German politician compares rioters with migrant backgrounds to ‘monkeys’

BERLIN (AA) – A German politician has caused outrage with a racist video he published on social media.

Thomas Bäppler-Wolf, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from the state of Hesse who has been a councilor for the city of Frankfurt since July 2016, commented on riots that broke out on December 31 in Berlin in an Instagram video that has since been deleted.

“What country do we actually live in?” Bäppler-Wolf said in the video. Talking about the youth who rioted, he said, “90% of them are not highly German-speaking, educated people from North Rhine-Westphalia.”

Bäppler-Wolf even drew an indirect comparison with monkeys. “Since New Year’s Eve, we know that what we had there is the Beginning Link — far ahead of the monkeys and without brains.”

The New Year’s Eve rioters are “criminals” and “belong locked away,” the politician said.

Following a prison sentence, they should be put on a plane and “sent back to where they came from,” he added.

However, in a post after deleting the video, he said he refused to be applauded by “wrong guys” and resented being “mentioned in the same breath as right-wing populists.”

On New Year’s Eve, there were isolated outbreaks of violence in Germany, especially in the capital Berlin. After the attacks on police and rescue workers, a political debate developed about the cause of the violence.

Politicians from the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Alternative for Germany (AfD) parties constructed a connection between young people with immigrant backgrounds and the rioting.

As reported by public broadcaster ARD, the police provisionally arrested 145 people in connection with the riots.

For the first time, the police also provided information on the origin of the accused. According to the report, they are of 18 different nationalities, including 45 Germans,  27 Afghans and 21 Syrians.