After Cologne

On January 13, the German Bundestag approved a bill establishing a single model of identity cards for refugees.

The law was passed hot on the heels of New Year's Eve events in Cologne and some other German cities, when hundreds of women were robbed and sexually assaulted by organized groups of aggressive men, most of whom were allegedly newly arrived migrants from the Middle East. Presumably because many of them were undocumented. But whether identities will solve the problem is a big question. Because there is already another, non-parliamentary, reaction to the New Year's state of emergency. On Saturday, January 9, in the center of Cologne, a crowd of hooligans, bouncers and rockers severely beat several black foreigners who came under the arm. The next day, at the Cologne railway station, twenty thugs attacked six Pakistanis, one of them was hospitalized. Naturally, it was not those who participated in the New Year's hunt for women who suffered from racist violence.

But this is not the end of the reaction of the people to the Cologne hunt. The initiative group Cologne Civil Self-Defense is looking for jocks to patrol the streets and "protect our women and children from attacks." In the comments on the Self-Defense page, her goals are expressed less politically correct: “We will send azilyants (asylum seekers. - NT ) into a knockout. And all the foreign parasites along with them.” Justice Minister Heiko Maas demanded decisive action against the racists: "We have no right to give the field to radical arsonists."

German society is in shock. The political class, which for years hushed up the problems of integration, is in shock, fearing to “spill water” on the mill of neo-Nazis. But caution did not help - racism found its heroes and emerged from the underground. The left-wing intellectuals, who felt guilty before the “victims” and preached the de-labeling of society, were also shocked. In shock, volunteers from different walks of life who work for free in reception centers and refugee camps, teach them German, take care of minors. “With horror and pain,” declares the writer and father of three daughters Uwe Schmitt in the pages of the newspaper Die Welt, “I confess that the Cologne criminals were able to do what a million refugees could not: I feel as if I were ridiculed and abused . No one beat me or robbed me, I was not that night either on Cathedral Square, or in St. Pauli (Hamburg), or at the Brandenburg Gate. My decades-old tolerance has been raped. The cackling chatter has ruined my good will, it forces me to give up my sense of justice towards migrants: I no longer want to think and seek justice, I want revenge and punishment.”

Uwe Schmitt expressed the dismay of the majority, offended by their disinterestedness and frightened by the barbarity of the "victims". Despite this, it still retains immunity against racism and is not ready to support radicals from right-wing parties. But ahead, in early February, is the Cologne Carnival, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world. They say that in the 15th century, during this holiday, outrages similar to the tragic New Year incidents also took place. It is hard to imagine that the age-old tradition of laughter and freedom can be defiled by a crowd of barbarians.