The assassination attempt against people in a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in Hamburg made waves. The guesswork about the motive of the perpetrator now seems to have received an answer. One expert does not consider political extremism to be the main reason, but “religious fanaticism”.
Inhalt / Content
Probably found the motive of the perpetrator
The reason for a man’s killing spree on March 9, 2023 in a Hamburg community of Jehovah’s Witnesses seems to have been clarified. It was “religious fanaticism”. The Hamburg police commissioned extremism researcher Peter Neumann to provide an expert opinion. Investigators wanted to find out what motive the gunman might have had for his crime. During the rampage, the man shot eight people with a semi-automatic weapon and then himself. Nine other people were injured.
The focus of the investigations and the report was the book “The Truth About God, Jesus Christ and Satan”, published by the assassin on the Internet in 2022. Peter Neumann picked up this book and studied its contents.
“Religious fanaticism” is plausible
In an interview with “Spiegel”, Neumann explained that the “most plausible motive” was “hatred of Christian religious communities”. The assassin was furious that the believers were being withheld from the truth by religious communities. This indicates a “religious fanatic”. This conclusion is based on the content of the book. This explains the motive and aim of the assassination.
However, the book does not contain explicit references to Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are also no calls for or approval of the use of force to achieve ideological goals. The assumption about a right-wing extremist attitude is not supported. It does contain passages of text that could also be understood as “anti-democratic”, but this is not enough to classify it as political extremism.
Left-wings verbally shoots sharply
Either not waiting for the report or simply ignoring it, the writers of “ND-aktuell – Journalism from the left” came to their own conclusion. According to the title of her contribution, the alleged assassin was an “extreme rightist”. The editorial team of this online paper sees the theological background noted by the reviewer as merely a facade. In “Truth” a “confusing, dangerous mixture of religious fervor, anti-Semitism, hatred of women and LGBTQ and Nazi glorification” can already be seen when “cross-reading”. The alleged assassin has many parallels “to the ideology of many right-wing terrorist assassins in recent years,” according to nd-aktuell, just to build a bridge to Behring Breivik. He shot ings in Norway in 2011. 77 people because of his “madness” to have to protect Europe as a successor to the Christian Knights Templar.
It seems interesting that the media in this case prints the perpetrator’s first name and shortened family name, but still refers to him as the “presumed perpetrator”. The case does not appear to have been finally resolved. However, the comprehensive description of the motive of a perpetrator who can no longer be questioned appears to be only right and proper.
Ditches are widened
Since a kind of “religious right” has actually been developing in the USA in particular for some time and is also gaining considerable influence, it can be understood that such left-wing media as the nd-aktuell, which anyway consider everything right that is not in their line drives to use their entire arsenal to move such cases to the right camp using long-worn trigger formulations. Be it occupied or not. Emotions outweigh the facts anyway and fictions stand above reality.
The rifts between the two camps left and right, theology and atheism, are currently being drawn even deeper and wider. The great clash, as it is in the book Daniel 11 is described, but is imminent.
