France knows these headlines.
Unfortunately.
Two brothers. Twenty and twenty-two years old.
An engineering student and a young man without a job.
In the car: a loaded pistol, chemicals, symbols of the so-called Islamic State. Along with digital traces full of jihadist propaganda. And the dream of martyrdom – that grotesque glorification of killing that terrorists like to sell as a religious hero story.
The French anti-terror prosecution speaks of a “mortifère et antisémite” plot – deadly, anti-Semitic.
An attack that was supposed to claim as many victims as possible.
You read these words and immediately feel the old, familiar shiver: the memory of Bataclan, of Charlie Hebdo, of Nice. Of all those places where terrorists tried to tear the open society apart like an old tablecloth.
The security authorities apparently stopped the brothers in time.
Good.
But while the judiciary does its work, elsewhere another kind of political exploitation begins.
Because as soon as such a case appears, a familiar spectacle begins. On the political marketplaces, the megaphones are taken out. Some parties are already rubbing their hands – not out of concern for security, but out of joy over a new election campaign topic.
Fear is, after all, an extremely profitable political resource.
And France is in the middle of the local election campaign.
It is one of the bitter ironies of contemporary Europe that terrorism and right-wing populism exist in a sinister interplay. Terror produces fear. Fear produces votes. And votes produce power.
A macabre political cycle.
Of course, the threat is real. No sane person would downplay it. France has lived for years with a terrorist threat that has changed: fewer large networks, but more small groups, sometimes even individuals, radicalized in front of the screen, in dark corners of the internet.
The pattern is known.
Young people who get lost in virtual parallel worlds. Propaganda that convinces them that murder is a religious duty. The fantasy of the heroic victim – a grotesque mix of religious fanaticism and adolescent megalomania.
And suddenly a chatroom becomes a plan of action.
All of this is real.
All of this is dangerous.
But equally real is the political temptation to turn every such story into a simple slogan.
“See!”, then shout the loudspeakers of the extreme right. “The republic is weak. Immigration is to blame. The solution is toughness.”
As if politics were a sledgehammer.
These slogans ignore a crucial fact: The French security authorities have prevented the attack. Investigators, judges, intelligence agencies – they function. They observe, analyze, intervene.
The state acts.
But in the political theater of fear, this reality counts for little. Success sells poorly. Fear sells excellently.
And so a political narrative emerges that is about as nuanced as graffiti in a train station restroom.
“Migration equals terror.”
Done.
Yet the case of the two brothers tells a much more complicated story. A story about online radicalization, about failed biographies, about ideological seduction in digital echo chambers.
And about antisemitic hate, which has become louder again in Europe – from various political and religious milieus.
But nuanced analyses have a problem: They don’t fit on election posters.
So reality is shortened.
Until it fits into a slogan.
That works surprisingly well. Fear is a political turbo. Those who stir it gain attention – and sometimes also elections.
The far right in France knows this. It has been playing this game for years with the precision of a watchmaker.
And every averted terror story is immediately incorporated into the same political narrative: The state is too soft, democracy too naive, the solution lies in authoritarian strength.
As if Europe had not already experienced where such political fantasies lead.
Of course, terrorism demands determined responses. Police, intelligence services, international cooperation – all of this remains necessary.
But anyone who believes the answer to terror is to undermine democratic principles or to put entire populations under general suspicion has not understood the core of the problem.
Terrorism aims at fear.
And populism feeds on fear.
In this regard, they are involuntary allies.
One tries to shake society through violence.
The other uses the shock to cash in politically.
In the end, there is a democracy that must defend itself not only against bombs but also against political simplification.
The real strength of an open society lies not in its toughness. But in its ability to remain vigilant and free at the same time.
That sounds complicated.
It is.
Democracy is not a sledgehammer.
It is more like a clockwork – delicate, sensitive, precise. And precisely for this reason vulnerable to those who want to smash it with coarse slogans.
The foiled attack plan from Pas-de-Calais serves as a reminder that terrorism still exists. But it also reminds us of something else: the responsibility of politics.
Fear explains a lot.
It excuses nothing.
Those who want to fight terror must not damage at the same time the democratic culture they claim to defend.
Otherwise, in the end two forces win simultaneously:
the fanatics with their bomb fantasies – and the populists with their simple answers.
And to put it in a non-academic way, that would really be damn bad news for Europe.
A commentary by Andreas M. Brucker