Free Republic

It is hard to believe, given that the Nazi term Lügenpresse has recently been repopularized by the far right, but the media has never been as trusted in Germany as now, a new study claims. Every Monday in Dresden, angry demonstrators march for the anti-Islam movement Pegida, holding up signs denouncing the mainstream media as the Lügenpresse (lying press) for its alleged covering up of crimes committed by immigrants. The term Lügenpresse was a favorite description of Hitler’s propagandist Joseph Goebbels for the non-German press. But an annual study conducted by the University of Würzburg last week shows that German...

Integration into the job market for migrants has become a major ongoing task for the German government but in one town migrants are refusing to work entirely. One of the major issues of the migrant crisis is Germany and elsewhere has been the economic impact the massive wave of migrants will have in Europe. While some experts initially were optimistic about a potential vast new source of skilled labour, most economists have come to the conclusion that the migrants who have arrived are for the most part unskilled and poorly educated. Yet in own Saxon town, they have moved...

Transcripts of chats obtained by German authorities indicate that the two men involved in attacks in the German cities of Ansbach and Würzburg had repeated contact with suspected members of Islamic State via telephone numbers registered in Saudi Arabia, among other places, Spiegel has learned. Würzburg perpetrator Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, who is believed to have originated from Afghanistan and seriously injured several people on a regional train with an axe and knife on July 18, also left a goodbye message before engaging in the attack. “We’ll see each other in paradise,” he wrote. …

Within seven days Germany has been hit by four bloody attacks on innocent people on its streets and on a train. What does this unprecedented string of murders mean for the country? […] … Public opinion turned strongly against the welcoming culture after sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg over New Year, around half of the suspects for which arrived as refugees over the preceding 12 months. The great influx of refugees which took place in the second half of 2015 came to an end months ago, with monthly arrivals now comparable to the numbers that crossed the border in...

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday evening in response to the Würzburg axe attack that refugees are no more likely than anyone else to commit terrorist atrocities. All the evidence from the last 12 months shows that the danger of terrorism posed by refugees “is not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population”, Altmaier told broadcaster ZDF. The chief of staff was making the comment after a 17-year-old who had arrived in Germany in 2015 claiming to have fled from Afghanistan, attacked passengers with an axe on a train near Würzburg,...

Terror group ISIS have released a video which apparently shows the teenager who attacked passengers with an axe on a train in Bavaria on Monday making threats. The video was released through the jihadi organization’s news agency Amaq, which had claimed a link earlier in the day. The assault on a regional train near the southern city of Würzburg on Monday left two of the victims in a critical condition, said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of Bavaria state. The teenage assailant was killed as he tried to flee. …