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So, this is very interesting. I wonder: was his plan to essentially make this look like an Islamist attack, to stir up hostility toward Muslim immigration? I imagine he understood that everyone would, justifiably, assume that an Arab man driving his car into a Christmas market (with an explosive device inside, no less!) would be interpreted by all sides as an Islamist terror attack. Maybe he was hoping nobody would identify him and discover his Twitter account? If he did expect people to find his account, I really have no idea what political outcome (if any) he was hoping to facilitate as a result of this attack.
On the one hand, his background as a former refugee from the Middle East makes him an incredibly unwieldy weapon for progressives to use to discredit immigration skeptics; on the other hand, his support for the AfD and his criticism of Muslim immigration makes him pretty much impossible to use as a cudgel by the right wing. Some commentators, such as Keith Woods, are taking the position that this proves that all Arab immigration to Europe should be cut off, because even the apparently liberal/assimilated ones are still ticking time bombs of potential violence; this seems fairly tendentious even to me, given what we know about the guy so far.
Yes, excellent analysis. Thanks for laying out exactly what I was thinking in such agreeable prose.
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