Far-right and other politically motivated crime in Germany has doubled over the past decade to hit an all-time high last year, the government said Tuesday.
Such crimes – ranging from hate speech and property offences to assault – rose by two percent to 85,837 reported cases last year, with about half motivated by right-wing ideology.
“By far the most offences were committed by right-wing and far-right perpetrators,” said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, but he stressed that left-wing offences rose most sharply.
Security services pointed to a hardening tone in online discourse fuelling hatred and violence in the streets.
“Key drivers of societal polarisation are social media, through which hatred, incitement and propaganda are spread,” said Federal Criminal Police Office chief Holger Münch.
“This accelerates radicalisation and, in the worst case, leads to serious crimes in the offline world.”
Violent crime rose by 1.2 percent to 4,156 cases, the highest number in a decade, police said.
“Violent offences are rising significantly in both the left-wing and right-wing extremist spheres,” Dobrindt told a Berlin press conference.
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So-called hate crimes, committed due to group-related prejudices, were up 1.8 percent to 22,159 reported offences.
Of these, more than 80 percent were motivated by xenophobia. This was followed by antisemitic crimes, which increased by five percent to 6,548 cases.
Security authorities also recorded a 5.7 percent increase in religiously motivated crimes, reaching 1,983 cases.
Münch also pointed to “nihilistic crimes”, committed in online networks, as “a phenomenon we’ve seen increasingly over the last two or three years”.
He said mostly young, male perpetrators use digital networks “to try to persuade vulnerable individuals to self-harm, to take photos of themselves that are later used for blackmail, and ultimately to push people to their deaths”.
A German juvenile court in Hamburg this year started the so-called “White Tiger” trial, in which a man is accused of multiple sadistic online crimes, including coercing a 13-year-old transgender youth to take their own life.
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