Ex-leftists complain in the media about "new migrants" at Berlin’s "Kotti" – although they should know better.

No longer sexy, just poor: Kreuzberg Photo: reuters

Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg is now a no-go area. Those who escape with their lives can consider themselves lucky. "Whoever gets off the subway here has only himself to blame," headlined Die Welt. Responsible, by the way, are the "Nafris," quite clearly. That’s what Rhineland police officers call people from the North African region, according to a memo. The super-left residents and migrant tradesmen are fed up, one reads. Few things are as dear to the Wutburger as people with a migrant background who make negative comments about other migrants. Whether it’s books by Tania Kambouri and Akif Pirincci or, say, a guest appearance by Hamed Abdel-Samad at the AfD – the cheers are always euphoric, logically.

And now these Kreuzbergers. Always perceived as pests of the people, they now supposedly realize that they’ve brought the wrong friends on board. For once, the people’s souls on the Internet are boiling not with rage, but with schadenfreude. "That’s what they get for it now, these do-gooders. Their left-wing tolerance is blowing up in their faces, Jawolla!" That’s what we read from thousands of users who, according to their profiles, come from such melodious and cosmopolitan metropolises as Radebeul or Straubing. But it’s not just the dregs of the Facebook rabble that are mocking. Jungle World, which I’m sure some leftists would call "leftist," noted, "… even leftists are starting to wonder." Nah, right? Wow!

The solution was quickly determined: crack down. Zero-tolerance policy. The scaremongers claim that the rule of law has taken its leave at Kotti. In a nationally broadcast TV report, Munich was cited as a positive counterexample, saying that the daily raids had put an end to open drug trafficking there. Of course. The "stoner’s paradise" Gorlitzer Park has shown how useful months of repression can be.

The scene also needs to be better monitored, they say. If you can’t think of anything else, then you call for cameras. Yet it is an open secret that the police have their own apartment in the adjacent NKZ apartment block, from which they have been monitoring the entire square for years. Denial follows.

The heroin scene on Kotti has existed since the 1980s. Formerly located at Nollendorfplatz, the addicts were driven away at that time. When they hit the Kotti, the raids stopped. Recently, a relatively manageable group of pickpockets has now joined them. A nuisance for some, certainly. But the real issue would be (economic) displacement.

When former squatters become philistines over time and Green patronage suddenly seems more important than issues like solidarity, rent-seeking and failed Senate policies, there’s a reason for it: people fear for their sinecures. Instead: Isolated ex-leftists and migrants who complain about the "new migrants" to the media, although they should actually know better. Us against them. Poor Kreuzberg, not even sexy. It’s still fair to say that.