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It hurts to see these pictures, in me they mainly trigger anger: A man stands up in a tram in front of a seated teenager.

“Do you want another one,” he asks the boy in the hoodie, “you little bastard,” he roars, “you're coming to my country, just piss off where you come from.” The man spits on the boy, “shout after your mother or your dad, ”he says, then he steps off.

With full force towards the head, four times.

A passenger's cell phone video documents the racist attack, recorded last Friday at around 11 p.m. in Erfurt.

The alleged perpetrator, Christian B., 40, with multiple criminal records, was identified and arrested on Monday.

The victim is a young Syrian, 17, who, according to initial information, came to Germany as an unaccompanied refugee.

Anyone who thinks the Erfurt attack is an exception is wrong.

He joins the long list of racist, xenophobic attacks.

They belong to Germany like the “Tagesschau” - they are part of everyday life.

And there are places where people with foreign roots live particularly dangerously, where the fear of attacks is part and parcel of many.

Erfurt is such an example.

According to the advice center "Ezra", the city has been Thuringia's stronghold of right-wing, racist violence for years.

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29 attacks were registered there last year. In August 2020, for example, three Guineans were attacked by a group of Germans not far from a right-wing scene meeting and some were seriously injured. A few days later a man showed the Hitler salute at a tram stop and insulted passers-by in a racist manner. Similar attacks on women wearing headscarves, refugees and people with foreign roots are increasing across the country.

When I see the video from Erfurt, I have to think of my little brother.

A few years ago, he too could have sat in one of those trains at night: the son of a Jordanian, Mediterranean appearance, sometimes it doesn't take more to be attacked.

Or I think of my Amman cousin, coming of age.

Could I let him take the train carefree at night when I visit any German city?

Probably not.

Not a country full of racists

It's not about portraying Germany as a country full of racists.

This activist reflex is as wrong as it is dangerous.

It is sufficient to clearly state racism and not to relativize it.

Every "but ..." sentence, every reference to acts of violence by refugees is completely out of place after attacks like the one in Erfurt.

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It is all the more important that people with a large reach express themselves about such incidents and show solidarity.

I think it's a shame, for example, that people like ex-Constitutional Protection President Hans-Georg Maaßen, who otherwise likes to distribute beer tent rhetoric against “1.8 million Arabs”, don't take advantage of this opportunity.

What the attack from Erfurt shows once again: Without attentive fellow citizens, without moral courage, we have no chance in the fight against extremists.

Nobody intervened directly on the apparently sparsely occupied train, but brave people took out their cell phones.

This was the only way to identify the alleged perpetrator.

A start, anyway.