Police in Germany have launched an investigation into individuals belonging to the far-left extremist group Antifa who recently called for the murder of 53 politicians from the national conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The extremist activists also published the residential addresses of the politicians on an internet platform popular with radical leftists.
According to a report from the news portal FOCUS Online, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the security agency that is responsible for ensuring the personal safety of the nation’s politicians, has confirmed that people belonging to left-wing extremist circles have made death threats against 53 Alternative for Germany (AfD) politicians on the online platform Indymedia.
In the second week of September, several posts were published to the platform which called for lethal violence to be carried out against members of the anti-establishment conservative party. One of the posts said: “Let’s kill the AfD pigs with explosives.”
In addition to publishing the names and addresses of the populist politicians, far-left extremists also posted detailed bomb-making instructions and intimate details about some of the target’s living arrangements. For example, one of the radical leftist authors provides information about the potential victim’s neighborhood to the would-be assassin, noting that a certain celebrity lives a few streets away and that the politician’s house is guarded by police patrols.
Björne Höcke, member of the Thuringia state parliament and one of the leaders of the now-dissolved radical faction of the AfD, and Hamburg parliamentary group leader Bernd Baumann were among the individuals who were expressly named by the violent extremists.
One radical wrote: “The time has come for tough action. Höcke is one of those people who has to be killed,” adding that the bodyguards for Höcke shouldn’t be spared either.
Calls for incitement to violence against public officials have resulted in two state police offices launching investigations into the matter in an attempt to unmask the perpetrators.
When asked to comment on the matter in a recent interview with the online magazine Tichys Einblick, Baden-Württemberg AfD MP Jürgen Braun mentioned that calls for violence against politicians and members of the AfD are nothing new, but that that attacks carried out by left-wing extremists against the AfD are on the rise.
“Unfortunately, we are the leader in attacks in every category – for example, physical attacks against AfD candidates, simple party members, parliamentary offices, thousands of election posters and arson attacks against cars and houses,” Braun said, adding that in many regions, acts of vandalism and theft against AfD election posters have increased by 80 percent recently.
Just weeks before Germany’s federal elections, Vadim Derksen, the AfD’s candidate for the Berlin state elections, had his family car set ablaze in what’s believed to have been a politically motivated attack carried out by left-wing extremists, Remix News previously reported. He is only one of many AfD politicians who have been the target of arson.
“The night before the federal elections, the building of my office in Korb was damaged in a left-wing extremist attack,” Braun said, mentioning that left-wing extremists took responsibility for the attack days later.