Warning of attacks as German far-right and extremists rise by 50pc in two years

THE threat of Right-wing attacks is mounting in Germany, with extremists and fringe groups increasing by 50 per cent over the past two years, authorities there have warned.

“Right-wing extremist structures today are as dangerous for our democracy as they were in 1945,” Konstantin von Notz, a German legislator with the environmentalist Green Party, told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, which first reported the development.

In its analysis of extremist activity, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic security agency, reported that traditional extremists had fragmented, giving way to fringe groups and potential lone-wolf attackers.

In 2017, an active soldier known as Franco A posed as a Syrian refugee in

‘Right-wing and extremist structures today are as dangerous for democracy as they were in 1945’

order to infiltrate a refugee camp and carry out an attack with the intention of blaming it on foreigners.

He had been a member of an online forum that condemned German migration policy and called for the dismantling of democratic order. The report said that authorities must bolster their surveillance of such online forums. Authorities are currently monitoring 33 individuals or fringe groups considered able to carry out terrorist attacks, up from 22 in 2017.

Suspects are predominantly male, around 30 years old and have been obsessed with refugees and Muslims since 2015. Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AFD) has capitalised on such sentiment, which propelled it to becoming the third largest party in the German parliament after the 2017 election.

At particular risk are soldiers and police officers already harbouring Right-wing views about refugees and asylum seekers, the report said.