Members of the German police force who are suspected of holding opinions deemed unacceptable by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and her political allies risk having their employment terminated under a new law.
Germany’s radical left-activist interior minister has, since taking office in 2021, made it her mission to effectively rid all levels of the civil service of conservatives. The list of so-called ‘enemies of the constitution’ and ‘right-wing extremists’ appears to be ever-expanding.
Under Faeser’s new disciplinary law for civil servants, included in her sweeping 13-point plan to combat ‘right-wing extremism,’ the court process for removing public servants from office has been abolished, opening the door for political arbitrariness. As of April 1st, the state has the unilateral authority to determine whether someone is an ‘extremist.’
By the Federal Disciplinary Act (Bundesdisziplinargesetz), which provides for different measures of punishment if a disciplinary procedure is launched against an employee of the state, the Federal Ministry of the Interior ultimately calls the shots. This puts Faeser at the center of this push to rid the police force of officers with rightist views.
Furthermore, the Federal Interior Minister, under “the right to issue instructions,” is permitted to give directives to the interior ministers of the federal states.
According to information from the 16 interior ministries of the federal states, at least 407 police officers are already being investigated or face disciplinary proceedings—and could be removed from public service—over suspicions of having ‘right-wing extremist’ views and alleged penchants for ‘conspiracy theories.’
It is unclear what evidence has been collected and presented against the officers in question and by what means it was obtained. The fact is that both state and federal internal intelligence agencies (LfVs and BfV) over the past year have become increasingly hostile to the rightist opposition and its supporters.
For instance, Thuringia’s head of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) described supporters of the Right anti-globalist opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as the “brown dregs” of German society, an unmistakable,—and dehumanizing—Nazi reference. The chief of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, meanwhile, has urged Germans not to vote for AfD.
The Bundestag’s Federal Police Commissioner Uli Grötsch, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and a close political ally of Faeser, did his best to play up the idea that ‘right-wing extremists’ have infiltrated all aspects of society and represent an existential threat to the Constitutional order.
“We live in times in which right-wing extremists are deliberately trying to destabilize the police,” Grötsch claimed. “The danger is greater than ever before. For the entire country. And therefore also for the police.”
The use of the term ‘right-wing extremist’ is employed, perhaps more so than ever, by members of Germany’s political establishment as a means to demonize, marginalize, and exclude their ideological opponents and democratic political challengers.
Even the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution under Angela Merkel, Hans-Georg Maassen, has been slapped with the label by the domestic intelligence agency—and is therefore a subject of its intrusive observation.
“It is obvious that the BfV is no longer being used to protect the constitution, but is being misused to protect the government and to fight and persecute government critics,” Hans-Georg Maassen said last year in response to the investigation that had been initiated against him.
Maassen, in an interview with Junge Freiheit published days ago, told the newspaper that “the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has now created dossiers on many citizens in order to persecute them.”
