The political consequences of the Hanau ultra-right killing have not been long in coming. All eyes are on Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that the rest of the German political class accuses of inciting hatred and legitimizing xenophobia from Parliament with its anti-immigration speech. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has asked the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the internal secret services, to put AfD under surveillance.
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The political function of hate
The ghost of history and the radical drift of AfD cement the dike against the German ultras
"In Hanau there was a shooting, but it seems that there were many who provided him with ammunition and AfD is certainly one of them," said SPD Secretary General Lars Klingbeil. The manifesto written by Tobias R., the man who allegedly murdered nine people, mostly of foreign origin in Hanau, was plagued by xenophobic ideas and called to "annihilate" entire communities. “The party has poisoned the social climate in recent months. It is quite clear that AfD is a party that needs to be monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), ”Klingbeil asked.
Klingbeil was not the only one to link the attack to the ideology and the rhetoric of AfD. Cem Ozdemir, a prominent politician from Los Verdes, considered AfD "the political arm of hate", which aims to destabilize the system. Norbert Röttgen, one of the candidates for the succession of Angela Merkel in the conservative CDU party considered that “we should not see crime in isolation. We must fight against the poison that AfD and others bring to our society, ”he told the German press.
Meanwhile, from AfD they tried to reduce the attack on a crime committed by a mentally ill person, regardless of ideological motivations. “This is not terrorism neither of rights nor of lefts, this is a paranoid act of a crazy man. Any kind of political instrumentalization of this terrible act is a cynical mistake, ”tweeted Jörg Meuthen, co-leader of AfD. Something similar said another of its leaders, Alexander Gauland, who said he does not believe that "no debate in the Bundestag has anything to do with being totally mentally disturbed." AfD first entered the Bundestag in September 2017, after obtaining 12.6% of the votes, contributing to twitch the parliamentary debate.
The youth wing of the party, as well as Der Flügel, the most radical wing of the organization are considered suspicious by the Office of Protection of the Constitution. The BfV found in the youth organization "clear indications of anti-immigration and anti-Islam attitudes", emphasized with aggressive rhetoric ", which in its opinion is an attack on the constitutional order and basic democratic freedoms.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution indicates that there are 24,100 extreme right-wing extremists in Germany and of these, 12,700 could commit violent acts. The German internal secret services have been at the center of the controversy in the last year, after their former director, Hans-Georg Maassen, was dismissed for his alleged complicity with ultra-rightist theses. Holger Münch, head of the criminal police, told the press in Berlin that one of the problems they face is that about half of the ultra-right attackers were not known to the police, which is a challenge.
Meanwhile, the German Government, which has just approved a plan to combat right-wing extremism, has considered this Friday that "right-wing extremism is the biggest threat to security in Germany." Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has also warned at a press conference that the threat related to crimes “linked to the extreme right, anti-Semitism and racism is very high” and has announced the reinforcement of security in possible targets such as mosques , airports or transport stations. Seehofer described what happened in Hanau as "a terrorist attack with racist motivations."