In the past year, more crimes with a political background were committed in Germany than in the past 20 years. According to preliminary data from the Federal Criminal Police Office, the number of politically motivated crimes in 2021 rose by almost six percent compared to the previous year to a total of 47,303 crimes, as can be seen from a response from the federal government to a written question by AfD MP Martin Hess.
This means that politically motivated crime has reached its highest level since the annual statistics were introduced in 2001. Due to possible late reports – for the government’s answer a query was made on January 5th – the number could end up being even higher.
The reasons for this increase are politically motivated crimes which, from the point of view of the police, cannot be assigned to either the left or the right spectrum. According to the security authorities, the heated social climate in the corona pandemic plays a key role here. In the previous year, almost 60 percent of all politically motivated crimes committed in connection with the pandemic were reported by the federal states as “not attributable”.
“The high number of politically motivated crimes, which has risen again, is cause for concern,” says FDP domestic politician Linda Teuteberg. She says: “The free constitutional state must not be blind in any eyes and the open society must not be intimidated by anyone. There is no ethical superiority to any variant of violent extremism.”
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According to the information, the majority of crimes recorded in 2021, as in the previous year, were right-wing motivated. The preliminary statistics show more than 19,000 crimes by suspects from the right spectrum. More than 17,000 criminal offenses could not be assigned ideologically to the police. In the case of around 9,000 criminal offenses in the past year, the police assume a left-wing political motivation.
According to the provisional statistics, the police recorded a decline of around six percent overall in violent crimes with a political background. However, here too the high number of violent crimes committed by suspects who do not belong to any particular political spectrum is striking.
connection with anti-corona demos
According to the information, 1,047 violent crimes were committed last year by suspects who were not identified by the police as right-wing, left-wing or Islamists, nor as supporters of a foreign ideology – this includes, for example, the world view of the Kurdish PKK. In the same period, 1,066 violent crimes by left-wing suspects, 882 violent crimes by right-wing suspects and 52 violent crimes from the area of ”religious ideology” were registered.
For comparison: in the previous year, politically motivated suspects who were not assigned to any of the known ideological categories by the police committed 591 violent crimes. With 98 criminal offences, the majority of the 120 violent crimes against public officials and elected officials known to the police in 2021 can also be attributed to people whose political background lies beyond the known phenomena.
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From the perspective of domestic politician Martina Renner (left), the police statistics do not adequately reflect the situation. The member of the Bundestag wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “The majority of the 17,000 criminal offenses that allegedly cannot be assigned come from the area of corona deniers, Reich citizens, self-administrators. Not calling the child by its name is technically questionable and negligent in terms of security policy.”
Last year, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution set up a new phenomenon area “delegitimization of the state relevant to the protection of the constitution”. In doing so, the Cologne authority was primarily reacting to the spread of conspiracy myths and anti-Semitic resentment in connection with the anti-corona protests.
1334 acts of violence against the police
Renner finds this new category of constitutional protection superfluous. She says: most corona deniers “place their aggressive egoism above health protection and the consideration of the vast majority of society”. They are “social chauvinists who accept the deaths of the elderly and the sick and resort to well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy patterns”. These are clearly recognizable right-wing positions.
According to the federal government, ten of the violent acts directed against public officials and elected officials that the BKA has become aware of from the past year were directed against AfD members, and representatives of the Greens and the CDU were affected in two cases each.
So far in 2021, 1,334 violent crimes have been reported with the “police” as their target. With a view to the possible long-term consequences of the protests against the state anti-corona measures, the Federal Chairman of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, considers the danger “of people turning away from the democratic spectrum and being recruited by right-wing extremists” to be very high. In order to prevent that, a debate about the advantages of the free social order is necessary. Politicians must be at the forefront of such a debate, “it must not exclude and demonize, but must also conduct a dialogue with critics, which the population cannot choose.”
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