Last Friday night, Taleb Al Abdulmohsen crashed his car at full speed into a Christmas market in the town of Magdeburgin the heart of Germanykilling five people and injuring another 235. Although it is a 50-year-old Saudi man, more and more evidence indicates that the attack was the result of a radicalization of far right.
This was reported by the president of the Thuringian Constitutional Protection Office, Stephan Kramer. “Even if it turns out he had a mental disorder, the posts of the alleged perpetrator on the Internet show that he has become increasingly radicalized in recent years, with links to the extreme right“, he stated in statements to Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, referring to the publications in which Al Abdulmohsen expressed his support for the anti-immigration policies of Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Rise of violence
The attack occurs in a context of growing tension and violence social. In 2023, the crimes for political reasons in Germany increased by 1.89% to reach 60,028, the highest level since 2001, when records began. According to the latest report from the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, up to 17,000 of those cases were hate crimeswhich grew by 48%. There were 17 attempted homicides and three people were murdered.
“We are experiencing an escalation of political aggression with increasing attempts at intimidation and attacks against citizens who are politically active, volunteers for our society or who are in the service of the police and emergency services,” warned the Federal Minister of the Inside, Nancy Faeser.
Threat from the far right
Attacks have almost doubled in the last 10 years, an increase that is due to the growing ideological radicalization of part of German society, especially groups of extreme right. These perpetrated some 28,945 crimes, a rise of 22.4%, putting immigrants and asylum seekers in the center of their target.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German police intelligence agency, estimates in its annual report that there are 40,600 right-wing radicals in the country, 14,500 of them violent. In April the trial began against nine members of the Citizens of the Reich (o Reich citizen in German), a far-right group that was planning a violent coup d’état and would add another 25,000 radicals. In May, the court approved that the secret services monitor the activity of AfD as a suspect of an extremism described by Berlin as the “greatest threat to democracy.”
Radical Islamism and the left
The record registered in 2023 is also due to the rebound in attacks considered antisemiteswhich have doubled after the war Israel in Gaza until reaching 5,164 crimes. Behind these attacks are far-right groups, but also radical Islamists, numbering 27,000 potential individuals. According to the aforementioned report, the threat of Islamist terrorism “It has grown even more” since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel by surprise, although this comes from individual criminals and small groups.
The authorities warn that the rise of political violence also has other ideological components. Thus, 7,777 of these crimes are attributed to the extreme leftthe majority against police officers, a heterogeneous bloc with a “not yet exploited radicalization potential” that totals 37,000 potential members, 11,200 of them “oriented toward violence.” Various progressive groups, from climate activists to human rights defenders, denounce that Germany is increasingly criminalizing protest and silencing any criticism of Israel’s violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.
