Protest against coronavirus pandemic restrictions in Berlin, January 2022.Michael Sohn (AP)
Students painting swastikas on desks and giving the Hitler salute in the school hallways; racist insults to children of Turkish origin in a camp in Brandenburg; far-right attacks on LGBTI students at the University of Potsdam... In recent weeks the German press has reported several incidents related to the extreme right in eastern Länder. Isolated cases, but which are increasing and increasingly worrying the security forces. Germany recorded a record number of politically motivated crimes in 2022, according to data presented Tuesday by the Interior Ministry.
Never since this statistic began to be compiled in 2001 had so many crimes of this type been recorded: almost 59,000, 7% more than the previous year. For some years now, Germany has considered the far right the main threat to the country's security, ahead of Islamist terrorism. Almost 23,500 of these crimes of a political or ideological nature are linked to right-wing ideologies, an increase of 7% compared to 2021, according to the annual report. The security forces are detecting a "greater tendency to radicalization in parts of the population," the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, warned on Tuesday.
The police and intelligence services closely monitor the activity of the Reichsbürger (citizens of the Empire), a right-wing extremist group that does not recognize the legitimacy of the Federal Republic that emerged from World War II. Especially since the end of last year in one of the largest anti-terrorist raids in recent years arrested 25 people who planned the forcible takeover of Parliament. The conspirators had weapons and ammunition and counted among their ranks former soldiers. The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, has specifically referred to the "irrationality and dangerousness" of these groups, whose activity has skyrocketed judging by the crimes attributed to them: 1,860 cases, 40% more than the previous year.
However, the crimes that have increased the most according to the BKA's annual report are neither those of the extreme right nor the extreme left – the latter fell by 31% to around 7,000 – but cases that cannot be clearly assigned due to their "diffuse ideological motivation". This category includes, for example, those related to protests against restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's internal secret services, decided in 2021 to subject to surveillance the movement known as Querdenker (lateral or alternative thinkers) that led the demonstrations against the government's measures. Some gathered several tens of thousands of people, mostly in Berlin. Among the participants in these protests were covid-19 deniers, anti-vaxxers, believers in conspiracy theories, esoterics but also many supporters of the far right. According to a report by the BfV, the extreme right took advantage of the discomfort of a part of the citizenry over the restrictions on individual freedoms to launch its slogans and try to capitalize on the protest.
"Right-wing extremism remains the biggest threat," Münch said at a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday. Faeser, for his part, pointed out that the data reflect the changes and uncertainty experienced by citizens due to conflicts that have arisen in recent years, such as the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The BKA has recorded an increase (9 per cent) in crimes against refugees. There have also been more cases that are classified as "foreign ideology", related both to the war in Ukraine – mainly insults or threats in demonstrations of an anti-Russian or anti-Ukrainian nature – and to the conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or the situation in Iran.
The German secret services classified a few days ago the youth of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist group that threatens democracy. "There is no longer any doubt that they are pursuing anti-constitutional aspirations," said Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), who accused the Young Alternative for Germany (JA) of "agitation" against refugees and migrants. The AfD party is considered suspected of extremism, a step down the rankings.
Counselling centres for victims of far-right, racist and anti-Semitic violence also presented their own statistics on Tuesday, which confirm that far-right attacks "are on the rise", said Robert Kusche, director of the Regional Offices for Education, Integration and Democracy in Saxony. The report points to a particularly alarming fact: that the number of child victims has doubled in one year, from 288 in 2021 to 520 in 2022.
The protests that have to do with the climate emergency also left more crimes in the police statistics, 1,600 last year. The minister has assured "not understanding" actions such as those carried out by the environmental group Letzte Generation (last generation), which periodically organizes road blocks in which activists stick to the asphalt or cars. "The climate crisis is fought from democracy," he said. "Legitimate protest," he added, "ends where crime begins."
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