Exclusive
Status: 01/21/2022 06:00 a.m
The scene of self-proclaimed “lateral thinkers” and conspiracy ideologies is increasingly presenting the police with challenges. For example in the classification of criminal offenses and the classification of endangerers.
It is still preliminary data that the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has collected, but the numbers are already quite worrying: Last year there were apparently more politically motivated crimes in Germany than there have been in 20 years. Federal and state police authorities reported around 47,300 crimes.
The majority, around 19,000 crimes, are assigned to the right-wing extremist spectrum. However, the police could not assign more than 17,000 offenses to any particular area. According to the BKA, the political background was unclear for 98 of the 120 acts of violence known to the police.
Many crimes in Corona demonstrations
Above all, it is crimes committed in the context of the Corona demonstrations by self-proclaimed “lateral thinkers” and conspiracy ideologues that are increasingly posing a challenge for the police. The perpetrators are often not associated with any particular ideology. In the police statistics, they are then usually entered in the category “politically motivated crime – other”.
Last year, the authorities for the protection of the constitution introduced the new phenomenon area “delegitimization of the state relevant to the protection of the constitution” and the new observation object “anti-democratic and/or security-endangering delegitimization of the state” in order to be able to take a look at the extremist conspiracy ideologues.
This was necessary, argues the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, because we are increasingly dealing with extremists who cannot be assigned to any of the existing categories such as right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism or even the so-called “Reich citizens”.
Few protagonists captured
So far, according to security circles, only little personal data of people in the environment of so-called “lateral thinkers” has been stored in the intelligence information system (NADIS), a database of the secret services. Only individual, outstanding actors of the scene as well as clubs and organizations are said to have recorded the protection of the constitution.
Dealing with violent lateral thinkers is sometimes more difficult for the police. Criminal offenses in the context of the corona pandemic have not yet been systematically recorded, and there are also no detailed situation reports that describe the phenomenon more precisely, such as key regions or information about the type of perpetrator.
There is also no separate category for the classification of the extremists who are considered particularly dangerous, the “endangerers” and “relevant persons”. Since 2019, people who cannot be assigned to right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, Islamism or foreign extremism (e.g. Kurdish extremists or Turkish nationalists) have been listed as “not to be assigned”.
Only one “dangerous person” identified
In this area, only one person is currently considered a “danger” and four others are “relevant people,” as Left Party MP Martina Renner found out in a written request to the federal government. However, it was not announced whether these were “lateral thinkers”, other conspiracy ideologues or radical “preppers”. “It is a security risk and extremely dangerous to lead people in a category that does not make it clear who is actually in danger here,” says Renner. “It has to be clarified quickly whether the people are ideologically and organizationally assigned to the right-wing scene.”
State security officials are increasingly seeing the clear dividing lines in political ideologies blurring, and more and more often we are dealing with extremists who “no longer fit into a drawer”. In the USA, representatives of the federal police FBI are already talking about a “salad bar extremism” in which people use individual set pieces of different ideologies.
Even if the vast majority of the demonstrators against the Corona measures are peaceful. The German sociologist and extremism researcher Matthias Quent points out that numerous well-known right-wing extremists, neo-Nazis and hooligans are also involved in the current corona protests – and in some cases even made the structures available for the demonstrations. Former NPD supporters invented the “staging of the walk” years ago and are now active in organizations such as the “Freie Sachsen”, said Quent this week on the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz”.