On Tuesday, Tareq Alaows, a 31-year-old Damascus-born Syrian refugee and human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
activist, announced that racist attacks and personal threats had forced him to withdraw what had been billed as a historic political candidacy for Germany's parliament, the Bundestag.
Alaows, who fled conscription in Syria and arrived in Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...six years ago, had announced his intent to run as a Green Party candidate for his home district of Oberhausen in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia back in February. At the time, many lauded the possibility of a refugee entering Germany's parliament but not everyone was enthusiastic.
The candidate, who said he wanted to fight for the rights of refugees in Germany, quickly became the target of social media attacks. Many of those attacking him for his declared desire to change how Germany deals with race, said if he wanted change he should go back to Syria and do something there.
EXPOSED TO 'MASSIVE RACISM' DURING SHORT CANDIDACY
In announcing his withdrawal, Alaows, who has applied for German citizenship, said: "The great public interest generated by my candidacy shows what we refugees can do. But unfortunately our society lacks discrimination-free spaces in many areas of life. It's up to all of us to actively deal with that in our surroundings and to change things."
He said, "the serious threats against me, and more importantly against those around me, are the primary reason for withdrawing my candidacy." Alaows, who received numerous death threats from right-wing bully boy accounts, said he was shocked by the "massive racism" he faced.
Beyond ending his candidacy, Alaows has also withdrawn from his local Green Party branch in the former industrial city of Oberhausen to protect his privacy.
Alaows said last month he planned to run for the Greens in a former coal-mining region of western Germany in a national election on Sept. 26 - as long as his application for German citizenship is approved by then. The Greens said Alaows would have been the first refugee elected to the federal parliament.
Alaows drifted across the Aegean in a rubber boat before walking most of the way from Athens to Vienna. A lawyer, Alaows taught himself German by putting laws into Google Translate on his mobile phone.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom. Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslem colonists...
opened the borders in 2015 to refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.
But that influx has triggered an upsurge in support for the far right, helping to propel the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) into the Bundestag parliament in 2017.
Alaows drew a wave of online attacks from the far right, particularly after suggesting that the words "Dem Deutschen Volke" (to the German people) on the parliament building be replaced with "For all people who live in Germany".
Opinion polls put the left-leaning Greens second behind Merkel's conservative bloc.