The “Last Generation” movement, which has made a name for itself by sticking to the streets and other protest actions, is not a case for the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution. These activists, as well as the radical environmental protection group Extinction Rebellion, are “not shaped or controlled by left-wing extremists, but are still anchored in the bourgeois potential,” said the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Burkhard Körner on Monday. The climate stickers did commit crimes, but they did not aim to “direct themselves against the state, democracy or human dignity”.
Together with Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU), Körner presented his house’s report for 2022. In general, left-wing extremists are trying to hijack the issue of climate protection and to carry the “fight against supposedly ruling classes” and “fighting the free-democratic state” into the movements – in the “Last Generation” (LG) as well as in “Fridays for Future”. ” (FFF). However, with the exception of individuals, these efforts have “so far been unsuccessful,” according to the report, and no formative influence is discernible. “Neither the LG nor the FFF are objects of surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.”
This is different with the group “Ende Gelände” – in Bavaria with local groups in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Passau and Regensburg, among others – in which members of the scene play a major role. Herrmann had already defended the means of preventive detention against climate glue in the SZ interview a few months ago. The thesis of the CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt that there was a threat of a “climate RAF” was not wanted by the interior minister even then.
A key finding of the report, Herrmann explained: “The ongoing crisis is putting our democracy to the test.” Extremists of all persuasions are using the developments to sow distrust of the state and its institutions. Also noticeable: The boundaries between extremism areas are blurring. “Conspiracy theories, fake news, hatred and hate speech, especially on the Internet, have many points of intersection with extremist ideologies. Anti-democratic ideas can spread more easily through this gateway to the majority of society.”
The statistics list 5,360 “Reich citizens”, 450 of whom are violent
5,360 people (450 of them violent) are assigned to the “Reichsbürger” scene, a record high. According to Herrmann, this is due to the crisis – from the tail end of the pandemic to war and inflation; but it is also related to the fact that “every little hint of activities typical of Reich citizens” is followed up. Thus, all the letters to communities or district offices, among others, which negate official powers and often fall under blackmail or coercion, are consistently assigned to the context. Since Georgensgmünd, when a “Reich citizen” shot and killed a police officer in 2016, the authorities also began to disarm people from the spectrum; i.e. to revoke the gun license (already 525 cases in total) and to confiscate pistols or rifles (almost 1100 pieces so far).
Right-wing extremism is moving away from clearly defined structures such as parties. Of the almost 2,600 defined members of the scene, more than half now belong to an unstructured potential, such as Internet activists. It is currently being observed that the scene is increasing its agitation, especially against migrants, says Herrmann. “In particular, she tries to influence protests by citizens against the accommodation of asylum seekers”. He does not rule out that this could lead to a renewed increase in criminal offenses in the medium term. In 2022 they were declining.
The 70 members of the AfD youth organization can also be found in the report for the protection of the constitution
In the AfD, the constitutional protection report currently only assigns the 70 members of the Junge Alternative to the right-wing extremist scene. The ethnic “wing” of the party has been formally dissolved and is therefore numbered with zero people. Nevertheless, the state office plans to permanently monitor the entire Bavarian AfD; one lawsuit by the party in the main proceedings is currently pending. In an intermediate step, the Munich Administrative Court recently strengthened the authority. This is not yet in the report.
Authorities head Körner explained that the AfD is targeting platforms on the internet that are trying to divide society. Parts of the AfD would also violate the human rights of foreigners and citizens with a migration background. Furthermore, the AfD violates the principle of democracy, which is reflected in commonly used formulations such as “system press” and “cartel parties”.
According to Herrmann, the power to mobilize is falling in the left-wing extremist scene. At the G-7 meeting last summer at Schloss Elmau, “calls to make the summit a disaster met with no response.” The minister recently gave a positive assessment of this in the state parliament’s interior committee. What is worrying, however, is “a progressive radicalization” of the left-wing extremist scene, “attacks are becoming more targeted, personal and professional”. The constitutional protectors assign 690 people to the Salafist spectrum in Bavaria, of which a good one in five is violent. The threat from Islamist-motivated individual perpetrators, mostly without affiliation with terrorist groups, still exists. Herrmann recalled the knife attack by an Afghan in Ansbach in September. The investigations have now been taken over by the terror experts at the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.