Enlarge image
Participants in a demonstration by right-wing extremists and Reich citizens in Berlin (photo from March)
Photo: Jean MW / Future Image / imago images
The number of people with right-wing extremist attitudes rose again in Germany last year.
This emerges from the report for the protection of the Constitution for 2020, which Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, have now presented.
Accordingly, the number of people in the right-wing extremist spectrum grew by 3.8 percent to 33,300 people.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution assesses almost 40 percent of them as "violent, willing to use violence, supportive of violence, or supportive of violence".
There is a "special security situation that is a big problem," said Seehofer.
The corona pandemic contributed to strengthening the right-wing scene.
Haldenwang recently described right-wing extremism as the "greatest threat to our security and our democracy."
Seehofer said that numerous right-wing extremist major events were canceled last year.
Right-wing extremists have tried, however, to catch up with the bourgeois spectrum through the protests against state corona measures.
"We must be particularly concerned that the bourgeois demonstrators have not clearly distinguished themselves from the right-wing extremists."
According to security sources, right-wing extremists and right-wing meeting places have also been the target of attacks several times in the past few months.
In Erfurt, a suspected member of the violent right-wing extremist hooligan scene and his pregnant girlfriend were attacked at night in their apartment in May and mistreated by intruders disguised as police officers.
The right-wing extremists in the focus of the protection of the constitution also include around a thousand so-called Reich citizens.
These are people who do not recognize the Federal Republic and its democratic structures.
That is why they are often in conflict with the authorities.
Not all people who are counted as "Reich citizens and self-administrators" by the security authorities are, however, assigned to right-wing extremism by the protection of the constitution.
as / dpa / AFP