进步主义和恐怖主义的“自相残杀” Progressivism and Terrorism’s ‘Fratricidal’ Conflict

    2026年7月25日晚，柏林一年一度的Christopher Street Day刚刚结束不久，一辆白色厢式货车驶入勃兰登堡门附近的蒂尔加滕公园，冲撞聚集在那里的人群。袭击造成一名六十多岁的波兰女性死亡，二十九人受伤。德国警方认为，驾驶车辆的男子随后还持刀袭击了路人。经过近一天搜捕，警方在施潘道发现了二十一岁的嫌疑人阿卜杜勒·巴卢特；他持利器冲向特警，随后被击毙。两天后，德国联邦检察机关在他的手机里发现了一段蒙面宣誓效忠“伊斯兰国”的视频。调查机关仍在核实他选择具体地点和时间的全部考虑，但德国政府已经将案件定性为伊斯兰主义恐怖袭击，袭击与欧洲规模最大的同志游行之一在空间与时间上的重合，也很难被解释成偶然。

    这起袭击的残酷之处并不只在伤亡数字。它像一把突然落下的刀，切开了欧洲进步主义长期维持的一幅政治拼图：在这幅拼图中，性少数、穆斯林、移民、难民、非白人和一切被归入“边缘群体”的人，天然属于同一个反压迫联盟。他们的历史不同，信仰不同，对自由、家庭、性别和法律的理解也可能完全相反，但在进步主义绘制的身份地图上，只要共同面对所谓白人、父权、资本主义和西方霸权，就应当自动站在同一边。如今，一名向“伊斯兰国”效忠的男子把车开向同志游行的人群，进步主义才被迫看见：被它塞进同一个政治阵营的两种力量，从未签署过共同价值契约，其中一方甚至从一开始就拒绝另一方存在的权利。

    恐怖主义者当然不属于同志运动，柏林街头的受害者也无需为任何政治思潮承担袭击责任。开车撞人、持刀伤人和宣誓效忠“伊斯兰国”的责任，完整地属于施暴者本人。本文所追问的，是另一层政治责任：为什么在欧洲的进步主义运动中，一套公开否定世俗法律、性别平等、宗教退出权和同性恋生存权的意识形态，长期被当成受压迫身份的一部分加以保护；为什么任何试图区分穆斯林与伊斯兰主义、移民权利与移民政策、宗教自由与宗教政治的人，都可能先被要求证明自己没有种族歧视；为什么一个被安全机构掌握多年、已经尝试加入恐怖组织并被法院判刑的危险人物，仍能在自由社会中获得继续证明自己的机会，直到他用别人的生命完成证明。

    要回答这些问题，首先需要区分自由主义与进步主义。自由主义以个人为权利主体，要求法律同等保护同性恋者、穆斯林、基督徒、无神论者、移民与本国公民。它保护一个人信仰伊斯兰教的自由，也保护另一个人批评伊斯兰教、退出伊斯兰教和嘲讽宗教教义的自由。它允许国家接纳难民，同时要求进入共同政治空间的人服从同一套世俗法律。自由主义的核心是普遍规则：一个行为是否侵犯权利，要看行为本身，无须先询问行为人属于哪个族群。

    进步主义则逐渐把个人拆解成身份的集合，再依据这些身份与西方权力结构之间的距离分配道德地位。在它的叙事中，社会首先由压迫者与被压迫者构成，事实和规范随后围绕这个位置展开。一个人属于多数群体，他的观点更容易被解释为权力；属于少数群体，他的观点则更容易被解释为经验。于是，宗教也被种族化了。伊斯兰教原本是一套可以信仰、解释、批评或放弃的宗教，进入进步主义语言后，却越来越像一种不可选择的肤色。批评基督教保守主义可以被视为反抗权威，批评伊斯兰保守主义却时常被怀疑是在攻击少数族裔。

    这种转变为伊斯兰主义提供了最有价值的政治掩体。伊斯兰主义是一种现代政治意识形态，它追求宗教规范对公共生活和政治秩序的支配，其中一部分流派采用议会、社团、学校与社区组织扩张影响，另一部分流派接受或直接实施暴力。普通穆斯林与伊斯兰主义者之间没有天然等号，正如普通德国人与纳粹之间没有天然等号。伊斯兰主义组织却乐于抹去这条界线，因为只要社会接受“批评伊斯兰主义等于敌视穆斯林”，对政治意识形态的审查便会被包装成对少数群体的迫害，极端主义者也能以整个信仰群体代言人的身份进入公共机构。

    欧洲进步主义在这里完成了一次荒谬的自我缴械。它自称要保护少数群体内部最脆弱的人，却往往把解释少数群体的权力交给其中组织程度最高、声音最大、最擅长使用受害者语言的人。一个来自穆斯林家庭的女同性恋者、一个离开伊斯兰教的前穆斯林、一个拒绝戴头巾的女孩，或一个因批评宗教而受到死亡威胁的作家，未必拥有清真寺协会、宗教委员会和身份政治组织那样的资源。他们的个人自由反而容易被牺牲，因为他们的存在破坏了“少数群体拥有统一诉求”的方便叙事。

    这也解释了激进左翼与伊斯兰主义之间看似不可思议的合作。两者对性、家庭、宗教与个人生活的想象相距极远，却共享一套敌人名单：西方、美国、资本主义、帝国主义、殖民主义、世俗国家以及被视为西方代理人的以色列。德国康拉德·阿登纳基金会在讨论左翼极端主义与伊斯兰主义的“跨阵营联合”时，就把反帝国主义和后殖民主义视为两者汇合的主要通道。共同的政治否定暂时掩盖了终极目标的冲突。激进左翼相信，摧毁旧秩序后会出现一个解放了性别、种族与阶级的新世界；伊斯兰主义者期待的，则可能是一个服从神圣律法、惩罚叛教并压制同性关系的宗教共同体。双方可以一起拆墙，只是对墙倒塌之后由谁来统治意见迥异。

    这种联盟从来没有真正的理论一致性，它依赖一项进步主义幻觉：凡是遭受西方排斥的人，都会自然认同进步价值。殖民历史中的受害地位仿佛可以自动生产性别平等，移民身份仿佛可以自动产生对多元文化的忠诚，遭受种族歧视的经验仿佛会使一个人本能地尊重同性恋。现实显然没有这种道德炼金术。受害经历既可能培养同情，也可能制造新的仇恨；一个人在某种权力关系中处于弱势，完全可能在另一种关系中成为压迫者。拒绝承认这一点，所谓“交叉性”就会从分析多重权力关系的工具，退化成给不同受害身份安排座次的名单。

