An anti-immigrant German national stabbed a mayoral candidate in Cologne, Germany on Saturday, citing his anger over the country’s growing refugee situation.
Henriette Reker, an independent candidate in Sunday’s election, was stabbed in the neck at a campaign stand by a man who reportedly shouted about an “influx of refugees” and said “I am the Messiah. I’m doing it for you all,” according to The Independent.
Four other people were also attacked, including liberal politician Anette von Waldow and other political aides. Reker’s condition was described as “stable” by police on Saturday afternoon.
The suspect, who has been unemployed for several years, had a small flick knife and a large hunting knife at the time of his arrest.
Reker is Cologne’s social affairs commissioner, a job that manages refugees and helps them find housing in the city. More than 615,000 refugees from Africa and the Middle East have made their way to Europe so far this year, particularly as the region has received an influx of people fleeing from Syria. German Chancellor Angela Merkel previously announced that Germany will remain open to refugees, saying “we cannot close our borders” to refugees seeking safety from their home countries. As a result, the country has been the biggest recipient of migrants.
But that has also caused unrest in the country, with anti-immigrant zealots taking it out on the refugees themselves. One man recently screamed at two women to take off their hijabs “because we’re in Europe” while another shouted from his car, “foreigners out.”
And across Europe, some politicians have even attempted to drive down public opinion about refugees by perpetuating myths that migrants could carry disease, that migrants could be terrorists in disguise, and that migrants could leave a negative impact on the European economy.
Germany’s interior minister said this weekend’s attack “underlined growing concerns over hatred and violence in the refugee crisis,” according to the New York Times. But anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t just spurring attacks in Germany. In Sweden, police are looking into a case of “aggravated arson” at an abandoned school burned to the ground that was planned to house 80 refugees.
And across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States, Donald Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric suggesting that Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals, and drug dealers has emboldened his supporters to attack Latinos. A local CBS reporter captured on video at least one Trump supporter who spat in the face of a immigrant activist at a rally last week.
Trump supporters in the past have told immigrant activists to “clean my hotel room, bitch;” shouted “if it ain’t white, it ain’t right” while ripping up posters; told Latino U.S. citizens to “go home” while grabbing their hair and spitting on them; told prominent journalist and U.S. citizen Jorge Ramos to “get out of my country;” joked “you can shoot all the people you want that cross illegally;” and beat up and urinated on the homeless. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of incidents against Latinos.