Members of Germany’s law enforcement have recently faced numerous high-profile cases involving right-wing extremism
Hamburg police are investigating 15 active and retired officers on suspicion of using right-wing extremist and racist messages in chats. On March 4, the homes of nine people (including three retired officers) were searched. The authorities were looking for evidence of criminal activity. The searches were conducted under an administrative court order, and data storage devices were confiscated.
«We in the Hamburg police do not tolerate discrimination, the glorification of violence or xenophobia in any form», said Falk Schnabel, head of the local police, after the raids.
The investigation was triggered by two criminal cases. One case was against a police officer for insulting behavior; the other was against a water police officer for a crime related to «possession or use of a weapon». The material included tens of thousands of provocative and extremist messages from chats on messaging apps.
Investigators found that both officers had independently sent and received xenophobic, racist, and violent messages in both individual and group chats, some of which glorified National Socialism. The exchange took place among like-minded individuals, and the chat partners included the same 15 officers, who ranged in age from 44 to 61. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against all of them.
It is noteworthy that these events are taking place in «red» Hamburg, which has the status of a federal state. Why «red»? Because power here has belonged for several decades to the «comrades», as members of the SPD call each other. From 2011 to 2018, the position of first mayor of the city was held by the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Incidentally, regional elections were held here on March 2. Once again, the Social Democrats were victorious (33.5%), although they lost 5.7 percentage points compared to the 2020 vote. They had recently governed in coalition with the Greens, but now they may change partners. The Christian Democratic Union came in second (19.8%), improving its result by 8.6 percentage points. The local «comrades» are tempted to dump the Greens and form a mini «GroKo» — a precursor to the «Grand Coalition» that will most likely be formed at the federal level after the early Bundestag elections.
I include this digression to make it clear that even among the «Reds» in Hamburg, the moral behavior of law enforcement officials has been less than exemplary.
Germans in general seem to change once they join the police or army. When some put on the uniform and are issued weapons, an unexpected, almost genetic «Heil Hitler» syndrome seems to emerge.
In recent years, several high-profile cases have been initiated against law enforcement officials in connection with manifestations of right-wing extremism and racism in liberal and democratic Germany.
In 2018, the weekly magazine Focus conducted an investigation that pointed to the possible existence of a «secret network» among former and current Bundeswehr soldiers. Closed chats were identified, some of which were conducted via Telegram. The investigation uncovered a little-known organization uniting more than a thousand members of the army’s elite special forces unit, the KSK, and police officers.
In 2020, the MAD military counterintelligence service identified about 20 fighters with right-wing, nationalist views in one of the four KSK units. As a result, the unit was disbanded and the remaining units were thoroughly vetted.
The KSK story emerged as part of a broader investigation. In January 2020, MAD reported that it had discovered more than 600 Bundeswehr soldiers sympathetic to right-wing extremists.
That same year, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) published a report titled «Right-wing Extremists in Law Enforcement», which claimed that more than 1,400 people in the army, police, and intelligence services had become suspects in cases of right-wing extremism. The largest group was in the Bundeswehr — over a thousand soldiers.
In June 2021, it became known that 49 police officers in the state of Hesse were members of chats in which right-wing extremist information was circulated.
Earlier, in May of that year, an individual using the nickname «NSU 2.0» (a reference to the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground) was arrested in Berlin for writing electronic letters sent to politicians and journalists across the country containing messages «calling for inter-ethnic discord, insults and threats». Investigators concluded that the perpetrator had used inside information from police circles.
In July 2022, authorities also searched the homes of five local police officers in Frankfurt am Main suspected of extremist activities. Among them were high-ranking law enforcement officials.
In the same city, the public prosecutor’s office filed charges against several of its employees for sharing photos and videos of a Nazi nature and hate material in a chat group. Their targets were people with disabilities, Jews, Muslims and blacks.
It is a truly «brown» disaster that shows that law-abiding citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany cannot clearly claim that the police and armed forces are protecting them.