Friday

29th Mar 2024

Insight

How big is Germany's far-right problem?

  • Berlin: Tens of thousand of Germans held vigils in support of victims on Thursday (Photo: Sascha Kohlmann)

The Hanau shooting showed that "the threat posed by right-wing extremism, antisemitism, and racism in Germany is very high," German interior minister Horst Seehofer said on Friday (21 February).

He called it "a clearly racially-motivated terror attack" that left "a trail of blood ... in our country".

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

It was the third far-right killing in Germany since last June, he noted.

And the threats kept multiplying, he said.

"Just last week, we arrested 12 suspected right-wing terrorists who had made concrete plans for attacks. During the past few days, we've investigated suspected right-wing extremists in several locations throughout Germany. We seized large quantities of explosives as well as hand grenades and automatic weapons," Seehofer said.

The Hanau shooting, which targeted Kurds, saw Germany step up security at mosques and transport hubs amid concern on copycat attacks.

It saw tens of thousands of Germans hold vigils in protest.

It prompted vice-chancellor Olaf Scholz to voice historical guilt.

"Our political debates cannot duck the fact that 75 years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, right-wing terror exists in Germany again," he said.

And it acted as a national wake-up call to the size of Germany's far-right problem for Volker Bouffier, the regional premier in Hanau.

"This changes everything. Not only for this city, but for our country," Bouffier said of the attack.

German security services have tried to put numbers on it.

There were 24,100 right-wing extremists in Germany, 12,700 of whom were "violence-oriented", Germany's homeland intelligence agency, the BfV, said in its 2019 report.

Far-right attacks against migrants and refugee centres soared after 2015, when almost 1m people sought asylum in Germany, with 995 such attacks in 2016 alone.

And in other figures, the Hanau incident came in times when the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was the third-largest in the German parliament.

But in the end, Germany's far-right problem might be more complex than numbers can say.

Germany's extreme-right was known for "persistently high levels of verbal aggression", the BfV report noted, in a sign of how its ideology had spread.

"Issues related to immigration policies and offences allegedly committed by migrants repeatedly mobilised significant numbers of people from the right-wing spectrum," Europol, the EU's joint police agency in The Hague, also said of Germany in its 2019 report.

The AfD party, like the extreme-right, has demonised migrants and other minorities in its rise in popularity.

And even the mainstream CDU and CSU parties of Scholz and Seehofer have espoused a harder line on migrants in recent times.

Fingers pointed at AfD

For Lars Klingbeil, the secretary-general of the left-wing Social Democrats party, AfD hate speech had directly contributed to a "poisoning of [German] society".

"One person carried out the shooting in Hanau, that's what it looks like, but there were many who provided him with the ammunition, and the AfD is definitely among them," Klingbeil told German broadcaster ARD.

The AfD was "the political arm of hate", Cem Özdemir, a German Green MP of Turkish origin, also said.

The Hanau killings prompted one AfD politician, Robert Lambrou, to exclaim that he was in a "state of shock" at the "horrific murders", in what sounded like a mea culpa.

But the AfD party as a whole showed little remorse, while targeting the Hanau attacker's mental health problems in its defence.

"The 'manifesto' of the crazy man of Hanau is now known. The remote diagnosis of a psychiatrist is that he was suffering from paranoid hallucinatory schizophrenia. In other words, he belonged in a psychiatric ward! But rather than suggesting that, attempts are being made to put the blame on us for his act of madness," an AfD statement said.

Internal EU report: Far-right terrorist attacks rise

An internal document drafted from the EU presidency highlights a rise in attacks by right-wing terrorists. The paper says the algorithms behind social media giants not only fuels violent radicalisation but also spreads right-wing violent extremist ideology.

Column

George Floyd: What US polarisation means for Europe

Practically nobody in Germany knows of Mercedes Kierpacz. The 35-year old mother of two was working in a kiosk in the German city of Hanau on the evening of 19 February when a man shot her dead.

Opinion

Threat to EU on Greece-Turkey border is EU-made

Despite the escalating bloodshed in Idlib, the EU had made no evident plans to continue funding Syrian refugees in Turkey with the impending expiration of the so-called EU-Turkey statement.

EU Parliament set to sue EU Commission over Hungary funds

The European Parliament will likely take the European Commission to court for unblocking more than €10bn in funds for Hungary last December. A final nod of approval is still needed by European Parliament president, Roberta Metsola.

EU Commission clears Poland's access to up to €137bn EU funds

The European Commission has legally paved the way for Poland to access up to €137bn EU funds, following Donald Tusk's government's efforts to strengthen the independence of their judiciary and restore the rule of law in the country.

Opinion

Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers

The UN could launch an independent international investigation into Navalny's killing, akin to investigation I conducted on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination, or on Navalny's Novichok poisoning, in my role as special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, writes the secretary-general of Amnesty International.

Opinion

I'll be honest — Moldova's judicial system isn't fit for EU

To state a plain truth: at present, Moldova does not have a justice system worthy of a EU member state; it is riven with corruption and lax and inconsistent standards, despite previous attempts at reform, writes Moldova's former justice minister.

Latest News

  1. Kenyan traders react angrily to proposed EU clothes ban
  2. Lawyer suing Frontex takes aim at 'antagonistic' judges
  3. Orban's Fidesz faces low-polling jitters ahead of EU election
  4. German bank freezes account of Jewish peace group
  5. EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania
  6. 'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told
  7. Moscow's terror attack, security and Gaza
  8. Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us