    柏林袭击恰好把这种幻觉压缩进一个人身上。巴卢特生于柏林，是德国公民，拥有黎巴嫩家庭背景。安全部门据报从他十六岁起便注意到他在伊斯兰主义圈子中的活动。2025年，他多次试图前往境外参加“伊斯兰国”的武装活动，7月在黎巴嫩被捕并被判刑，11月返回德国后再次被捕。2026年5月12日，柏林一家青年法庭以准备危害国家的严重暴力行为判处他一年十个月青年刑罚。由于判决处于一种延后决定是否缓刑的“预备缓刑”状态，他获准离开羁押场所，条件之一是参加民间机构提供的去激进化项目。据德国公共广播机构调查，项目当时仍在决定是否正式接收他的评估阶段，他只参加了两次自愿谈话，第三次原定在袭击后的那一周进行。咨询人员已经怀疑他是否真诚配合。与此同时，他曾受到部分监控，电话也被监听，并多次成为德国联合反恐中心讨论的对象。换句话说，这起案件几乎没有“无人预料”的成分。国家知道他是谁，知道他相信什么，知道他去过哪里，也知道他试图加入谁。国家拥有大量信息，缺少的是在风险与宽容发生冲突时作出判断的能力。

    把这一切简单归结为“移民带来恐怖主义”，显然是不符合事实的。巴卢特没有刚刚穿越边境，他在德国出生和长大，拿着德国护照，接受过德国教育，并进入德国青年司法与社会辅导系统。他是真正的德国公民。真正的问题在于，一个国家能否把国籍理解为共同政治义务，能否向第二代、第三代移民明确说明：你可以拥有任何血统、宗教和私人文化，但没有权利以神学命令取消他人的自由；你一旦准备加入以屠杀平民为手段的组织，国家将把保护潜在受害者放在继续观察你是否愿意改变之前。

    德国青年司法为何对一个二十一岁的危险人物适用青年刑罚，有具体法律背景。德国法律允许在一定条件下对十八至二十岁的“青年成年人”适用青年法，法院也可以暂缓决定是否将青年刑罚转为缓刑。这套制度原本建立在一个合理信念上：年轻人的人格尚未定型，刑罚应为改造留下空间。问题出现在制度把一般犯罪人的可塑性想象，机械套用于具有明确政治信仰、跨境参战意图和恐怖组织认同的人。盗窃、斗殴与加入“伊斯兰国”之间存在重要差别。前者的行为人可能因为冲动、贫困或同伴压力犯罪，后者已经把暴力纳入一套解释世界的完整道德体系。国家若只治疗他的情绪和社会处境，却不认真处理那套为杀戮赋予正当性的思想，去激进化就很容易成为填写表格的行政仪式。

    这并不意味着所有极端言论都应导致拘禁，也不意味着安全机构可以凭宗教身份无限期关押个人。自由社会之所以值得保护，正因为政府必须受到证据、程序和司法审查约束。恐怖主义最希望看到的结果之一，正是国家在恐惧中取消自身的自由原则。可在巴卢特案中，国家面对的早已超过思想嫌疑：跨境加入“伊斯兰国”的多次尝试、外国定罪、回国被捕、德国法院判刑、情报机构长期关注和风险评估共同构成了一条极其清晰的危险链条。谨慎保障权利与拒绝作出判断，属于两回事。德国保护了他的第二次机会，却没有为公园里的人保留第二条生命。

    进步主义在刑事司法上的影响，也常通过这种“拒绝判断”表现出来。它习惯把暴力还原为结构性原因：贫困、隔离、创伤、歧视、缺乏归属感、心理疾病。这些因素确实可能增加个人被极端组织吸引的风险，欧洲刑事政策也有充分理由重视改造。但解释一个人如何走向暴力，不能自动取消他为何选择暴力的思想内容。英国反极端主义委员会2025年发布的一项关于恐怖主义意识形态的研究指出，学界对个人如何受意识形态驱动仍有争议，同时也确认，意识形态被普遍视为极端主义运动及其组织的核心。社会因素说明了易感性，意识形态则告诉易感者应当仇恨谁、杀害谁，以及为什么杀戮可以被视为美德。

    进步主义最典型的错误，正是把恐怖主义者当成一份社会工作个案。只要为他找到歧视经历、家庭问题或身份焦虑，暴力仿佛就获得了一个比宗教政治更“科学”的解释。这样的研究语言表面中立，实际效果却是把恐怖主义的思想主体性从行为人身上移走：他不再是相信某种政治目标并为之行动的人，而成了社会结构推出的结果。西方社会于是承担了几乎全部因果责任，极端主义教义只剩一个可以随时替换的外壳。恐怖组织当然喜欢这种解释，因为它让每次袭击都能反过来证明西方有罪。

    知识生产中的偏斜进一步巩固了这种局面。英国反极端主义委员会委托的一项研究在2023年指出，当代伊斯兰主义极端主义研究存在明显缺口，研究领域高度政治化，公共资助项目更多关注一般化的“极端主义”和极右翼；一些研究者担心，研究伊斯兰主义会招致种族主义指控，批评进步主义事业则可能带来职业后果。英国的学术生态不能直接代表德国，却揭示了欧美公共讨论中一种熟悉的激励结构：研究极右翼通常能获得道德安全，研究伊斯兰主义则需要先处理研究者本人的政治嫌疑，正如所有西方人都只能止步于反共，而只有来自中国的异议人士才可以反华一样。

    这类偏斜不会直接制造一名恐怖分子，却会改变社会发现危险、描述危险和配置资源的能力。当研究机构缺少对具体伊斯兰主义组织、招募网络与教义传播的持续研究，政府便更依赖抽象的“激进化模型”；当媒体把明确的宗教政治动机改写成孤独、心理健康和融入失败，公众便难以理解袭击者为何总能从不同个人创伤中得出相似的目标；当教师、社工和地方官员担心一个错误判断会毁掉自己的职业，他们就会把本来应当上报的迹象解释为青春期表达或宗教探索。意识形态禁忌最终转化为制度盲区。

