The EU parliamentary elections are coming up shortly, so the German establishment is busy finding right-wing extremists under the bed — even if it has to roll out the bed and put them there itself.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this piece by Hans Heckel from Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung:

Stuff Happens

Satirical Week in Review by Hans Heckel
May 4, 2019

Why confidential information is again filtering out of National Security, everywhere where danger is lurking, and why you too are an extreme rightist

Shocking reports come to us just in time for the approaching EU elections. One is about the increasing danger from right extremist “dangerous persons.” The second is about the increasing danger from the populace. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a growing danger is coming from right extremists. That is according to a “confidential analysis” by that office made available to the Welt am Sonntag. Since Thomas Haldenweg took over from Hans-Georg Maaßen as head of the secret service, internal matters have been, accidentally of course, dribbling into the public arena, if they are of some political use.

Last summer, when the leading parties needed something to use against the AfD^[1] after a demonstration in Chemnitz, one spook misplaced the definition of “Alternative” as a “Test Case” directly into the hands of journalists. Indeed, such a classification as “test case” is confidential, but — oops! — something happened. And the EU elections are almost here — the ones in which the “right populists” could do very well. And, just in time, the next confidential information from the security forces lands on the desk of a Sunday gazette. Stuff happens!

What is in this analysis? We had hoped for fearful exposés, after hearing in connection with the Christchurch massacre of the existence of a “Fascist International” — a globally active, gigantic brown network. Instead, there are barely organized small groups and individuals. In other words, marginal individuals who drool at the sight of a Hitler picture, or dim-witted drinking buddies in attic rooms. BfV’s report must admit (in a whisper) that there is not much here. In elegant gobbledygook, it states that there were “gaps in planning and accomplishing.” In plain German, this means that these morons possibly had something evil in mind, but, luckily, didn’t have the brains to get it done. However it isn’t a good idea to be happy about this, because it doesn’t fit into the picture of a “growing danger.”

This danger can be demonstrated with hard facts. In January, by the BfV’s count, there were 31 “dangerous persons.” Two years ago, there were only 22. That is counting the types from the group “Revolution Chemnitz,” named in the exposé in Welt am Sonntag.

We were already terrified by these people months ago. They tried to inspect the IDs of people on Chemnitz’s Schlossteichinsel^[2] and later went after a group of Germans and foreigners with glass bottles, quartz-sand gloves^[3] and a cattle prod. The media were electrified, saying that the Chemnitzers were planning no less than upending the democratic system.

The ringleader was apprehended on the same day. A search of the revolutionary’s premises disclosed, to be sure, neither explosives nor firearms, but instead an air rifle and a billy club. Certainly a closer search would have uncovered one of those notorious blank-shooting guns, which — after a shot from middle distance (in the case of this weapon, ca. 3 to 6 centimeters) — can cause a hematoma the size of a freckle, which the victim could carry for life. Or at least for his next three days of life.

How an attack on the Schlossteichinsel was expected to incite a coup is a mystery. Connoisseurs of the affair presumed the attack was simply a trial run for the great putsch. How may we think about that? Did the Chemnitz “revolutionaries” intend to capsize the island as a “test run” for the overthrow of the “media dictatorship and their slaves” as their internet tirades called those in power in the land?

At any rate, the group is said to have tried to acquire semi-automatic weapons, but that failed — “gaps between planning and accomplishment,” you see. And meanwhile, eight of the group are sitting in jail.

“Gaps between planning and accomplishment” are distinctly less on the left edge of things. The Federal Police identify only a pathetic four “dangerous persons” there. But they must be four wild SOBs, who were able to plunge Hamburg — the second largest city in Germany — into a state of emergency during the G20 summit, carry out weekly attacks on AfD events or politicians, and otherwise be all but ubiquitous.

Nonetheless, let us stick with the rightist terrorists. And yet, even if they are more interesting, the question remains: What does this all have to do with the EU elections? Can someone close this “gap” for us?

Green Bundestag representative Konstantin von Notz is happy to oblige, bellowing apocalyptically about the BfV analysis in the Welt am Sonntag: “Right extremist organizations are as dangerous for our democracy today as in 1945.” Because their connections are supposed to reach into the governments of neighboring countries, state legislatures, the Bundestag, the security forces and the armed forces. Bundestag, of course, means the AfD. And that is how it all hangs together. Anyone who votes for them is voting for “danger.” Capisce? That is why the BfV analysis had to leak out.

And the danger has burrowed into society even deeper than a few Nazi-sniffers can reveal. With the dramatic title, “The Lost Middle. Hostile Circumstances,” a study commissioned by the SPD-friendly Friedrich Ebert Foundation discloses how far the German People have already slipped into the brown quagmire. The study was directed by Andreas Zick, who is the “extremism researcher” and simultaneously the chair of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, and this tells us all we need to know about his ideological incorruptibility as a pure-as-the-driven-snow scientist.

That is to say, outside of the title, “Study,” there is nothing resembling science here. To confirm the spread of right extremist thinking, we are told that one-third of those interviewed believed that “the government is hiding the truth from the people.” It is also right extremist to think that the German people have an unalterable identity. And since every second person has some reservations about asylum seekers, Zick and his cohorts find this evidence of misanthropy.

So: If you do not trust the government, if you believe that we Germans are who we are and will remain that way, and if you have reservations about people coming to Germany with diverse motives, ranging from incomprehensible to ominous and frequently breaking our laws, then, according to the study’s co-author Beate Knüpper, you are a right extremist. The study is so embarrassing that ex-SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel raced to the BILD newsmagazine to distance himself as publicly as possible. “Whoever stands up for justice and law is not automatically a right populist.”

You don’t have to tell us, Siggi. Try telling some of your comrades.

Notes: