IncitementGermany: Hate Speech, Threats against Politicians Rise
Three weeks after a neo-Nazi was convicted of murdering regional governor Walter Lübcke. In answer to a parliamentary information request from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the Interior Ministry reported that 1,534 crimes against politicians, party members or party property had been reported in 2020, a 9 percent increase on the year before.
There was an increase in abuse against politicians across Germany in 2020, new figures show, with extremists more and more willing to resort to violence. Regional and local-level politicians are particularly vulnerable.
Three weeks after a neo-Nazi was convicted of murdering regional governor Walter Lübcke.
In answer to a parliamentary information request from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the Interior Ministry reported that 1,534 crimes against politicians, party members or party property had been reported in 2020, a 9% increase on the year before.
The crimes recorded by the ministry ranged from verbal abuse, slander, threats and hate speech to property damage and arson attacks on party offices. There were also a handful of cases of physical assault.
The AfD reported 694 crimes reported, followed by Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), with 231, and the Green party, with 206. The Interior Ministry attributed 544 crimes to actors with a left-wing motive and 393 to the right wing and reported that 532 could not be attributed.
The statistics were released a week after Holger Münch, the chief of the Federal Criminal Police, told Der Spiegel magazine that the agency had seen an increase of threats against politicians, virologists and journalists during the coronavirus pandemic.
AfD Bundestag member Martin Hess, who made the information request, said the figures proved that left-wing extremists posed the biggest threat to political parties, especially his.
“There are politicians in our party that after attacks and threats can only go out in public with massive personal protection,” Hess told DW in an email. “This fact is a disgrace for our democratic rule of law. We regularly face attacks on our cars, offices, and apartments.”
“Violence Starts with Words”
The rising abuse has been felt by German politicians of every stripe. Over the last few years, many of the country’s leading politicians including President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have called out what they call the deterioration of the country’s “debate culture.”
Ute Vogt, the interior policy spokeswoman for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said being a politician had become more difficult.
