Status: 07.06.2022 12:16 p.m
Last year, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution registered 33,476 politically motivated crimes – that’s a good 500 more than in the previous year. According to Interior Minister Faeser, right-wing extremism remains the greatest threat.
The number of extremist crimes has increased slightly in Germany. This emerges from the annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and BfV President Thomas Haldenwang presented in Berlin. According to this, a total of 33,476 politically motivated crimes with an extremist background were registered last year, in 2020 there were 32,924. Of these, 2,994 were acts of violence, after 2,707 in the previous year.
“The greatest extremist threat to our democracy continues to be right-wing extremism,” said Faeser. The number of right-wing extremist criminal and violent crimes fell last year for the first time since 2018 by 9.6 percent to around 20,200. At 13,500, the potential for violent right-wing extremists was “albeit at an unchanged high level in 2021”. According to a report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, their number rose by 200 within a year. “We have to stop radicalization, smash right-wing extremist networks and consistently withdraw the weapons from extremists,” said Faeser.
Fewer crimes motivated by left-wing extremists
According to the report, the number of left-wing extremist crimes fell by 7.4 percent to around 6,100. However, the number of violent left-wing extremists has risen again and is now 10,300. “We still need very consistent and early intervention against left-wing extremist violence,” said Faeser.
According to estimates by the Cologne authorities, the number of followers of Islamist groups fell slightly for the first time in many years, by around 1.5 percent to 28,290 people. In addition to the undiminished danger from Islamist terrorism, the “increasingly complex secret service activities of other countries” also pose a “serious threat,” said Faeser. Russia is mentioned here in particular. However, according to the report, “concrete impairments of the federal election and the five state elections” in 2021 “could not be determined”.
“With the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the threat situation has taken on a new dimension,” said Faeser. “We defend internal security and internal peace in Germany against Russian espionage, attempts to exert influence, lies and war propaganda.” Germany must also “arm itself more specifically against cyber attacks,” wrote Faeser in the foreword of the report.
“Spread of disinformation”
The observation object “anti-democratic and/or security-endangering delegitimization of the state”, which was newly set up in April last year, is listed for the first time in the report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In this ideologically very heterogeneous category, the domestic secret service combines groups and actors who cannot be assigned to either left-wing or right-wing extremism, but who have indications that they want to override constitutional principles or impair the functioning of the state.
These are people and groups that spread certain conspiracy theories, cast doubt on the democratic state or reject it outright. There is still no estimate of how large the number of supporters of this heterogeneous scene is.
BfV President Haldenwang said the report shows that “there are numerous threats to our democracy and security from very different areas”. What is striking is the “spreading of disinformation that can be found in almost every area of phenomena,” said Haldenwang. “It is a task for society as a whole to neutralize this through corrections and clarification.”