    英国2016年的《凯西融合评估》对这一机制的表述是：一些公共机构为了避免被称为种族主义者或“伊斯兰恐惧症”患者，对倒退、分裂和有害的文化及宗教实践视而不见，甚至予以纵容；这种退让并未保护相关社群，反而给极端主义者提供了空间。十年之后，这段结论依然令人不安，因为它所描述的范围超出了某项孤立政策的失败，直指一种官僚机构的风险计算。放任极端主义可能在未来造成无法确定的伤害，冒犯一个身份组织却可能立刻引发投诉、舆论危机和政治问责。对个人官员而言，沉默往往是更安全的选择；对整个社会而言，无数次安全的沉默会累积成一次致命的意外。

    柏林袭击后的公共反应也显示了这种语言秩序。柏林CSD协会的正式声明其实保持了必要的区分：它要求毫不淡化地明确称呼伊斯兰主义恐怖主义，同时反对借案件煽动对穆斯林和特定族裔的仇恨。这是自由社会应有的立场，因为普通穆斯林无需替恐怖分子承担集体责任，针对穆斯林的报复只会制造新的受害者，并帮助极端主义者宣传“西方永远仇视伊斯兰”。然而，柏林参议院负责酷儿事务的官员在谈到袭击时，很快又把话题转向民主政党中不支持酷儿社群的声音，并批评总理默茨没有推动足够的法律平等。这些问题可以讨论，只是它们在此刻被并置，暴露出一种近乎条件反射的平衡冲动：每当伊斯兰主义暴力进入视野，必须立刻召唤极右翼、保守派或社会歧视来稀释它的独特性，否则陈述事实本身似乎就可能损害政治正确。

    反对集体归罪需要清晰地指出作案意识形态，因为含混才会为集体怀疑提供土壤。如果政府和媒体只说“仇恨袭击”“针对多元社会的暴力”或“极端主义事件”，公众看见的现实与官方语言之间便会出现裂缝。极右翼最擅长占领这种裂缝，宣称建制派正在隐瞒真相，继而把一个伊斯兰主义者的罪行扩展到所有穆斯林。进步主义担心明确命名会帮助极右翼，实际结果往往相反：越不肯命名，极右翼越容易垄断命名权。诚实承认伊斯兰主义威胁，同时坚决保护穆斯林公民的平等权利，才有可能同时切断两种极端主义的宣传链条。

    欧洲的数据也不允许人们继续把伊斯兰主义恐怖主义当成被右翼夸大的边缘现象。欧洲刑警组织2026年度报告显示，欧盟成员国在2025年共报告四十五起已经实施、失败或被挫败的恐怖袭击，其中二十四起归入圣战主义恐怖主义；全年四百八十六名涉恐嫌疑人被捕，其中三百四十七人与圣战主义有关。同期极右翼恐怖袭击为五起，相关逮捕四十三人。极右翼暴力、反穆斯林仇恨与新纳粹组织当然是真实威胁，德国尤其没有遗忘这一威胁的资格；可同时承认两种危险，并不会让数字失去比例。欧洲刑警组织预计，圣战主义仍可能占据未来恐怖袭击与涉恐逮捕的多数。德国联邦宪法保卫局2025年报告估计，全国伊斯兰主义极端主义相关人员约二万八千六百四十五人，其中约九千一百一十人具有暴力倾向。这个统计范围远大于真正会实施恐袭的人数，也不能被拿来怀疑每一位保守穆斯林。它说明的是，伊斯兰主义已经形成一个持续存在的社会与安全问题，无法继续用“个别被边缘化青年误入歧途”概括。与此同时，欧洲刑警组织指出，近年的袭击和计划多由独狼或小型自发团体实施，车辆和刀具等简单手段降低了行动门槛。恐怖主义组织不需要指挥一支地下军队，只需让足够多的人相信，在日常城市空间里杀死“异教徒”、犹太人、警察或同性恋者是一种可以获得意义的行为。

    那么，进步主义究竟怎样助长这种危险？它通常不会提供武器，也不会直接教授袭击方法。它提供的是一种宽松的政治生态：对伊斯兰主义的概念批判被转化成身份风险，使记者、教师、研究者和官员在开口之前先担心自己会被归入哪个阵营；融合被降格成社会经济服务，仿佛只要住房、教育、就业和代表性改善，价值冲突就会自行消失；政府又习惯通过宗教或族群组织与“社区”对话，客观上提高了保守宗教中介者的代表权，削弱了社群内部世俗派、女性、同性恋者和叛教者的声音。等到共同规则需要强制执行时，国家已经习惯把表达边界视为多数文化对少数文化的权力扩张，最后只剩协商、辅导和象征性团结。

    这些机制无法用一条统计回归证明，柏林一次袭击也不足以建立简单因果关系。政治思潮很少像病毒那样直接进入个人身体，再按固定时间产生暴力。它通过机构激励、语言禁忌、法律选择和社会声望发挥作用：什么问题值得研究，什么风险可以公开描述，谁有资格代表一个群体，何时应当强制干预，失败后首先担心受害者还是担心舆论反弹。进步主义对恐怖主义的帮助，就存在于这些微小决定的总和里。它没有创造“伊斯兰国”的教义，却不断削弱自由社会识别和抵抗这套教义的信心。

    移民政策在其中占据重要位置，也需要摆脱口号。大规模移民会增加融合系统、警务、情报、住房与教育的压力；当来源社会与接收社会在宗教、性别和法律观念上差异较大时，人数与速度当然影响融合效果。假装人口规模与制度容量毫无关系，只是一种昂贵的道德表演。与此同时，把恐怖主义与所有难民绑定，同样经不起事实检验。很多欧洲袭击者在当地出生、成长或长期居住，合法身份和语言能力并未阻止他们激进化。可行的政策需要控制规模、进行个体化安全审查、提高拒绝和遣返危险外国人的执行力，也需要对本国公民中的极端主义者采用刑事司法、情报监控和明确的价值教育。边境既不能被当成不存在，也不能被幻想成能够挡住已经在境内成长的思想。

    进步主义对“融合”一词本身也抱有怀疑，担心它暗示少数群体单方面适应多数社会。这种担忧在某些情况下有道理：移民没有义务放弃食物、语言、姓名、节日和私人信仰，主流社会也必须改变歧视性的制度。但一个政治共同体若连最低限度的规范同一性都不敢要求，就只剩共享税制与地理空间。接受同性恋者公开生活、承认女性拥有完整法律人格、允许个人退出宗教、服从民选立法机关与独立法院，这些内容不属于德国人的民族习俗，它们构成自由社会的入场规则。移民可以改变德国，德国也有权拒绝被改变成一个容许神权暴力的国家。

