IMAGENS DE OVOODOCORVO
'Lack of
leadership': Merkel under fire after far-right gains in regional German
election
AFP
news@thelocal.de
@thelocalgermany
29 October
2019
'Lack of
leadership': Merkel under fire after far-right gains in regional German
election
The
pressure is on Angela Merkel after the Thuringia vote. Photo: DPA
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel faces renewed pressure from within her Christian
Democrats after the centre-right party was beaten by the populist, far-right
AfD in the Thuringia state election on Sunday.
Her
conservative critics charge that Merkel has dragged the CDU too far to the left
on immigration, climate and other issues, allowing the rise of the Alternative
for Germany (AfD) on the extreme right.
A long-time
rival who hopes to succeed Merkel, Friedrich Merz, suggested the veteran leader
dubbed "Mutti" (mummy) is already a lame duck and should bow out long
before she plans to leave politics in 2021.
In his most
direct attack yet, 63-year-old Merz said that "for years the chancellor's
inactivity and lack of leadership have covered this country like a blanket of
fog.
"I
simply cannot imagine that this kind of governance will last another two years
in Germany," said Merz, an executive of the German arm of US investment
firm BlackRock.
'Barely
heard or seen'
Merkel, in
power for almost 14 years, has faced heightened pressure ever since 2015 when
she decided to keep open German borders to a mass influx of refugees and
migrants.
The move
earned her much praise but also sparked an angry backlash that fuelled the rise
of the anti-immigration and anti-Islam AfD, now the biggest opposition party.
In recent
months it has topped 20 percent in three state polls in the ex-communist east --
most recently Sunday when it narrowly beat Merkel's CDU in Thuringia to second
spot behind the far-left Die Linke.
It was the
CDU's worst ever result there and seemed to echo the demise of Germany's other
mainstream party, the Social Democrats (SPD), which scored just nine percent.
News
website Spiegel Online asserted that the state election showed that "the
state of the CDU is at least as desolate" as that of the SPD.
The big
difference for now was that the CDU remains the party of the chancellor, it
said, adding however that "this could easily be missed given that Angela
Merkel is barely heard or seen these days".
'Something
must change'
It was
after a similar state poll setback last year that Merkel dramatically handed
over the CDU leadership to her preferred successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer,
widely known by her initials AKK.
AKK in a
later vote beat Merz for the party chair's position and more recently also took
on the post of defence minister, but in recent months her political star has
dimmed.
Doubts
about AKK have grown after several blunders and gaffes, including a spat with a
YouTube personality, a joke about intersex people and a surprise proposal for a
peacekeeping mission to Syria that sparked open discord within
the
cabinet.
Tilman
Kuban, head of the CDU's youth wing, which leans towards Merz, this week openly
asked whether AKK is the right candidate to lead the party.
Another
critic who took aim at both Merkel and her crown princess was parliamentary
group co-leader Axel Fischer, who called the latest defeat "thelogical
consequence of national CDU policies that seems to lack any substance".
An
outsider, the Free Democrats' co-leader Wolfgang Kubicki, put it more bluntly,
declaring that Kramp-Karrenbauer simply "lacks the stature" to lead
the CDU or run for chancellor.
Things are
likely to come to a head toward the end of the year, when the SPD will decide
whether to stay in Merkel's coalition or leave, which could spark new
elections.
Before
then, the CDU will face their own fireworks, at a party congress in late
November.
Merz has so
far held his fire against AKK, preferring to attack the government as a whole.
"The
image of the government is simply abysmal," he thundered this week,
demanding that "something must change".
By Yacine Le Forestier
'We Are
Doing What We Can'
German
Domestic Intellience Chief on the New Wave of Hate
In an
interview, Thomas Haldenwang, the president of Germany's domestic intelligence
agency, discusses the new threat of extremism in the wake of the Halle attack
and his agency's need for greater authority in the monitoring of such threats.
Interview
Conducted by Martin Knobbe and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt
October 23,
2019 10:35 AM
DER
SPIEGEL: Mr. Haldenwang, the perpetrator in Halle who attempted to conduct a
mass murder at a synagogue on Oct. 9 appears to have come out of nowhere. He
seems to have struck without the authorities ever having noticed his extremism.
As president of Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
(BfV) what's your explanation for this?
