Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the online news portal Nius. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Mocking a murder victim: Why the laughter of the Berlin Greens is so treacherous

Laughter can be disarming. Or revealing. When a politician such as the then-CDU candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet laughs at a joke during the memorial service for the victims of the Ahr Valley flood, he is, in the milder case, not paying attention; in the more serious case, he is mocking the dead and people who have lost everything.

But laughter can also reveal intellectual defenselessness and the absence of any decency, as is the case these days in the Berlin House of Representatives. In response to the depressing words of Berlin’s Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD), “The terrible death of Mannheim shows us…” Green Party MP Tuba Bozkurt thought it appropriate to interrupt with a grin, “Mannheim is dead?” and was not alone in her hilarity. “Laughter from the Greens,” the incorruptible parliamentary stenographers recorded in the minutes at this point.

Anyone who mocks the state must feel the harshness of the rule of law, said Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) at the beginning of February with regard to right-wing extremists. Anyone who mocks brutally murdered civil servants can get away with an apology. Her interjection was “indecent,” Bozkurt wrote on Twitter (X), and she “deeply regrets it.” That is the least she can do. Everyone has to decide for themselves how credible such apologies are. [Since she’s of Turkish descent, I’d call this “apology” taqiyya.]

Typical contempt for the police

Laughter is also disarming because it is difficult to control at crucial moments and is revealingly honest. It just bursts out. In the case of the Greens, it exposes the contempt for the police that is typical of the milieu, it exposes a feeling of superiority in the Green group that is not justified intellectually or ethically, and a deep contempt for those who believe that law and order is a good principle.

A self-confident ideological elite looks down unmoved on an official who is practically executed by an Islamist in a blind frenzy. And even this viral, fanatical bloodlust was unable to break through the eco-elitist arrogance towards the supposedly staid state power and to show human compassion for a brief moment of self-restraint.

There are many different types of political laughter. The fake laughter to appear likeable. The artificial laughter at the Munich strong beer tapping at the Nockherberg, when a politician has to put on a brave face for the evil satirical play about him. The ice-cold laughter of power, the patronizing laughter in the dictators’ stands of the world.

Usually, people complain about a lack of honest, free, relaxed or simply happy laughter in politics. The laughter in the Berlin House of Representatives is one of the most disgusting varieties of laughter. No one would have missed it.

Afterword from the translator:

Just imagine the whole thing the other way round: A German extremist had attacked one or more Muslims with a knife and brutally killed a police officer of Muslim faith in the process. This fact alone would generate endless mainstream focus points and talk shows. And then the AfD would make such a subterranean, mindless remark at a plenary session — which of course no one from their ranks would ever do. The other parties would go crazy, there would be tumult that no one could control. The entire party would be expelled from the room without further ado. There would be calls for resignation and an immediate ban on the party without further investigation.

But here, in this case, a casual, and very probably not even sincere, apology is apparently enough. It is completely insane what migrant politicians are now doing in Germany and getting away with it. How on earth did it get to this point? How can people hate themselves to such a degree that they happily voting their own executioner into power? The only answer that makes sense to me is “Sefton Delmer”.