I LOOK with shock and sadness at the pictures of far-right hooligans rioting under the huge bust of Karl Marx in the German city of Chemnitz, having charged through the streets shouting fascist slogans and hunting down people who look foreign in a ghastly echo from history.

All this in response to the stabbing of a Cuban-German – who apparently loathed fascists – by a refugee from Iraq.

It was a squabble between people of various nationalities, weaponised by the far right as they play on the sense of alienation, impoverishment and hopelessness felt not just in Chemnitz but many cities and towns in the former GDR. And all this nearly 30 years after they were — to paraphrase all the cliches of our age — liberated from a brutal and oppressive Stasi regime and joined with their brothers and sisters in a free, united Germany.