What can be done about knife attacks? Some want to deport people, others want more social work. The parties are overwhelmed.

The Bundestag debated the topic of migrant violence. The AfD had requested a debate on the topic. Parties are overwhelmed – most of them, anyway.

A Berlin police officer displays a knife confiscated during a raid on Sonnenallee in Neukölln. Markus Wächter/Berliner Zeitung

Sunday morning in Bielefeld: A 35-year-old Syrian randomly stabbed football fans with a knife, injuring five of them. Sunday evening in Halle: A 46-year-old Kosovar injured three people, including an eleven-year-old girl, with a knife. This happens every day – an average of 79 times a day. Or to put it another way: every 18 minutes, someone is threatened or stabbed with a knife. The Federal Criminal Police Office counted over 29,000 such knife attacks last year. So what can be done to reduce this number? In a current affairs session requested by the AfD, the new Bundestag attempted to address the problem on Wednesday. The issue has – to put it politely – polarized.

Martin Hess of the AfD opens the battle with these words: "Germany has obviously lost control of its internal security. What is unfolding on the streets and in schoolyards is a disaster that has never been seen on this scale in Germany before."

The CDU/CSU initially offered moderate words: "The knife crime problem is older than your narrative of opening borders," says Marc Henrichmann (CDU) to the AfD. Unfortunately, knives are infinitely available in this society. "We've lost track of the situation when it comes to enforcing gun laws." Knife bans and robust enforcement measures are needed to bring these perpetrators to justice. And: "Harsh punishments are the best means against unfocused populists."

The Greens prefer to talk about right-wing extremism

Then the plenary session gets loud: The Greens, SPD, and Left Party demand investments in psychosocial care, prospects, and education instead of border closures and deportations. Lukas Brenner (Greens): prefers to talk about right-wing extremism: "We must not allow another Hanau!" Inhumane incitement, hatred, and violence are the business of the enemies of democracy.

Rasha Nasr (SPD) accuses the AfD of intellectual arson: "They're trying to stir up sentiment against migrants." Knife violence is "a multifaceted problem." Anyone who wants to combat knife violence must address social factors like poverty.

And Clara Bünger of the Left Party complains: It's disgusting how the AfD is exploiting the Bielefeld crime to make politics on the backs of migrants. Migrants are being placed under general suspicion. Now she gets personal: "While you like to talk about criminal foreigners, the criminals are in your own ranks! Several AfD MPs have been convicted of crimes, including bodily harm, incitement to hatred, dangerous assault, possession of weapons, and I could go on." – Interjections from the right: "If the crime rate among the general population were as high as that of the AfD, we would have a massive security problem. The fact that you have the chutzpah to talk about law and order here is completely absurd."

CDU: “The Bielefeld attack must be the final wake-up call”

However, it is also a fact that, according to BKA statistics, the number of dangerous and serious bodily harms with knives increased by 10.8 percent from 2023 to 2024. Over half of the criminals who used a knife do not have German citizenship. Stephan Mayer of the CSU also points this out and praises the "migration turnaround" that the Interior Minister has initiated. "And the migration turnaround is working! You'll also become increasingly quieter," he says, looking to the far right, from where laughter has just emanated. The number of rejections is increasing, and deportations are becoming more rapid, including to Afghanistan and Syria. Much will improve in domestic security in the next four years, Mayer announces. "The terrible attack in Bielefeld must be the very last wake-up call that security policy in Germany needs to change significantly."

Among the members of parliament delivering their first speech in the House of Representatives is Sascha Lensing of the AfD. He launches into his argument: The opening of the borders is the cause of the increased crime. "The domestic political consequences of the disastrous phrase 'We can do it' are dramatic: Islamist terrorist attacks, mass rapes as a new imported crime phenomenon, boisterous celebrations by the 'party and event scene' with riots and homemade explosives in German city centers." Shouts and heckles repeatedly emanate from the left side of the parliament.

Lensing continues: "...a mocro-mafia bombing its way through North Rhine-Westphalia, rampant knife violence nationwide, drug-related crime in almost all schools and an increase in violence and homicides, and on top of that, the next outdoor swimming pool season is just around the corner." The loss of domestic political control can no longer be resolved by the police.

More interruptions.

"What you have achieved is a domestic political failure," Lensing continues. "The pink elephant of imported terrorists and anti-Semites is not only in the room, but it's trumpeting loudly!"

Thomas, Michael and Marc

There isn't really a debate going on here, but rather a reading of one's own statements. Ingo Vogel (SPD) is calling for a complete knife ban – as if the knives were the problem and not the people who carry them. Lena Gummior (Greens) says that Germany has a crime problem on a scale that hasn't been addressed here today: 938 girls and women were victims of attempted or completed homicides last year. "The perpetrators were their spouses or ex-boyfriends. But above all, they were men!" She is furious at the ignorance of the CDU/CSU, which has convened the Interior Committee in Solingen and Magdeburg, but not after four femicides in two weeks. "Why do you turn a blind eye when the violence is perpetrated by perpetrators named Thomas, Michael, or Marc?" Does MP Gummior have access to the investigation files and knows the perpetrators' first names?

She sees right-wing extremism as the second major crime phenomenon: "Nazis have become the greatest security threat in our country. Therefore, we must expand reporting and complaint centers and strengthen civil society with a democracy promotion law. "Then this country will become safer for all of us."

“Helmut Schmidt would be under surveillance today by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution”

Naturally, Christian Wirth from the other end of the political spectrum sees things differently, explicitly thanking the Greens and the Left Party "for the advertising block" when they downplayed crime. "The problem is that we have allowed too many Arab and African migrants into the country illegally," says the AfD representative. "Helmut Schmidt predicted this back in the 2000s. Nobody wants to acknowledge it today, but Helmut Schmidt would also be under surveillance by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution today."

Now Christina Stumpp (CDU) also says that the problem of knife violence is not a question of knife length or whether there should be a knife ban. "The problem is a disproportionately high proportion of violent individuals, for example from the Arab world, who have come to Germany irregularly."

Meanwhile, her fellow party member Josef Oster is praising his government's "determined security offensive," which will no longer include the FDP and Green Party's stumbling blocks. "A new security culture is beginning," the politician says. There's a new Federal Minister of the Interior who will set different priorities. "What this Federal Minister of the Interior certainly doesn't need is the AfD's current rhetoric."