Last Saturday, an Islamist terrorist targeted the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin. One person was killed and 16 others were injured, some of them seriously.
The perpetrator had multiple previous convictions, was known to the police and had only recently been released from prison. He had repeatedly sought contact with Islamic State. Officers later shot him dead as they attempted to arrest him after he threatened them with a knife.
For the police and prosecutors, the case is closed. The assailant has been identified and is dead.
Politically, however, the matter is far from over.
Alongside grief and dismay, the atrocity prompted the wildest speculation about what lay behind it. The facts are clear: it was an act of Islamist terrorism. Yet left-wing politicians, activists and journalists have claimed that the right, the center-right and Christians bear some responsibility – or at least stand to benefit.
Other theories hold that such incidents occur with suspicious frequency shortly before important elections, benefiting the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). The most extreme claims attribute the violence to foreign interference intended to manipulate German elections.
Conspiracies in the Mainstream Media
Claims bordering on conspiracy theories are not confined to the political fringes and cannot simply be dismissed. The public broadcaster ZDF, financed through Germany’s mandatory license fee, has drawn attention to social media posts advancing such ideas. One recurring suggestion is that attacks of this kind may be orchestrated by Putin.
Although ZDF immediately qualified the allegation and did not endorse it, the report nevertheless gave ample space to conspiratorial speculation.
Even Bild, Germany’s largest tabloid newspaper, reported on 7 July 2026 that Putin was planning attacks in Germany. Shortly before the assault, a presenter on one of ZDF’s main news programs had claimed that the threat stemmed from a general rise in hostility toward queer people, including from right-wing extremists.
Conservatives in the Frame
After the attack, the Neukölln district branch of the Left Party declared: “The deliberate spread of anti-queer and anti-trans ideology by right-wing and conservative actors creates the conditions for attacks such as yesterday’s.”
The original statement made no mention of the Islamist background. After fierce criticism, the party issued a “clarification” that simply added Islamic State and other Islamist fundamentalist groups to the previously cited “right-wing and anti-feminist forces”. IS was thereby explicitly placed in the same political category as conservatives and the right.
Left Party politician Didem Aydurmus wrote on Threads: “The attack is just one more reason to ban the AfD! Before the AfD, we did not really have this kind of shit. No Russian puppets carrying out terrorist attacks so the fascists get more votes. Ban the AfD now!”
Here, too, the claim is that the Islamist was acting on Putin’s behalf.
Always Before Elections
Dara Marc Sasmaz is an adviser and activist close to the Left Party. Under the name “The Radical Democrat”, he reaches a sizeable audience, particularly on YouTube.
In one video, he claimed that there were indications “that the AfD itself is behind such acts through a number of intermediaries”. As evidence, he pointed to the fact that the attack had taken place “entirely by coincidence” shortly before the Berlin elections and suggested a link to Russia. He did not, however, provide any proof connecting the attacker to either Moscow or the AfD.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician Alfonso Pantisano is the Berlin Senate’s commissioner for queer affairs. He simply cast the IS terrorist as part of the conservative camp.
Shortly before the attack, Pantisano had said on Abendschau, a program broadcast by the public broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB): “What concerns us most is that we are currently under political attack from the right and above all from conservative forces, right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis.”
Those Evil Conservative Forces
Asked whether he would repeat that statement after the attack, Pantisano not only stood by it but went further: “Yes, because I also include all religious groups that have a problem with us among conservative forces, and Islamists are part of that.”
He explained: “We have a problem with some people in Islam who demonize the way we live. Unfortunately, we see that in many other religions as well. And we need to protect ourselves and consider how we can continue to live here in freedom.”
Berlin-based writer and columnist Fatma Aydemir wrote in the Guardian on 29 July that the queer community had been under attack from conservative forces for years. She described politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who were now expressing solidarity as hypocritical.
Her central claim could hardly have been clearer: “Christian conservatives and Islamists are quite similar when it comes to their stance on queerness.” According to Aydemir, the two groups may differ in their methods, projects and theological language, but not in their hostility. She thus places mainstream Christian Democrats in the same ideological camp as Islamists.
Catholics Are Just Islamists Too
Catholic priest and queer activist Wolfgang Rothe, who belongs to Austria’s Diocese of St Pölten and is currently serving in Munich, also holds Christians partly responsible: “As a religious person, I am deeply ashamed that religion has once again been abused to justify hatred and even murder. Neither Islam nor Christianity is innocent of the renewed rise in hostility toward queer people in our society.”
Rothe argues that neither faith is yet prepared to recognize queer people and their way of life as equal. He accuses Christians and Muslims alike of showing contempt for human dignity and violating human rights.
Rothe was removed from his post as deputy head of the St Pölten seminary following a sex scandal in 2004. He has since worked as a pastor in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising and made headlines as the first Catholic priest to officially participate in a Christopher Street Day event.
Stoking Hatred
A Correctiv newsletter claimed that the threat to queer life arose from “socially incited hatred” coming both from “fundamentalist religious circles” and “the right”. According to the publication, both cast queer life as an enemy and warn of the destruction of the traditional family or the “gay West”.
Correctiv is a state-funded investigative outlet that has, on occasion, been found in court to have reported falsely.
In another publication, the organization promoted the claim that the AfD was exploiting the attack. A political consultant quoted in the article said the party sought out such “extreme situations” because it believed they increased public support for a radical agenda.
The left-wing German daily taz stated bluntly in its headline: “The AfD Is Using the Attack for Its Agenda.” Former Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach recently endorsed the same argument.
Three Narratives
Three distinct narratives can be identified.
The first is the conspiracy theory proper: Russia or the AfD is indirectly behind Islamist attacks. Dara Marc Sasmaz and the social media posts influenced by him exemplify this view.
The second treats Islamists, Christian conservatives and the right as expressions of the same fundamentally anti-queer outlook. Wolfgang Rothe, Fatma Aydemir, Alfonso Pantisano and the statement issued by the Neukölln branch of the Left Party are the clearest examples.
The third casts the AfD or the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), as beneficiaries that exploit the violence to advance their political agenda. This is probably the most widespread interpretation and can be found in Correctiv, taz and statements by various politicians.
Bad Jokes and an Alleged Attack
In his commemorative address, Chancellor Friedrich Merz displayed a peculiar logic by identifying bad jokes about queer people as one of the causes of Islamist violence.
Speaking in Paderborn, he repeated an assertion he had already made in Berlin: “I told this queer community that violence does not begin only with an attack. Violence begins with intolerance, exclusion, discrimination, stupid remarks and bad jokes.”
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the crime as an assault on an open society and expressed his sympathy for the victims. He made no mention of the Islamist background, which was already clearly apparent at the time, and instead described the incident as an alleged attack.
Steinmeier was speaking on the day of the violence at a temple festival hosted by the Hindu community in Hamm: “We are all shaken and horrified by the alleged attack on Christopher Street Day in Berlin.”
Look Right – That Is Where the Danger Lies
Anyone who had hoped that the federal president and the chancellor, the country’s highest representatives, would meet the grief and horror caused by such an attack with the necessary clarity and sobriety about the crime and its perpetrator was bitterly disappointed.
The inescapable conclusion is that an Islamist attack in Germany prompts no serious debate about how to prevent and combat Islamist terrorism. Instead, it becomes yet another argument for banning the AfD.
The pattern is not new. Crimes committed by migrants against ordinary people have repeatedly been followed by demonstrations against the right and loud demands that the AfD, which supposedly benefits from migrant crime, must finally be banned.
And so no effort is spared to divert the public’s attention from a real danger to an invented threat from the right.