grenades, nail bombs and Molotov cocktails. He took an explosive device from a backpack, clamped it under the cemetery gate and ignited it. But he still couldn’t get the gate to open.

A few seconds after the bang, a pedestrian named Jana L., 40, walked past Balliet. Earlier that morning, L., who liked going to concerts and collecting autographs from German pop singers, had posted a cheerful message on Facebook. She lived just around the corner.

But she misjudged the situation on the street at Humboldstrasse entirely. It was clear that Jana L. thought she was dealing with some kind of young punk who liked to set off firecrackers. “Do you have to do that when I’m walking by?” she complained.

All of a sudden, Balliet shot Jana L. from behind. After she fell to the ground, he fired another round at her, calling her a “pig.” A courier driver, who showed up at the crime scene only shortly afterward, only survived because the killer’s submachine gun jammed. Later, his weapons would fail repeatedly — otherwise the death count might have been much higher.

The head of the local Jewish community was able to follow the perpetrator’s movements from inside through the images on the CCTV camera. He watched the man fire his gun at the woman on the street. And then he witnessed how the perpetrator tried to get inside the synagogue again. At 12:05 p.m., Balliet fired a shotgun at the entrance door — once, twice, three times — before kicking the wood. The door held.

‘One Time Loser, Always Loser’

Balliet left the synagogue and got back into his rental car. He apparently shot one of his vehicle’s tires by accident, because he had a flat. In broken English, he says in the live video: “One time loser, always loser.”

He drove toward an intersection some 500 meters away, where he discovered Kiez Döner, a Turkish-Kurdish kebab shop. “Doner, we take,” he mumbled.

A construction worker in white pants and a red sweater ran inside in panic as Balliet shot at him. He tried to hide behind a fridge. One of the restaurant’s employees, Rifat Tekin, later reported hearing him shout, “Please don’t, please don’t!” as he feared for his life.

Balliet mumbled, “Shut the fuck up!” as he fired at the men. He fetched another weapon from the car with ammunition casings he had apparently made himself using a 3-D printer. Investigators would later discover a 3-D printer in Balliet’s former childhood bedroom at his father’s apartment.

He shot indiscriminately at people on the sidewalk. Then he forced his way back into the kebab shop and, again, shot the man in the red sweatshirt who was already lying motionless in the corner. The victim’s name was Kevin S., a 20-year-old construction worker from the nearby town of Merseburg. Friends and colleagues described S. as lovable and “always willing to help.” He enjoyed soccer and was a fervent fan of the team Hallescher FC. “He was family,” said a fellow soccer enthusiast who knew S. from team’s fan block.

At 12:16 p.m., 15 minutes after the attack on the synagogue, the shooter encountered the police for the first time. A patrol car was blocking Ludwig Wucherer Street. “Police, now I’m going to die,” Balliet announced on his livestream.

A video taken by a witness showed the attacker sheltering behind his car and shooting at the officers in the road.

Then Balliet was hit in the neck. Despite the bleeding, he was able to escape in his car. At 12:22 p.m., he tossed his mobile phone out the car window near Halle’s central train station. “I am a complete loser,” was one of the last things he said before the livestream ended.

A Dark Online World

For Germany’s intelligence services, the culprit came out of nowhere. He wasn’t believed to have been registered as an extremist in any police or intelligence agency files. He had no prior convictions. Only the German army, the Bundeswehr, had records on him: He learned to shoot there years ago. According to investigators, Balliet completed basic training with a mechanized infantry division from 2010 to 2011 in Hagenow, near Schwerin, in northern Germany. After the shooting, Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service quickly inspected his personnel file. There was considerable fear that something important had been overlooked during Balliet’s time with the troops. But even the Bundeswehr’s records didn’t raise any red flags.

But it appears that Balliet had been self-radicalizing for quite some time, flying well under the radar of the authorities.

Balliet had signed up two months ago for an account on Twitch, the gaming platform he used Wednesday to livestream his attack, the company said.

A metadata analysis revealed that Balliet composed the most important part of his manifesto a week before the attack. His writing, plus the video of the crime, indicate that he was deeply embedded in the international racist community online. He even knew how to speak their language, an amalgamation of codes and abbreviations that often only means something to other far-right extremists.

Balliet disparaged Jews as “kikes” and spoke of a “ZOG” — a “Zionist Occupied Government,” a popular right-wing extremist conspiracy theory. Burning down a mosque would be like a “crusty kebab,” he wrote.

Such extreme contempt for humanity is common among exponents of the new wave of global white terrorism. They are united by their savvy use of what the internet has to offer. It is a space for recruitment and radicalization. It is where hateful musings and justifications first emerge; later, it is where crimes are streamed in real time. It is a parallel world in which the values of civilization do not apply.

Article source: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/far-right-terrorism-in-germany-shooting-exposes-lapses-in-security-apparatus-a-1291075.html#ref=rss