    真正值得保护的穆斯林，恰恰需要社会更坚定地反对作为一种意识形态的伊斯兰主义，尤其是在这种意识形态与保护他们的东道国的价值观并不相符的情况下。在保守家庭和宗教社群中生活的同性恋穆斯林、遭受强迫婚姻的女性、被威胁的前穆斯林、拒绝极端主义的普通信徒，承受的压力往往来自他们身边最具体的权力。进步主义把整个社群想象成一个受害整体时，这些人会再次被抹去。他们若公开批评内部压迫，可能被指责给种族主义者递刀；保持沉默，却等于把公共代表权留给压迫他们的人。所谓保护少数群体，最后保护了少数群体中的多数规范。

    这种逻辑在“酷儿支持某某宗教保守运动”的口号中达到喜剧般的高潮。进步主义者会说，政治团结无需对所有议题意见一致，这当然正确。工会成员也不必拥有相同宗教，反战者更不必共享一种性生活。然而，团结至少需要对彼此作为平等政治主体的存在作出承诺。如果一个运动把同性恋视为应当从公共空间清除的罪，把跨性别者视为西方腐化的象征，把叛教者视为背叛共同体的人，那么与它的合作就不能被美化成普通的议题联盟。那更接近一方利用另一方提供合法性，等共同敌人退场后再处理暂时的盟友。

    柏林的恐怖袭击因此具有一种残忍的寓言性质。同志运动中的一部分进步主义者多年努力证明，真正的危险总是来自欧洲本土的保守主义、基督教传统和极右翼；他们把伊斯兰主义置于“反种族主义”的保护罩下，或者只愿把它描述为西方外交政策的回声。恐怖分子却没有接受这套身份排序。在他眼中，游行者与共同反抗白人霸权的边缘群体毫无关系；那是一群公开庆祝其教义所憎恶生活方式的人。进步主义把两者安排在同一张联盟合影里，伊斯兰主义则用车辆和刀具撕掉了照片。

    右翼民粹主义经常把“伊斯兰主义”扩张成“伊斯兰”，再把“伊斯兰”扩张成每一张来自中东或北非的面孔。但这并不是进步主义的借口。一个成熟社会应当同时完成两件事：清楚区分穆斯林与伊斯兰主义，毫不含糊地打击伊斯兰主义。前者保护无辜者，后者保护所有人。只做前者，宽容会沦为纵容；只做后者，安全会沦为集体迫害。过去二十年欧洲政治的失败，就在于左右两翼不断逼迫公众二选一：要么否认伊斯兰主义问题，要么怀疑全部穆斯林。中间那条以个人权利、世俗法律和具体证据为基础的道路，反而被两边共同挤压。

    德国接下来当然会讨论加强大型活动安保、调整青年刑法、扩大对“危险人物”的限制措施和改善情报共享。这些技术改革都有意义，却无法代替思想层面的转向。再多路障也不可能保护每一场游行，再多摄像头也无法跟踪每一个在网络上被激进化的年轻人。国家必须重新获得表达价值判断的勇气：伊斯兰主义是一种反自由的政治意识形态；非暴力伊斯兰主义与圣战恐怖主义在手段上有重要差异，某些核心政治目标仍可能相通；宗教自由不包含建立平行强制秩序的权利；对教义的批评属于言论自由；当一个已经实施跨境参战准备并被定罪的人仍表现出高度危险时，保护社会应当获得更高权重。

    去激进化项目也需要摆脱温情主义。项目可以帮助真正动摇的人离开极端网络，心理治疗、家庭介入、就业支持和宗教反叙事都有现实价值。它们无法取代风险控制，更不能把自愿参加几次谈话当成安全证明。对明确赞同恐怖组织、曾经采取实际步骤加入武装活动的人，退出过程应当接受严格、长期和可验证的评估；拒绝配合、欺骗咨询人员或持续接触极端网络，需要产生清楚的法律后果。社会工作者可以帮助一个人改变，警察和法院仍有义务为他尚未改变的可能性负责。

    公共机构还应当停止把宗教团体默认成少数群体的天然代表。政府需要直接支持世俗穆斯林、自由派信徒、女性权利组织、前穆斯林和来自穆斯林家庭的性少数，让社群内部的思想竞争进入公共空间。学校讲授宗教多样性时，也应讲授批评宗教、转换宗教和不信教的权利。反歧视教育若只教学生尊重身份，却不教他们审查权威，最终会培养出一种对保守宗教格外顺从的多元文化主义。

    对进步主义者而言，最困难的任务是放弃受害者必然正确的神话。任何人都可能遭受歧视，任何人也都可能持有压迫他人的观念。道德判断必须回到具体行为和政治主张：一个穆斯林遭受就业歧视时应得到法律保护；同一个人若威胁同性恋者，也应承担法律责任。身份既不会洗清罪行，也不会预先证明罪行。只有坚持这条原则，自由社会才能在保护穆斯林的同时保护被伊斯兰主义威胁的人。

    “进步主义助长恐怖主义”因此不应被理解成某个同志活动家替袭击者踩下了油门，也不应成为侮辱死伤者的工具。它指向一套更深的政治机制：进步主义把反歧视扩大成反判断，把文化尊重扩大成价值退让，把个人权利改写成群体代表权，又把明确的意识形态冲突改写成社会创伤。在这套机制中，极端主义获得时间、空间和话语保护，承担风险的却是那些最依赖自由秩序才能公开生活的人。

    柏林CSD袭击不会自动终结这种思潮。进步主义拥有一套强大的自我保护语言，它可以把任何批评解释为极右翼对悲剧的利用，也可以把每次恐袭重新放回歧视、殖民与社会排斥的框架。真正的变化只能从一个简单承认开始：开放社会面对的敌人并不都来自多数群体，弱势身份也可能携带强势而残酷的政治计划。自由若想继续存在，就必须愿意判断谁在利用自由摧毁自由。

    当晚走在蒂尔加滕公园里的人，以为自己刚参加完一场庆祝可见性、尊严与选择的游行。袭击者却用最直接的方式告诉他们，在他的政治神学中，这些自由没有合法位置。进步主义曾经试图用“共同受压迫”的标签掩盖这场冲突，恐怖主义最终亲手揭开标签。它们之间所谓的“自相残杀”，说到底是一场从未真正成立的联盟开始清算自己的谎言。

