They identify 327 police, military and intelligence agents of neo-Nazi ideology
The German extreme right infiltrates the country’s security forces. An official report on the presence of right-wing extremists in the police, the Federal Body for the Defense of the Constitution (BfV) and the Bundeswehr, the federal army, reveals that in the last three years there have been 327 cases of people with objectives unconstitutional. The figure is 10 times higher than that of the cases registered in 2020, when the first study was prepared, also by order of the federal Ministry of the Interior. The report will be presented this Friday at a press conference by the head of that portfolio and the president of the BfV, Thomas Haldenwang, responsible for the fight against terrorism and counter-espionage. The report focuses on members of these three security forces with neo-Nazi ideology, as well as the so-called “Reichsbürger” or citizens of the Reich and those described as “self-managed.” In these last two cases, they are people, also from the extreme right, who do not recognize the authority and legality of the state to the point that some proclaim their territorial independence.
Advance by several German media outlets, the document stresses, however, that the sharp increase in cases from one report to the other is due to the fact that the investigation of the presence of far-rightists in the security forces has been deepened and cases have come out to the light that had been hidden for many years. But also “the even greater awareness of the issue of extremism in the ranks themselves” has led to a greater determination on the part of those responsible for combating it within the security forces. The most frequent extremist activity is participation in neo-Nazi forums for exchanging messages through mobile phones and belonging to or supporting extremist organizations that are being observed by the security forces. Offenses of political and ethnic motivation, in the case of expressions before people of migratory origin, or religious against Jews or Muslims, also appear on the list of crimes attributed to uniformed far-rightists.
7% of the cases registered by the federal organisms and 5% of the observers by the regional ones refer to «activities of violent orientation». Half of the suspects acted individually and the other half collectively. “When several people participate, the vast majority of those involved belonged to the same body or other public services,” highlights the official report. Those responsible for the study also analyzed for the first time the possible existence of far-right networks within the security forces and discovered that 201 officials have “clear connections” to groups of this type. Those responsible for the Federal Organ for the Defense of the Constitution pointed out that these soldiers had direct contact through these networks with another 765 far-rightists registered by the security forces. Forums through chat of neo-Nazi formations such as the German National Democratic Party (NPD) or The Right, as well as ultras movements such as “The Third Way”, in clear allusion to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
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