Monday 22 November 2021
Concerned about the potential for violence
Maier: AfD radicalizes corona protests
Thuringia’s Interior Minister Maier accuses the AfD regional association of having pushed the radicalization of the corona protests. He also pointed out the increasing violence potential of the movement. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution also fears an increase in “democracy enemies”.
According to Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier, the AfD regional association in the Free State is partly to blame for the radicalization of the corona protests. The Thuringian AfD had played an “outstanding role” in connection with the corona protests, said Maier at the presentation of the constitutional protection report for 2020 in Erfurt. The minister emphasized that it could be described as “defining the entire protest scene” and “contributed to the radicalization of the scene”.
In March of this year, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the Thuringian AfD regional association as a secured extremist object of observation. Even before that, when the regional association was still listed as a suspected case, intelligence services such as wiretapping of telephones could be used. Constitutional Protection President Stephan Kramer signaled that this had not been necessary so far.
Maier and Kramer pointed to the violence potential of parts of the opponents of the corona policy. “The greatest threat to the free and democratic order in Thuringia continues to come from right-wing extremism,” said Maier.
Protection of the Constitution fears growth in “democracy enemies”
In view of the new restrictions to contain the pandemic, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution also fears an increase in anti-constitutional agitation. It cannot be ruled out that “enemies of democracy” could “gain a large number of visitors” in the fourth wave of corona, said the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, at a congress on the subject of “defensive democracy” in Berlin.
Among those who misused this health crisis and the protests against government measures to spread anti-constitutional positions were people who were known to the authorities beforehand. Some of them were seen at the Islamophobic Pegida rallies or, for example, after the flood disaster in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
It is “always the same people” who are trying to “catch up with the middle class”. That is why it is wrong to focus only on the so-called lateral thinkers. “There is a lot to do – also for the new federal government,” said Haldenwang.