cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10085225
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has reported a surge in leftwing extremism, in response to the resurgent far right and Israel’s actions in the Middle East.
Violent crimes motivated by leftwing ideological beliefs include attempted murder, assaults, sabotage and arson attacks and rose 60 per cent in 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said on Tuesday.
“Leftwing extremism is on the rise again in Germany and poses a threat to public safety and order,” said interior minister Alexander Dobrindt at a news conference presenting the intelligence agency’s annual report.
He added that the phenomenon was largely a reaction to the already widespread problem of rightwing extremism in Germany, warning of a radicalising dynamic developing between the two.
“For both groups — leftwing extremists and rightwing extremists alike — we can see here that the potential for violence is rising significantly,” Dobrindt said.
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An electricity substation in Berlin was destroyed by the leftwing terrorist Vulkangruppe in January, leaving some 100,000 residents without power in freezing conditions for several days. Authorities were surprised by the attack and have struggled to trace the origins of the group or its membership.
Leftwing terrorism plays a dark role in postwar German history: during the 1970s and 1980s the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, conducted a campaign of robberies and bombings. They assassinated US soldiers, German diplomats and the CEO of Deutsche Bank as well as many ordinary West German citizens.
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The BfV is now tracking multiple extremist leftwing organisations, many of which profess violence as a political tool and are mostly underground.
“We’re dealing here with highly secretive structures . . . which, at times, also operate very professionally,” said BfV president Sinan Selen.
German intelligence and law enforcement services were working hard to penetrate the organisations, he said. “Various security agencies are very active in this area, and we’ll see what the coming months bring in this respect.”
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Under Selen, the agency has also sought to have the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — which now polls as the country’s largest political party — classified as a rightwing extremist organisation.
The determination was struck down by a German court in February but is still under review.
“My personal assessment is that the AfD is an extremist party,” Dobrindt said on Tuesday. His agency’s goal was to continue to scrutinise the party and its membership, he said.
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Funny, because in France (which isn’t that different from Germany) they recently asked the cops to determine the threats of violence from both left and right.
The cops’ findings (and let’s not forget that most French cops, like in other countries probably, vote for the far-right) was that right-wing violence was a real security threat, while left-wing violence wasn’t.
Germany is just trying to imitate Macron, place their right-right-wing ideas as the center, and say that everything on either side of this is extremist and terrorist.
Also, I’d like to point out that every fascist government will classify anti-fascism as terrorism. There’s a reason why pacific protesters in the UK are arrested on terrorism charges.
The right-wingers are active in Germany, too. There’s no difference between far-right and far-left extremism. Both is violence, both does no good, it helps no one.
I’m sorry, but if a nazi kills someone for being gay, it’s not the same as an antifa killing a nazi.
Violence is not all the same, and it’s a very dangerous thing to imply. With this logic, the resistance that was killing nazis during WW2 was as wrong as the nazis, and helped no one, because they were violent, and there’s no difference between the two.
Alexander Dobrindt likes to present left extremist crimes as worse than right extremist crimes. Showing charts with different y axis scaled to make the left look worse. On top of ignoring that the right commits significantly more violent crimes than the left.
Yeah, no. Political violence is dominated by right-wing morons all over Europe.
The title makes a jump from extremism to terrorism.
And they are for sure gonna do the thing were they focus on mostly non life threatening “left wing terrorism” and downplay right wing terrorism. Not like its a bad thing to oppose the genocide supporting, climate oppressing, working on militarism German state.
Op, please provide a non Kremlin source.
Its Financial Times, not Russian times. FT not RT
Minor correction: RT actually stands for “Russia Today”
Good call out, shows how much I watch Russian state media. Like I’m not a Russia propaganda alarmist, but anything I watched there was garbage. FT is mostly capitalist propaganda garbo too, but a few decent articles sneak in from time to time, and being a British publication they can be a bit more objective about American events, plus British journalism seems to bee more critical by cultural definition, but that could just be bias.
