What Heidenau Sounded Like

There’s a particular kind of contempt that only shows itself in public, surrounded by other people who share it. In private it stays vague—a feeling, a resentment—but in a crowd it gets loud and specific. You can see it happening in the video from Heidenau.

Angela Merkel traveled to the town near Dresden in late August 2015, not long after far-right mobs had spent days besieging a shelter for asylum seekers and fighting pitched battles with police. She came to make a statement—to be seen standing against it. And she was met by a crowd of "concerned citizens," as they prefer to be called, who had their own statement to make. One woman, clearly feeling very secure among her peers, chose to deliver hers at full volume, directly to the Chancellor of Germany: Du elende Fotze! You miserable cunt.

The brazenness of it is what stays with you. Not just the obscenity—that’s almost beside the point—but the confidence. She screamed it in daylight, in front of cameras and police, with the total assurance of someone who believes the hatred she’s expressing is righteous and shared. She wasn’t hiding. She was performing. The refugee crisis, in this moment, had been reduced to a woman screaming a slur at a politician because she resented the existence of desperate people seeking shelter. I don’t have words for it. I’m not sure words help.