After the murder of the Kasseler CDU politician Walter Lübcke the protection of the constitution to combat right-wing extremism should be massively upgraded. A corresponding concept presented by Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) and President of the Constitution Protection Commission Thomas Haldenwang on Tuesday in small group in Berlin.
Accordingly, the protection of the Constitution should receive 300 additional posts in order to better monitor the right-wing extremist scene. The goal should above all be to recognize terrorist cells and individual offenders at an early stage. In order to get an indication of possible violent extremists who are radicalizing themselves or networking with others, social networks and the internet should also be monitored more closely.
Noteworthy is a planned "central office for the clarification of right-wing extremist activities in the public service", which is to be furnished after SPIEGEL information with the protection of the constitution.
The Federal Government is responding to the accumulation of such incidents among police and soldiers. At the same time, cooperation with other authorities in dealing with these suspected cases is to be improved, above all the Bundeswehr intelligence service MAD. The former anti-espionage chief of the constitutional protection is to lead there its own new department for extremism defense.
In addition, the protection of the constitution should communicate more intensively with foreign partner services on the danger of extreme right-wing terrorism in the future. The background is the attacks in New Zealand and the US, where assassins attacked mosques, synagogues and migrants and killed countless people. The mosque aggressor in Christchurch, New Zealand, had contacts with the "Identitarian Movement" in Europe, in a manifesto published on the Internet shortly before the act, referring to their conspiracy theory of "Great Exchange."
In its latest annual report, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution counts 24,100 right-wing extremists in Germany, more than half of whom are considered by the authorities to be "violence-oriented". Federal Interior Minister Seehofer had described right-wing extremism two weeks ago at the autumn reception of the security authorities as a major threat as Islamism and announced additional jobs and restructurings.