Haldenwang:
He must have had a long-term plan of action -- he built his weapons using his
own resources. To do that, he must have obtained material from the internet.
But as far as we know so far, he didn't share his plans for the anti-Semitic
attack with anyone.
DER
SPIEGEL: Perpetrators like him radicalize themselves in forums and networks on
the internet that often have links to the gamer scene. Is Germany's interior
minister right when he says that the scene needs to be the subject of greater
scrutiny?
Haldenwang:
The majority of gamers have nothing to do with right-wing extremism, not even
the ones who like the shooting games. But if I perceive that hatred and
agitation are developing on these sites, if right-wing extremist ideas are
being shared, including the idea of committing a terrorist attack, then we have
to deal with these platforms.
DER
SPIEGEL: Shouldn't you have done so long ago?
Haldenwang:
We are doing what we can, but we need more staff to conduct considerably more
intensive internet monitoring. This is a complex task and you need skilled
employees who can identify trends and suspicious individuals.
DER
SPIEGEL: How many people do you need?
Haldenwang:
The 50 percent increase announced when I took office has already taken place.
With 300 additional positions, we would move in the right direction, bringing
us closer to the size of our department that deals with Islamism and Islamist
terrorism. But we also need to be granted the authority commensurate with
today's challenges.
DER SPIEGEL:
You are referring to the monitoring of chat communications, which are often
encrypted?
Haldenwang:
Yes. Messenger services, for example. It should make no difference whether we
want to be able to read an SMS or a WhatsApp message.
Thomas
Haldenwang, 59, has served as president of the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution since November 2018. Prior to that, the lawyer
was the deputy of the Cologne-based agency, which is responsible for monitoring
and combating extremism in all its forms in Germany.
DER
SPIEGEL: Should providers be required to hand the authorities a decrypted
version of chats, if required?
Haldenwang:
That would be a very far-reaching approach; there are alternatives, such as tapping
sources, which would be our preferred approach. We would access extremists'
phones at the point before communications become encrypted -- always subject to
the strict requirements of the law, according to which all surveillance must be
approved by an independent body, and only if the person has the potential to be
particularly dangerous.
DER
SPIEGEL: That wouldn't have helped at all in Halle. You can't plant a Trojan
horse on someone's phone to monitor them if you don't even know who that person
is.
Haldenwang:
Unfortunately, there will always be cases that can't be detected in advance.
But we can increase the chances -- by, for example, observing the internet more
closely with additional staff.
DER
SPIEGEL: In June, Walter Lübcke, a senior regional government official in
Kassel, was shot dead on the terrace of his home, likely by a man who has been
deeply rooted in the extreme right-wing scene for years. How could such a thing
happen?
Haldenwang:
The alleged perpetrator had not appeared to be visibly extremist to the Federal
Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2005. There was also a
seemingly plausible explanation. He had married, built a house, had regular
work, children, a dog and he was a member of a club. From all outside
appearances, it was a successful resocialization.
DER
SPIEGEL: But the suspect, Stephan Ernst, had been involved in an attack on a
trade union rally in the city of Dortmund in 2009. Your office wasn't aware of
that?
Haldenwang:
That didn't make it into the systems of the Federal Office for the Protection
of the Constitution. He had disappeared from our radar four years earlier.
That's why our authority deleted all data about him from our files in 2015,
after the expiry of the maximum storage period of 10 years. After the
revelations about the NSU terrorist group, though, a moratorium was placed on
deleting data. That's the only reason there were any documents left.
DER
SPIEGEL: Is there a lesson to be learned from the Lübcke murder?
Haldenwang:
We should consider extending the deadline for deletion to 15 years. And then
you need to check each individual case carefully before you delete it: Has the
person really left the scene, or are there any indications to make you doubt
it? We shouldn't have automatic deletion any longer.
DER
SPIEGEL: Is Ernst an isolated case?
Haldenwang:
We have conducted an intensive search of our documents and files to determine
whether there are similar cases. As of today, we haven't seen any.
DER
SPIEGEL: You often receive tips about suspicious Islamists from foreign
partners like the United States. Have you ever received a tip about a
right-wing terrorist in the states of Saxony or Hesse?
