German Far-Right Crime Rises; Police Arrest Alleged Neo-Nazi

Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old German man on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists that were signed with the acronym of a neo-Nazi group, as officials warned Tuesday that statistics show a disturbing rise in far-right extremism across Germany.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said far-right crime rose 5.65% in 2020, accounting for more than half of all criminality categorized as “politically motivated.”

“This shows again that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat for our country,” Seehofer told reporters Tuesday while announcing the annual statistics.

In carrying out Monday’s arrest in Berlin, police seized an unencrypted hard drive with data that might help with an ongoing probe, said Holger Muench, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office.

“There was a lot of data, but it needs to be evaluated,” he said.

The suspect, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, has previous convictions for “numerous crimes, including ones that were motivated by right-wing ideology,” said prosecutors in Frankfurt, who are handling the case.

German security agencies warned of the growing threat of violent far-right extremism. In July 2019, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was killed by a neo-Nazi; three months later, a gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing two people.

Seehofer said the new statistics reveal an ongoing increase in antisemitic crimes in Germany, which was up 15.7% in 2020 over 2019 with 2,351 total incidents — 94.6% of which were committed by a far-right suspect.

Of the total, 62 were acts of violence while the majority were antisemitic hate speech and other related crimes, frequently on the internet or over social media, Seehofer said.

“This development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful,” he said.

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said the German numbers highlight a broader issue.
“This is a wake-up call, not just for Germany, but for the whole world,” he said. “These figures should ring alarm bells, because we are seeing similar trends across the Western world.”

In 2020, Germany recorded a 72.4% increase in anti-immigrant crimes, up to 5,298 total cases over 3,073 in 2019, Seehofer said.

In the most deadly incident, nine people with immigrant backgrounds were shot dead in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in February by a gunman who had called for genocide.

Authorities have raised concerns about the role the Alternative for Germany party allegedly played in stoking a climate of resentment toward immigrants and the government. The party, which placed third in Germany’s 2017 election, has moved steadily to the right in recent years, drawing increasing scrutiny from the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

Many in the AfD have expressed support for, and participated in, the regular protests in Germany against lockdown measures, organized by the so-called Querdenker movement.

The demonstrations have become increasingly violent, and the country’s domestic intelligence service late last month said it had put some members of the loose-knit Querdenker movement under observation.

The protests have brought together a broad range of demonstrators, including people opposing vaccinations, others who deny the existence of the coronavirus, mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and others.

Seehofer said the protests have also attracted neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, and have regularly become violent.