如果欧洲仍然拒绝看清这一点，下一次悼念仪式上当然还会有鲜花、彩旗与关于团结的演说。政客会承诺不让仇恨分裂社会，活动组织者会宣布恐惧无法战胜爱，公共建筑会亮起彩虹色灯光。等灯光熄灭后，那个关于谁在仇恨、仇恨从何而来、国家为何早已知道却没有阻止的问题，仍会被小心地留在黑暗里。

On the evening of 25 July 2026, shortly after Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day had drawn to a close, a white van entered the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate and drove into a crowd gathered there. A Polish woman in her sixties was killed and twenty-nine people were injured. German police believe that the driver then attacked passers-by with a knife. After a manhunt lasting almost a day, officers found the twenty-one-year-old suspect, Abdul Ballout, in Spandau. He charged at a tactical police unit with a bladed weapon and was shot dead. Two days later, federal prosecutors discovered on his telephone a video in which, masked, he pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Investigators are still establishing every consideration behind his choice of time and place, but the German government has already classified the case as an Islamist terrorist attack. Its coincidence in both time and place with one of Europe’s largest Pride marches is also difficult to dismiss as accidental.

The cruelty of the attack lies in more than the casualty figures. Like a knife suddenly brought down, it cut through a political tableau that European progressivism has sustained for years. In that tableau, sexual minorities, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, non-white people and everyone classified as ‘marginalised’ naturally belong to a single coalition against oppression. Their histories differ, their faiths differ, and their understandings of freedom, family, sex and law may be diametrically opposed. Yet on the identity map drawn by progressivism, anyone facing the supposed forces of whiteness, patriarchy, capitalism and Western hegemony is expected to stand automatically on the same side. Now that a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State has driven a van into a Pride crowd, progressivism has been forced to see what it preferred to ignore: the two forces it placed in the same political camp never entered into a common covenant of values. One of them has denied the other’s right to exist from the outset.

Terrorists, of course, do not belong to the LGBT movement, and the victims on Berlin’s streets bear no responsibility for any political doctrine. Responsibility for driving into a crowd, attacking people with a knife and pledging allegiance to Islamic State rests entirely with the perpetrator. This essay asks about another kind of political responsibility. Why has an ideology that openly rejects secular law, equality between the sexes, the right to leave a religion and the right of homosexuals to exist long been protected within European progressive movements as part of an oppressed identity? Why must anyone who tries to distinguish Muslims from Islamism, immigrants’ rights from immigration policy, or religious liberty from religious politics first prove that he is free of racial prejudice? Why was a dangerous man, known to the security services for years, who had attempted to join a terrorist organisation and had already been convicted by a court, allowed yet another chance to prove himself in a free society — until he used other people’s lives to complete the proof?

Answering those questions requires a distinction between liberalism and progressivism. Liberalism treats the individual as the bearer of rights and demands equal protection under the law for homosexuals, Muslims, Christians, atheists, immigrants and citizens. It protects one person’s freedom to practise Islam and another’s freedom to criticise Islam, leave it or mock its doctrines. It permits a state to admit refugees while requiring those who enter its common political space to obey the same secular law. Liberalism rests on universal rules: whether an act violates someone’s rights depends on the act itself, without first asking which group the actor belongs to.

Progressivism has increasingly disassembled the individual into a collection of identities, then assigned moral standing according to each identity’s distance from Western structures of power. In its account, society is composed first of oppressors and oppressed; facts and norms are then arranged around those positions. The views of someone from a majority group are more readily interpreted as an exercise of power; those of someone from a minority as an expression of experience. Religion, in consequence, has been racialised. Islam is a religion that may be believed, interpreted, criticised or abandoned. In progressive language it has come to resemble an immutable skin colour. Criticism of Christian conservatism can be celebrated as resistance to authority, while criticism of Islamic conservatism is often suspected of attacking an ethnic minority.

That transformation has given Islamism its most valuable political shelter. Islamism is a modern political ideology that seeks to subordinate public life and political order to religious norms. Some of its currents expand their influence through parliaments, associations, schools and community organisations; others accept or directly practise violence. There is no natural equivalence between ordinary Muslims and Islamists, any more than there is between ordinary Germans and Nazis. Islamist organisations are nevertheless eager to erase the distinction. Once a society accepts that ‘criticism of Islamism equals hostility to Muslims’, scrutiny of a political ideology can be recast as persecution of a minority, while extremists gain access to public institutions as purported spokesmen for an entire faith.

Here European progressivism has performed an absurd act of self-disarmament. It claims to protect the most vulnerable people within minority groups, yet repeatedly hands the power to define those groups to their best-organised, loudest and most fluent exponents of the language of victimhood. A lesbian from a Muslim family, a former Muslim who has left the faith, a girl who refuses to wear the hijab, or a writer facing death threats for criticising religion may lack the resources of mosque associations, religious councils and identity-politics organisations. Their individual liberty is consequently easier to sacrifice, because their existence disrupts the convenient fiction that a minority possesses a single set of demands.

This also explains the seemingly improbable collaboration between the radical Left and Islamism. Their visions of sex, family, religion and private life are far apart, but their lists of enemies overlap: the West, America, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, the secular state and Israel, cast as the West’s proxy. In discussing a ‘cross-front’ between left-wing extremism and Islamism, Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation identified anti-imperialism and post-colonialism as the principal channels through which the two converge. A shared politics of negation temporarily conceals the clash between their ultimate aims. The radical Left believes that destroying the old order will produce a new world liberated from the constraints of sex, race and class. Islamists may look instead towards a religious community governed by divine law, punishing apostasy and suppressing same-sex relations. Both sides can pull down a wall together; they disagree profoundly about who should rule once it has fallen.

This alliance has never rested on genuine theoretical agreement. It depends upon a progressive fantasy: anyone excluded by the West will naturally embrace progressive values. Victimhood in colonial history supposedly generates equality between the sexes; immigrant status somehow instils loyalty to multiculturalism; experience of racial discrimination is expected to produce an instinctive respect for homosexuals. No such moral alchemy exists. Suffering may cultivate sympathy, and it may also generate new hatreds. A person who is vulnerable in one relation of power can readily become an oppressor in another. Once this is denied, ‘intersectionality’ degenerates from a tool for analysing overlapping structures of power into a seating plan that ranks competing identities of victimhood.

