In May 2025, Germany’s interior minister ordered tighter border controls on migrants and told authorities to deny asylum requests. As a result, more than 12,000 attempts at illegal border crossings were stopped in three months, and nearly 80% of migrants detained at the border were deported. These measures are part of the policy of new Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who supports tougher migration rules in the European Union.
On Aug. 4, 2025, the Telegram channel ZhS Premium posted a claim that German police are powerless against migrants who break the law. To back it up, the authors shared a video showing a Black man hitting a police car with a stick and then trying to run from officers.
“Nothing unusual, just a migrant in shorts whacking a police car with a stick while the officers... shoo away stunned Germans watching the scene. They’re used to the idea that stunts like this usually earn you a baton to the head or a rubber bullet. But here the migrant was simply allowed to walk off into the sunset.
Makes you wonder how soon Germany will finally blow a gasket from this so-called ‘democracy,’ where the law works differently for different people,” read the caption to the video.
The video had already appeared on Aug. 3 on the X account of the English-language site Remix News. The outlet presents itself as an international news media. But journalists from the independent Hungarian publication Átlátszó found that the project is run by a media network tied to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and funded from the state budget through affiliated organizations.
The video was first published by the German newspaper Bild in April 2023. It reported on an incident in the German town of Viernheim, where a young man of Somali origin behaved aggressively and tried to smash a police car. He was in a mentally unstable state and likely under the influence of drugs. When officers tried to detain him, he resisted, and police called for backup. The man was soon taken into custody and sent to a psychiatric clinic.
