After Berlin: The politics of fear and LGBTQ+ rights

COMMENTARY

As Germany prepares for crucial state elections, analysts warn the political fallout from the Berlin Pride attack could accelerate efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ protections across Europe.

By Denise Schipani, Cyber and Geopolitical Intelligence analyst.

ON SATURDAY evening, 21-year-old German national Abdul Ballout drove a white van into a crowd of people celebrating Berlin Pride before exiting the vehicle and attacking bystanders with a knife.

Three people are still in intensive care at Berlin’s Charité Hospital after the suspect killed one woman and injured 29 more people at the scene.

Analysts warn that Germany’s main right-wing populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is set to exploit the attack in the upcoming state elections taking place in eastern Germany in September.

This would not only hasten the erosion of LGBTQ+ protections in parts of Germany but also accentuate the growing propagation of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment across Europe and the UK.

With a number of defining European elections coming up in 2027, this attack could be consequential in shaping legislative protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals for years to come.

Ballout was shot dead by German police on Sunday afternoon following an extensive manhunt. The attacker was well known to the police and courts for attempting to join Islamic State (ISIS) and for previously planning a terrorist attack.

AfD politician Martin Hess commented on the attack, stating that Islamism “is and remains the biggest security threat to Germany”.

According to federal government reports, German intelligence agencies are observing around 9,110 “violence-oriented” Islamist extremists, compared with approximately 15,600 “violence-oriented” right-wing extremists.

Sibylline Europe analyst Caspar von der Schulenburg explains that quantitatively the threat from right-wing extremists is higher, though the Islamist extremist milieu may be more violent in nature.

However, he adds that the AfD is likely to focus on framing the attack as a security failure to appeal to voters.
“When these attacks have happened in the past, the AfD’s share of the vote in state elections has risen by around 6 percentage points,” he says.

“If the AfD plays this politically well, then it is likely to get a boost in the polls.”

The AfD maintains an anti-LGBTQIA+ stance, opposing marriage equality and gender diversity, despite the party’s co-chair, Alice Weidel, being a member of the community herself.

Weidel has previously expressed her support for civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples while distancing herself from wider queer and gender identity movements.

According to the latest polls, the AfD is close to securing an outright majority of seats in Saxony-Anhalt, in what would constitute an unprecedented development in Germany.

Von der Schulenburg states that an absolute majority would provide the AfD with control of Saxony-Anhalt’s state government and legislature, including the ability to significantly alter LGBTQ+ protections within the state’s jurisdiction.

Far-right groups and populist ideals are increasingly gaining ground in Europe and the UK, galvanised by hardened US politics, wars and dire economic conditions.

Authorities in Finland, Norway and Poland have all reported a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ crimes in recent years. Analysts assess that this is at least partly due to increasingly polarised political discourse, fuelled by the far-right political agendas.

In May, the UK’s Minister for Women and Equalities laid before Parliament the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) updated Code of Practice.

The update seeks to provide practical guidelines for businesses following the Supreme Court’s 2025 interpretation of the Equality Act, which redefined sex to mean biological sex for the purposes of the Act.

In practice, the update states that single-sex services should be provided on the basis of biological sex. This could restrict the single-sex spaces available to trans, non-binary and other gender non-conforming people, although providers must still consider the circumstances and their wider obligations under the Equality Act.

Several Labour MPs and LGBTQIA+ advocates have criticised the new guidance, claiming that it will have a deleterious impact on trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people by discouraging them from accessing key services, including healthcare.

Von der Schulenburg suggests that this guidance could be a harbinger of what is to come as far as legal protections for the LGBTQIA+ community across the rest of Europe are concerned.

“The Court of Justice of the European Union maintains very strong legal protections for trans rights.

“However, Europe and the UK are decidedly trending rightward politically, and this will lead to a push towards more binary legislation surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity,” he says.

Saturday’s attack on Berlin Pride did not happen in a vacuum. It is an emblem of shifting political tides across Europe.

“Governments will become increasingly right-wing and Eurosceptic. As European constitutional ideals are under attack, the tide will continue to shift in a negative direction for the LGBTQIA+ community.”