Germany: Hate Speech, Threats against Politicians Rise

“I think you always needed strong nerves to be a politician,” Vogt told DW. “But now you do get the feeling it’s rougher on all sides. In the old days you used to get anonymous letters, which were easier to deal with than these slanders and insults that are often much more public. I do think the job has gotten harder because the respect has significantly declined.”

Vogt said she had the impression that serious political debate is disappearing from public discourse. “Violence always starts with words,” she said. “We’re seeing the political debate become more aggressive, more polemical. We’re seeing less factual debate and more aggressive postulating of positions, and that leads to people feeling they have to take action. That’s a devastating development for our democracy.”

Certain Issues Attract Abuse
Irene Mihalic, interior policy spokeswoman for the Greens, told DW that prominent politicians — especially politicians who regularly weigh in on public controversies — often draw hatred from certain people. “It certainly depends on how much you are prepared to expose yourself on certain issues,” Mihalic said. “If you deal with racism, far-right extremism and discrimination, then you become an object of hate. That’s just how it is.”

A Forsa survey at the end of January found that 31% of mayors in the state of Baden-Württemberg said they had seen a rise in abuse directed at politicians in response to measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Politicians with a higher public profile, for whom fielding threats and insults is part of the daily routine, have their homes protected and receive personal protection from the federal police if they appear at any public event.

“As Bundestag members we’re comparatively privileged,” Mihalic said. “We’re all, by law, protected by the federal police. That means if someone really was threatening us, then measures would be taken.” She said police officers conducted meetings in the Bundestag to offer advice.

“The federal police have advised us to report every single incident, however small,” said Mihalic, herself a former police officer. “But it always depends on the individual parliamentarian. I know colleagues who receive threatening messages and say, ‘I’m not going to let myself be intimidated and I won’t take it seriously,’ and then throw it away. And I always tell them: No, report it to the police. It’s important that those things are registered, so the police can assess situations better.”

And, yet, the danger for regional politicians and political volunteers is arguably greater. Just how stark the risks have become were shown by the murder of Lübcke on his own porch in 2019, or the stabbing of Henriette Reker during her campaign for mayor of Cologne in 2015 — both acts carried out by racist extremists. State and municipal politicians may be less in the public eye, but they are also “completely defenseless,” Mihalic said.

While national-level politicians planning to attend public events can always report threats they see on the internet to the police, who then make an assessment of the danger, municipal politicians have fewer protections. “They don’t have anyone they can talk to, which is why we are calling for state police forces to also have centers they can turn to,” Mihalic said.

Ben Knight is a DW reporter. This article is published courtesy of Deutsche Welle (DW).