Haldenwang:
In the fight against right-wing extremism, cooperation on the national level is
the chief priority. But international exchange has intensified since the
attacks in Norway and New Zealand. I am confident that this will lead to the
exchange of tips in the future. Given our expertise, we are also a sought-after
partner internationally.
DER
SPIEGEL: Is there anything novel about the type of perpetrator who emerged in
the Halle attack?
Haldenwang:
What's new is the international dimension. Right-wing extremism as we know it
was long a particularly German phenomenon. But now, we see Anders Breivik in
Oslo, Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch, Patrick Crusius in El Paso, the
perpetrator in Halle. It's like links in a chain, almost an international
competition. Another insight is that it appears that no deep ideology is needed
to radicalize and develop plans for attacks. All that's needed is this emotion,
hate, incitement, the web-based instigation and this convergence of people who,
on the basis of simplistic messages often rooted in fake news, arrive at this
world view and think they have to strike immediately.
DER
SPIEGEL: Is there a societal discourse that promotes these kinds of crimes?
Haldenwang:
There is currently growing acceptance of ideologies in Germany that are
crossing the lines. The New Right practices a very intellectual right-wing
extremism. On the surface, it distances itself from violence, but it also
promotes the conspiracy theory of the "Great Replacement," (Eds: the
idea of the government deliberately swapping out the native German population
with refugees and foreigners) and conveys the feeling that something needs to
be done to stop these alleged developments. That creates the intellectual
breeding ground for these kinds of crimes.
DER
SPIEGEL: One of the protagonists of the movement is Björn Höcke, the regional
leader of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the
eastern state of Thuringia and a man known for peppering his language with Nazi
rhetoric. Do you consider him to be a right-wing extremist?
Haldenwang:
I ask for your understanding that I cannot comment on a leading candidate
shortly before a state election for legal reasons.
DER
SPIEGEL: What, for you, is the definition of a right-wing extremist?
Haldenwang:
If, for example, analogies to National Socialism are drawn in the wording. If
historical revisionist, ethnic and xenophobic views are not only held, but also
ultimately pursued. If human dignity is denied to large sections of the
population with immigration backgrounds.
DER
SPIEGEL: Another prominent figure is Andreas Kalbitz, the AfD's chair in the
state of Brandenburg. Has he credibly distanced himself from his right-wing
extremist past?
Haldenwang:
Mr. Kalbitz has made statements that can be categorized under the
aforementioned. I cannot recognize that he has distanced himself from his past.
Like Höcke, he's one of the leading figures on the AfD's "Flügel"
("Wing"), which we classified as a suspicious case (Eds: meaning it
is under observation by Haldenwang's agency) several months ago. We don't see
anything that would dissuade us from this assessment. On the contrary, the
Flügel is growing increasingly extremist.
DER
SPIEGEL: There are also other influential New Right groups, like publisher Götz
Kubitschek, who influences Höcke, or the magazine Compact. Are you looking into
them, as well?
Haldenwang:
There are many organizations that we are scrutinizing very intensively.
"Reconquista Germanica," a project of net activists, for example. It
has been obvious to us for a few weeks now that they are clearly right-wing
extremists. We can use intelligence agency means for such objects of
observation.
DER
SPIEGEL: Right-wing extremist elements have also been popping up repeatedly in
Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, and in the police. Are we talking about
individual cases or structures?
Haldenwang:
The overwhelming majority of the staffs of German security authorities abide
fully by the constitution. But there have been cases of right-wing extremism.
You could say they're isolated cases, but one can also say, and this is my
opinion, that there are too many isolated cases for me not to look at them
systematically. That's why we work together with the state-level agencies under
the tutelage of the federal agency to compile all the relevant information. And
we plan to set up a telephone hotline for tips that will not only be there for
government instances, but for all indications of right-wing extremism. That's
already an effective tool in combating Islamist terrorism.
DER SPIEGEL:
Your predecessor Hans-Georg Maassen makes no secret of the fact that he views
Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy to be the culprit of the current wave
of hate. Do you share that view?
Haldenwang:
I supported the federal government's policies, also back in 2015. It is part of
my Christian worldview that you help people who are in need. Germany did a
remarkable job in that respect in 2015. However, it was also right to restore
the normal procedures for immigration. So, no, I do not share my predecessor's
criticism.
