Nazis in Heidenau

I have this terrible habit of empathizing with everyone. No matter what they’ve done, where they’ve done it, or why—I’m there, trying to understand, reaching for the reason beneath the act. My friends know this about me. They’ve stopped waiting for me to come around. I’ll still be explaining some asshole’s point of view long after they’ve moved on.

Nothing happens without a reason, I tell myself. Everyone does what they think is right.

Then I watched that video from Heidenau. Eastern Germany. A crowd of far-right protesters—basically just Nazis—harassing asylum seekers, ransacking the refugee shelter, grinning the whole time. Laughing about it. Genuinely happy to be hurting people. And something shut down in me. The empathy quit working. I couldn’t find the reason, the hurt, the logic underneath the cruelty. I wanted to puke.

I kept seeing the families inside that shelter instead. People who’d walked thousands of kilometers out of hell, carrying their kids, believing they’d finally made it somewhere safe. To Germany. To Heidenau. And instead they’re standing in front of the next war. Kids crying, mothers holding them closer, trying to figure out if this is what they’d burned their lives down to escape.

That’s what I couldn’t make sense of. That’s what broke my ability to understand. Not the grievance or the fear or whatever story the crowd told themselves about protecting something. Just the pleasure in it. The actual joy of hurting people who had nothing left.

I’m still angry about it.