Eastern German State Premier Says Country Facing Right-wing Terrorism
Recent murderous attacks carried out by right-wing radicals should not be dismissed as isolated criminal acts, the premier of the eastern German state of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, said.
Ramelow, a member of the hard-left Die Linke, was speaking after the deadly attack in Halle a week ago.
The occurred when a gunman tried unsuccessfully to force his way into a synagogue full of worshippers on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar and then killed two people at random.
Seeing attacks like this as isolated was “like a reflex,” Ramelow said.
He pointed to the wave of murders perpetrated by the self-styled National Socialist Underground (NSU) targeting Turks in Germany between 2000 and 2006 and the murder in June of Walter Luebcke, a local politician who backed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open immigration policy,
These made it clear that “we are facing ‘brown terror’ in Germany,” Ramelow said, referencing the uniforms worn by Adolf Hitler’s violent street gangs.
According to a survey published by the masscirculation Bild newspaper on Wednesday, 65 per cent of Germans believe that politicians and security officials are underestimating the threat from right-wing terrorism.
Just 17 per cent of the 2,052 respondents approached after the Halle attack rejected the idea, while 11 per cent were undecided.
Ramelow, who heads a threeway coalition drawing in Die Linke, the Social Democrats (SPD and the Greens, was speaking in Erfurt, the state capital ahead of elections on Oct. 27.
Pre-election polling points to a surge in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has taken a strongly anti-immigrant line.
Ramelow said that, while defending the AfD was the last thing he wanted to do, making them responsible for the Halle attack was oversimplification.
“The AfD is merely making visible what is in any case there. And it is definitely also a stooge for the right- wing extremist scene,” he said.