The Berlin attack compressed that fantasy into a single individual. Ballout was born in Berlin, held German citizenship and came from a Lebanese family background. Security authorities had reportedly been aware of his activities in Islamist circles since he was sixteen. In 2025 he made repeated attempts to travel abroad and join Islamic State’s armed operations. He was arrested and convicted in Lebanon in July, then arrested again after returning to Germany in November. On 12 May 2026, a Berlin youth court sentenced him to one year and ten months’ youth custody for preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state. Because the court had deferred its decision on whether to suspend the sentence — a German procedure known as Vorbewährung, or provisional probation — he was released from custody on the condition, among others, that he attend a deradicalisation programme run by a civil-society organisation. According to an investigation by Germany’s public broadcaster, the programme was still assessing whether to admit him formally. He attended only two voluntary interviews, with a third scheduled for the week after the attack. Counsellors had already begun to doubt his sincerity. He had meanwhile been placed under partial surveillance, his telephone had been tapped, and his case had been discussed repeatedly at Germany’s Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre. In other words, almost nothing about this case was unforeseeable. The state knew who he was, what he believed, where he had been and whom he had tried to join. It possessed an abundance of information. What it lacked was the capacity to make a judgement when risk collided with tolerance.

Reducing all this to the claim that ‘immigration causes terrorism’ plainly does not fit the facts. Ballout had not just crossed the border. He was born and brought up in Germany, carried a German passport, received a German education and passed through Germany’s youth-justice and social-support systems. He was a German citizen in the fullest sense. The real question is whether a state can understand citizenship as a set of shared political obligations, and whether it can tell second- and third-generation immigrants plainly: you may have any ancestry, religion and private culture, but you have no right to use a theological command to extinguish someone else’s liberty; once you prepare to join an organisation that uses the slaughter of civilians as a method, the state will place the protection of potential victims above another period of observation to see whether you might change.

There is a specific legal background to Germany’s use of youth sentencing for a dangerous twenty-one-year-old. German law permits youth law to be applied, under certain conditions, to ‘young adults’ aged eighteen to twenty, and allows a court to defer the decision on whether a youth sentence should be suspended. The system grew from a reasonable belief: a young person’s character is still developing, and punishment should leave room for rehabilitation. Difficulty arises when an assumption about the malleability of ordinary offenders is applied mechanically to someone with a settled political creed, an intention to join armed activity abroad and an identification with a terrorist organisation. Theft, a street fight and an attempt to join Islamic State differ in important ways. The first two may arise from impulse, poverty or peer pressure. The last places violence inside a complete moral system for interpreting the world. If the state treats only a person’s emotions and social circumstances, while neglecting the ideology that confers righteousness upon killing, deradicalisation can readily become a bureaucratic ritual of completed forms.

None of this means that every extremist utterance should lead to detention, or that security services should be able to imprison people indefinitely on the basis of their religious identity. A free society is worth defending precisely because government remains constrained by evidence, due process and judicial review. One of terrorism’s desired outcomes is a state frightened into abolishing its own liberal principles. Yet in Ballout’s case the state had moved far beyond mere suspicion about his ideas. Repeated attempts to join Islamic State abroad, a foreign conviction, arrest upon his return, a sentence from a German court, long-standing attention from the intelligence services and formal risk assessments formed an exceptionally clear chain of danger. Scrupulous protection of rights and a refusal to exercise judgement are two different things. Germany preserved his second chance; it could not preserve a second life for the people in the park.

Progressivism’s influence on criminal justice often appears through this same refusal to judge. It habitually reduces violence to structural causes: poverty, segregation, trauma, discrimination, lack of belonging and mental illness. Those factors can indeed make a person more susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups, and European penal policy has good reason to value rehabilitation. Yet explaining how someone travelled towards violence cannot erase the ideological content of why he chose violence. A 2025 study on terrorist ideology published by Britain’s Commission for Countering Extremism noted continuing academic dispute over how ideology motivates individuals, while also confirming that ideology is widely regarded as central to extremist movements and organisations. Social factors explain susceptibility. Ideology tells the susceptible whom to hate, whom to kill and why killing may be treated as virtue.

Progressivism’s characteristic error is to treat the terrorist as a social-work case. Once an experience of discrimination, a family problem or an identity crisis has been found, violence appears to acquire an explanation more ‘scientific’ than religious politics. The language of such research looks neutral. Its practical effect is to remove ideological agency from the perpetrator: he ceases to be someone who believes in a political goal and acts upon it, and becomes the product of a social structure. Western society then assumes almost the entire burden of causation, while extremist doctrine is reduced to an interchangeable shell. Terrorist organisations naturally welcome this explanation, because it allows every attack to serve as fresh proof of Western guilt.

Distortion in the production of knowledge reinforces the problem. Research commissioned by Britain’s Commission for Countering Extremism reported in 2023 that major gaps existed existed in the contemporary study of Islamist extremism, that the field was highly politicised, and that publicly funded projects concentrated more heavily on generic ‘extremism’ and the far Right. Some researchers feared that studying Islamism could invite accusations of racism, while criticism of progressive causes might carry professional consequences. Britain’s academic environment cannot stand as a direct proxy for Germany’s, but it reveals a familiar incentive structure in public debate across Europe and America: researching the far Right usually offers moral safety; researching Islamism first requires the researcher to answer suspicions about his own politics — much as Westerners are apparently permitted to go no further than anti-communism, while the privilege of being ‘anti-China’ is reserved for dissidents from China.

This distortion does not directly manufacture a terrorist. It changes a society’s capacity to discover danger, describe it and allocate resources against it. When research institutions lack sustained study of particular Islamist organisations, recruitment networks and channels of doctrinal transmission, governments fall back on abstract ‘radicalisation models’. When the media translate an explicit religious-political motive into loneliness, poor mental health and failed integration, the public struggles to understand why attackers with different personal traumas repeatedly arrive at the same targets. When teachers, social workers and local officials fear that one mistaken judgement could destroy their careers, they recast signs that should be reported as adolescent expression or religious exploration. An ideological taboo becomes an institutional blind spot.

