Mob rages against refugees in Clausnitz
An online video shows how an angry mob of roughly 100 demonstrators surrounded a bus filled with refugees arriving in the German town of Clausnitz and shouted abuse at them. The refugees were so afraid that they didn't dare leave the bus. Another video shows a police officer forcefully dragging a minor out of the bus. For the German press this is proof of how brutal society has already become.
Xenophobes need coaching in democracy
It's clear that the xenophobes in Saxony shouting "We are the people" these days have failed to understand what democracy is, the liberal-conservative daily Tagesspiegel comments:
“The arrogant chanting of the xenophobes is not just a Pegida-type abuse of what was once a civil rights slogan. It's supposed to communicate that we, the protesters, are the true democratic sovereign. We are the shouting vanguard of a majority that has remained silent for too long. As is often the case with radical new protest movements, this testifies to a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. For constitutional democracy doesn't just mean the power of the majority, but also the protection of the minority. Without rights for the minority the government becomes a 'democracyship'. … It is not only the refugees from undemocratic societies who need help and integrative education on something they barely know. The German minority that sees itself as the shouting majority also needs to learn where democracy and human rights begin.”
Clausnitz exposes loss of political control
The events in Clausnitz testify to the loss of political control that has been observable for months in the German state of Saxony, the centre-left daily Berliner Zeitung comments:
.“The mob is on the move right across the state, for months Pegida has been calling for the 'pigsty' to be cleaned out, people's nerves are frayed. Apparently some local politicians still haven't learned how to talk to their people and explain things, to prevent events from getting completely out of hand. ... Clausnitz stands for complete failure, and the growing inability to control events through civilised dialogue. When politicians won't face up to their responsibilities and the other side is clearly no longer willing to listen to them or their arguments, the end of democracy and society is nigh and anarchy and the law of the jungle will soon prevail. Clausnitz is a glimpse of the yawning abyss”
We are the barbarians
The events in Clausnitz are proof of how Europe is destroying itself, the news website Spiegel Online comments:
“There can be no democratic, European solidarity without common values, and those values are being destroyed before our eyes. Not by the refugees; on the contrary they serve to remind us of those values, they constitute an existential test case. It is politicians all over Europe who, in their panicked opportunism, are destroying these values by turning the continent back into a battlefield of egoism. … After World War II the Europeans began looking at the rest of the world with shock and dismay, seeing everyone apart from themselves as barbarians. But that was wrong. The barbarians are among us. We are the barbarians.”