Perspective: ExtremismIf Germany Can’t Stop the Rise of White Nationalism, How Can Canada?
Between 2017 and 2018, anti-Semitic and xenophobic crimes both rose nearly 20 percent in Germany. In June, following the assassination by a neo-Nazi of Walter Lübcke, a conservative politician who supported Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies, the BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, busted Nordkreuz, an extremist organization which compiled a kill list of 25,000 liberal politicians considered “pro-refugee” while also acquiring weapons, 200 body bags, and quicklime, which prevents the rotting that makes corpses smell. The BfV says that it is now tracking 24,100 known right-wing extremists in the country, of which 12,700 have been classified as violent. “That these developments are happening in Germany, a country known for an unflinching view of its own horrific past, might be considered surprising,” Sadiya Ansari writes. “And if Germany is struggling to contain this [extremists’] threat, what does that mean for countries that haven’t been as vigilant?”
On 9 October, a 27-year-old man killed two people outside a synagogue in the German town of Halle. Stephan Balliet confessed to the murders, admitting he targeted the synagogue on Yom Kippur, one of the most significant Jewish holidays. Balliet told investigators he was motivated by extreme-right, anti-Semitic views; he had intended to livestream a massacre inside the synagogue.
“Our country and its basic order [are] being attacked from within,” German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an interview with the newspaper Tagesspiegel following the shooting. She characterized the attack as a “wake-up call.”
Sadiya Ansari writes in McLean’s that in an environment where anti-Semitic and xenophobic crimes both rose nearly 20 percent between 2017 and 2018, her statement was criticized. “It’s much too late to call this a wake-up call,” Wenzel Michalski, director of Human Rights Watch in Germany, told Maclean’s. “Everybody should be awake already.”
Four months earlier, another death was also labelled a “wake-up call” in Germany. On 2 June, Walter Lübcke was fatally shot in the head while smoking on his terrace in the small village of Istha. It wasn’t just the brazen violence that shook residents in the region—it was the fact that this was a targeted political murder. Lübcke, 65, was well-known as the regional president of the district council in Kassel, a mid-sized city in central Germany.
The suspect, Stephan Ernst, has a long history of violent crime and connections to neo-Nazi groups. He confessed to the murder soon after he’d committed it, later retracting his statement after switching legal counsel. Initially, Ernst said he was prompted by comments Lübcke made at a town hall in October 2015 supporting the influx of refugees which was the result of an open borders policy made by Lübcke’s Christian Democratic colleague, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The town hall had been held to discuss converting a former garden market into a shelter for refugees. This effort was part of broader accommodation of the 890,000 refugees Germany took in that year. Kurt Heldmann, who worked closely with Lübcke to settle refugees, estimates 700 or so were in attendance when a dozen people burst in and disrupted the assembly. A long-time resident of Kassel, Heldmann recognized them as members of the city’s far-right scene. “It was clear that it would be a problem,” he says, recalling the event several years later.
Following Lübcke’s death, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas published an op-ed in the newspaper Bild with a clear message: “Germany has a terrorism problem.” That same day, the headline on the newspaper Tageszeitung read, “Lübcke is not an isolated case.” A week later, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency busted Nordkreuz, an extremist organization that compiled a kill list of 25,000 liberal politicians considered “pro-refugee” while also acquiring weapons, 200 body bags and quicklime, which prevents the rotting that makes corpses smell.
Ansari writes:
That these developments are happening in Germany, a country known for an unflinching view of its own horrific past, might be considered surprising. Since the end of World War II, Germany has built institutions and cultivated a historical memory to avoid the atrocities of the Nazi era. Germany’s Federal Office of Constitutional Protection, the nation’s domestic intelligence agency known locally as BfV, is charged with monitoring extremism that threatens democratic order. For most Germans, the dangers of nationalism are obvious and there is a willingness to vigorously defend democratic values. But even still, there are 24,100 known right-wing extremists in the country and 12,700 of them have been classified as violent, according to the BfV. There has also been an alarming rise in extreme-right views which has already spilled over into mainstream politics. And Germany isn’t alone among countries considered “liberal”—the United States, United Kingdom and even Canada are grappling with criminal and political strains of white nationalism. And if Germany is struggling to contain this threat, what does that mean for countries that haven’t been as vigilant?