Britain’s 2016 Casey Review described the mechanism in these terms: some public bodies, fearful of being labelled racist or Islamophobic, ignored or even condoned regressive, divisive and harmful cultural or religious practices; that retreat failed to protect the communities concerned and instead opened space for extremists. A decade later, the finding remains unsettling because it reaches beyond the failure of any isolated policy and exposes the risk calculations of bureaucratic institutions. Tolerating extremism may produce uncertain harm in the future. Offending an identity organisation may bring an immediate complaint, a press controversy and political accountability. Silence is often the safer choice for an individual official; across a society, countless safe silences can accumulate into a fatal accident.

The public reaction to the Berlin attack also revealed this hierarchy of language. The official statement from Berlin CSD drew the necessary distinction: it demanded that Islamist terrorism be named without euphemism, while opposing any attempt to use the case to incite hatred against Muslims or particular ethnic groups. That is the proper position for a free society. Ordinary Muslims bear no collective responsibility for terrorists, and retaliation against Muslims would merely create new victims while helping extremists proclaim that ‘the West will always hate Islam’. Yet when the Berlin Senate official responsible for queer affairs discussed the attack, he soon turned to voices within democratic parties that failed to support the queer community, and criticised Chancellor Merz for doing too little to advance legal equality. Those questions may be discussed. Their juxtaposition at this moment exposed an almost reflexive urge to counterbalance: whenever Islamist violence enters view, the far Right, conservatives or social discrimination must be summoned at once to dilute its specificity, as though a statement of fact might otherwise breach the rules of political correctness.

Opposing collective blame requires the ideology behind an attack to be named clearly, because ambiguity is fertile soil for collective suspicion. If governments and media speak only of a ‘hate attack’, ‘violence against a diverse society’ or an ‘extremist incident’, a gap opens between what the public sees and what official language permits itself to say. The far Right excels at occupying that gap. It claims that the establishment is hiding the truth, then extends one Islamist’s crime to every Muslim. Progressives fear that clear naming will assist the far Right; the result is often the reverse. The greater the reluctance to name, the easier it becomes for the far Right to monopolise the power of naming. An honest recognition of the Islamist threat, combined with an unwavering defence of Muslim citizens’ equal rights, offers the only prospect of severing both extremist propaganda chains at once.

European data no longer permit Islamist terrorism to be dismissed as a marginal phenomenon inflated by the Right. Europol’s 2026 report recorded forty-five completed, failed or foiled terrorist attacks in EU member states during 2025, twenty-four of them classified as jihadist. Of 486 terrorism-related arrests that year, 347 were connected with jihadism. Five attacks were classified as right-wing terrorism, with forty-three related arrests. Far-right violence, anti-Muslim hatred and neo-Nazi organisations are genuine threats, and Germany has less right than any country to forget them. Recognising two dangers at the same time does not make their proportions disappear. Europol expects jihadism to continue accounting for the majority of terrorist attacks and terrorism-related arrests in the near future. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated in its 2025 report that the country contained some 28,645 people associated with Islamist extremism, of whom around 9,110 were considered violence-oriented. That category is far larger than the number of people who will ever carry out an attack, and it cannot justify suspicion towards every conservative Muslim. It shows that Islamism has become an enduring social and security problem that can no longer be summarised as a few marginalised young men losing their way. Europol also observes that recent attacks and plots have often been carried out by lone actors or small, self-organised groups, while simple methods involving vehicles and knives have lowered the threshold for action. A terrorist organisation need not command a clandestine army. It needs only to persuade enough people that killing ‘infidels’, Jews, police officers or homosexuals in ordinary urban spaces can give their lives meaning.

How, then, does progressivism foster this danger? It does not usually supply weapons or directly teach methods of attack. It provides a permissive political ecology. Conceptual criticism of Islamism is converted into an identity risk, causing journalists, teachers, researchers and officials to worry about the camp into which they will be placed before they speak. Integration is reduced to the provision of socio-economic services, as though improvements in housing, education, employment and representation would make conflicts of value disappear by themselves. Governments habitually conduct their dialogue with ‘communities’ through religious or ethnic organisations, objectively increasing the representative power of conservative religious intermediaries while weakening secularists, women, homosexuals and apostates within those same communities. By the time common rules need to be enforced, the state has grown accustomed to treating the assertion of limits as an exercise of majority power over a minority culture. Negotiation, counselling and symbolic solidarity are all that remain.

No single statistical regression can prove these mechanisms, and one attack in Berlin cannot establish a simple chain of causation. Political ideas rarely enter an individual like a virus and produce violence on a fixed timetable. They work through institutional incentives, linguistic taboos, legal choices and social prestige: which questions deserve research, which risks may be described publicly, who is entitled to represent a group, when coercive intervention becomes justified, and whether failure prompts concern first for the victims or for the expected political backlash. Progressivism’s assistance to terrorism lies in the sum of these small decisions. It did not create the doctrines of Islamic State. It has repeatedly weakened a free society’s confidence in identifying and resisting them.

Immigration policy has an important place in this argument and must also be released from slogans. Large-scale immigration increases pressure on systems of integration, policing, intelligence, housing and education. Where source and receiving societies differ substantially in their ideas about religion, sex and law, numbers and speed plainly affect the outcome of integration. Pretending that population scale bears no relation to institutional capacity is an expensive piece of moral theatre. Equally, attempts to bind terrorism to all refugees do not survive contact with the facts. Many European attackers were born, raised or long resident in the countries they struck; legal status and linguistic competence did not prevent their radicalisation. A workable policy must control numbers, conduct individual security assessments and improve the effective refusal and removal of dangerous foreign nationals. It must also use criminal justice, intelligence surveillance and explicit civic education against extremists who are citizens. The border cannot be treated as though it did not exist; nor can it be imagined capable of stopping an ideology already growing inside it.

Progressivism also distrusts the word ‘integration’, fearing that it implies a one-sided duty for minorities to adapt to a majority society. In some circumstances, the concern is justified. Immigrants have no obligation to abandon their food, language, names, festivals or private faith, and mainstream society must reform discriminatory institutions. Yet a political community unwilling to demand even a minimum normative unity is left with little beyond a shared tax system and geographical space. Acceptance of homosexuals living openly, recognition of women as full legal persons, the freedom to leave a religion, and obedience to elected legislatures and independent courts are not ethnic customs peculiar to Germans. They are the terms of entry into a free society. Immigrants may change Germany. Germany is equally entitled to refuse transformation into a country that tolerates theocratic violence.

