An Anglo-German perspective on the symbolic politics of terrorist-related police fatalities

Author: Lisa Walter, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany, and Matt Long, Loughborough University, UK.

On 2nd June 2024, a 29-year-old German known as Rouven Laur died of injuries incurred in a stabbing two days previously. But this was no ordinary citizen, he was a serving police officer whose death was politically motivated and classified as an act of terrorism incurred by Islamic extremists, known as the 'Mannheim stabbings' (Davis, 2024).

This sent shockwaves through the home country of this lead author and made the second author recall the similar horror and revulsion which was experienced by the collective conscience, to borrow a Durkheimian (1984) phrase, when PC Keith Palmer stalled the progress of an Islamic extremist in the 2017 'Westminster attack' (BBC News, 2018).

It will come as no surprise that all such terrorist incidents are strategically used by political parties of the far-right to galvanise anti-immigration agendas as such acts of violence are instrumentalised for the purpose of serving ideological discourses. Despite this, there is something particularly significant when a police officer loses his or her life in a terrorist incident, which goes beyond the deaths or injuries of other 'innocent victims'. The police are, of course, the public face of the criminal justice state; they are the proverbial 'thin blue line', who 'bravely' protect us against such threats to our national security (see Reiner, 2010). Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged Rouven Laur's "commitment to the safety of us", as being deserving of, "the highest recognition" (Davis, 2024). Similarly, back in 2017, PC Palmer was awarded a posthumous bravery medal by the Queen with the citation being that he had made, "the ultimate sacrifice" (BBC News, 2017).

The sound-wave model (Ignanski 2001) can show how the harm done to an individual is mirrored and magnified back to society. In our case of terrorism, the deaths of the police officers killed in the UK and Germany were magnified in ever expanding circles to wider civil society, hence the analogy of the sound wave. These ramifications of these magnifications influences the collective consciousness (Durkheim, 1984) and helps shape in this case a right wing political discourse.

So, nothing reaffirms the sense of collective normative infringement when a police officer is killed in a terrorist incident because he or she is not only a citizen in uniform (Reiner, 2010) but as the public face of law and order their deaths signify an attack on our state, our nationhood and our very identity. After the Mannheim stabbings, Chancellor Scholz has repeatedly argued for "harder" punishment and "tougher" measures on migration-policies, which echoes and in addition even legitimises far-right ideas. In January this year he reportedly said, "I am tired of these violent crimes occurring every few weeks, perpetrated by individuals who came to us seeking protection," before adding that, "Misguided tolerance has no place here" (Lunday, 2025).

This reflects, referring to Risk Theory, how "fear entrepreneurs" like Scholz highlight "possibilistic" risks (Furedi, 2019). When an act is framed as an existential threat, it shifts from ordinary politics into the segment of emergency politics. However, securitisation is only justifiable by strong emotions which consequently legitimises remarkable measures. As a result, the process of framing others as "threats", helps to institutionalise racism, undermine and reinforcing inequality and exclusion (see Ahmed, 2024). These dynamics influence political radicalisation: Since the Mannheim stabbings, Alternative für Deutschland, which is vehemently opposed to Muslim immigration, has firmly cemented itself as the second largest party and main opposition party in Germany. Similar patterns can be analysed in the UK: A year after the death of PC Palmer in London, the right-wing populist Reform UK was founded with several recent polls appearing to signify that Nigel Farage's anti-immigration rhetoric has been instrumental in it potentially overtaking the Conservative party and becoming the main opposition to Keir Starmer's Labour led administration. Following the Southport attacks in the UK last summer, for instance, it was reported that a former Scotland Yard anti-terrorist chief had accused Farage of inciting violence (Dodd et al. 2024).

By exaggerating victimisation in the discourse, an over-instrumentalisation of death occurs. This is caused in particular by the predominant ritualisation of the sacrifice of heroic victims of terrorist attacks. This became visible at the Mannheim Stabbing through a memorial ceremony organised by the police at the square where the attack took place in Mannheim (DW, 2024) and also in London by the Carriage Gates at the Palace of Westminster to commemorate the life of PC Palmer. The ritualisation goes hand in hand with over-represented loss, which materialises the actions of politics. This turns what was once a private act of grieving into a mediatised, public and highly contested political arena.

Social scientists have long known that issues of law and order and in particular policing have played a massive role in the political fortunes of elected political parties. Yet it remains significant that the role that political opportunism plays when police officers lose their lives in terrorist atrocities needs particular attention because of how their deaths come to symbolise both existential threats to notions of 'security' (Stepka, 2022) and 'nationhood', (Aslam, 2024) but also because these symbolic layers contribute to the symbolic manifestation of political reactions, which contributes to short-term decision-making and replaces long-term democratic dialogue and solution-finding in favour of populist reflexes (Nylen, 2024) and emotionally charged security discourses.
 

References

Ahmed, S. (2024). Institutional racism: colonialism, epistemic injustice and cumulative trauma. Abingdon, Axon, New York: Routledge. 

Aslam, M. M. M.; Shuib, S. A. & Mizan, M. N. (2024). Terrorism and Violence: a Danger to the Development of Nationhood. International Journal of Strategic Studies, 1(2), 24-31.

BBC News (2017, June 16). Queen honours Westminster attack PC Keith Palmer for bravery.

BBC News (2018, October 3). Westminster terror attack: Who were the victims?

Davis, B. (2024, June 3). Pictured: Police officer, 29, stabbed to death anti-Islam rally in Germany. The Independent. 

Dodd, V.; Quinn, B. and Mason, R. (2024, July 31). Former counter-terror chief accuses Farage of inciting Southport violence. The Guardian.

Durkheim, E. (1984[1893]). The Division of Labour in Society. New York: Macmillan.

DW (2024, July 6) Mannheim holds silence for murdered policeman.

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Lunday, D. (2025, January 22). Scholz hardens rhetoric on migrants after fatal knife attack. Politico.

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Reiner, R. (2010) The Politics of the Police. New York: Oxford University Press.

Stepka, M. (2022). Identifying Security Logics in the EU Policy Discourse: The "Migration Crisis" and the EU. Cham: Springer VS.