The Muslims who genuinely need protection need society to oppose Islamism more firmly as an ideology, especially where that ideology conflicts with the values of the host country that protects them. Gay Muslims living in conservative families and religious communities, women facing forced marriage, former Muslims under threat and ordinary believers who reject extremism often experience pressure from the most immediate forms of power around them. When progressivism imagines the entire community as a single victim, these people disappear once again. If they criticise internal oppression openly, they may be accused of handing racists a weapon. If they remain silent, public representation is left to the people who oppress them. The supposed protection of a minority ultimately protects the majority norm within that minority.

This logic reaches comic culmination in slogans proclaiming ‘queers for’ one religiously conservative movement or another. Progressives reply that political solidarity does not require agreement on every question, which is plainly true. Trade unionists need not share a religion; opponents of war need not share a sexual life. Solidarity does, however, require a commitment to one another’s existence as equal political subjects. If a movement regards homosexuality as a sin to be cleared from public space, transgender people as emblems of Western corruption, and apostates as traitors to the community, cooperation with it cannot be romanticised as an ordinary single-issue alliance. It more closely resembles one party using the other to confer legitimacy, with the temporary ally to be dealt with once the common enemy has left the scene.

The Berlin terrorist attack therefore has the quality of a cruel parable. For years, some progressives in the LGBT movement have tried to prove that the real danger always comes from Europe’s indigenous conservatism, its Christian inheritance and the far Right. They have placed Islamism beneath an ‘anti-racist’ shield, or agreed to describe it only as an echo of Western foreign policy. The terrorist did not accept their hierarchy of identities. In his eyes, the marchers had nothing in common with a marginalised group resisting white supremacy. They were people openly celebrating a way of life his doctrine despised. Progressivism arranged both sides in the same coalition photograph; Islamism tore up the photograph with a van and a knife.

Right-wing populism regularly expands ‘Islamism’ into ‘Islam’, then expands ‘Islam’ into every face from the Middle East or North Africa. That is no excuse for progressivism. A mature society must accomplish two things at once: distinguish Muslims clearly from Islamism, and fight Islamism without equivocation. The first protects the innocent; the second protects everyone. Do only the first and tolerance decays into indulgence. Do only the second and security decays into collective persecution. The failure of European politics over the past two decades lies in the false choice that Left and Right have repeatedly imposed on the public: deny the Islamist problem or suspect every Muslim. Between them, they have squeezed the middle path grounded in individual rights, secular law and specific evidence.

Germany will now, of course, debate stronger security for major public events, changes to youth criminal law, wider restrictions on individuals classified as dangerous, and better intelligence-sharing. Such technical reforms matter, but they cannot substitute for an intellectual turn. No number of barriers can protect every march; no number of cameras can track every young person radicalised online. The state must recover the courage to make value judgements: Islamism is an anti-liberal political ideology; non-violent Islamism and jihadist terrorism differ importantly in their methods, while some of their central political aims may still overlap; religious liberty does not include the right to establish a parallel coercive order; criticism of doctrine belongs to freedom of speech; and when someone convicted after taking practical steps to join armed activity abroad continues to present a grave danger, protection of society should carry greater weight.

Deradicalisation programmes must also free themselves from sentimentalism. They can help people whose convictions have genuinely begun to falter leave extremist networks; psychotherapy, family intervention, employment support and religious counter-narratives all have practical value. These programmes cannot replace risk control, and a few voluntarily attended conversations cannot serve as proof of safety. When a person has openly endorsed a terrorist organisation and taken concrete steps to join armed activity, his disengagement should be subjected to rigorous, sustained and verifiable assessment. Refusal to co-operate, deception of counsellors or continuing contact with extremist networks must have clear legal consequences. Social workers can help a person change. The police and courts remain responsible for the possibility that he has not.

Public institutions should also cease treating religious organisations as the natural representatives of minority groups. Governments need to support secular Muslims, liberal believers, women’s-rights organisations, former Muslims and sexual minorities from Muslim families directly, allowing intellectual competition within communities to enter public life. When schools teach religious diversity, they should also teach the right to criticise religion, change religion and have none. Anti-discrimination education that teaches respect for identity without teaching scrutiny of authority will ultimately produce a multiculturalism peculiarly submissive towards conservative religion.

For progressives, the hardest task is to abandon the myth that victimhood confers moral correctness. Anyone may suffer discrimination; anyone may also hold ideas that oppress others. Moral judgement must return to particular acts and political claims. A Muslim who faces discrimination in employment deserves legal protection. The same person, if he threatens homosexuals, should bear legal responsibility. Identity neither absolves an offence nor proves one in advance. Only this principle enables a free society to protect Muslims while also protecting those threatened by Islamism.

The claim that ‘progressivism fosters terrorism’ should therefore never be understood to mean that an LGBT activist pressed the accelerator for the attacker, or be used as a weapon against the dead and injured. It identifies a deeper political mechanism. Progressivism has expanded opposition to discrimination into opposition to judgement; respect for culture into a surrender of values; individual rights into group representation; and a clear ideological conflict into a story of social trauma. In that arrangement, extremism receives time, space and rhetorical protection, while the risk is borne by those who rely most heavily on the liberal order in order to live openly.

The Berlin CSD attack will not automatically end this doctrine. Progressivism possesses a powerful language of self-protection. It can interpret every criticism as a far-right exploitation of tragedy and return every terrorist attack to the framework of discrimination, colonialism and social exclusion. Change can begin only with a simple admission: the enemies of an open society do not all come from majority groups, and a disadvantaged identity may carry a powerful and brutal political programme. If freedom is to survive, it must be willing to judge who is using freedom to destroy it.

Those walking through the Tiergarten that evening believed they had just attended a march celebrating visibility, dignity and choice. The attacker told them in the most direct way possible that, in his political theology, those freedoms had no legitimate place. Progressivism had tried to cover the conflict with the label of ‘shared oppression’. Terrorism finally tore the label away. Their supposed ‘fratricidal conflict’ is, in the end, the reckoning of an alliance that never truly existed with the lies on which it was built.

If Europe still refuses to see this, the next memorial will naturally bring more flowers, rainbow flags and speeches about solidarity. Politicians will promise that hatred must not divide society; organisers will declare that fear cannot conquer love; public buildings will glow in rainbow colours. Once the lights have gone out, the questions of who is doing the hating, where that hatred came from, and why the state knew so much yet failed to stop it will once again be left, very carefully, in the dark.