This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old German man on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists that were signed with the acronym of a neo-Nazi group, as officials warned Tuesday that statistics show a disturbing rise in far-right extremism across Germany.
The letters were signed “NSU 2.0.” A German group called the National Socialist Underground was responsible for a string of violent crimes between 1998 and 2011, including the racially motivated killings of nine men with immigrant backgrounds and a police officer. The group’s name was derived from the full name of the Nazi, or National Socialist, party.
Seehofer said the new statistics reveal an ongoing increase in antisemitic crimes in Germany, which was up 15.7 per cent in 2020 over 2019 with 2,351 total incidents – 94.6 per cent of which were committed by a far-right suspect.Of the total, 62 were acts of violence while the majority were antisemitic hate speech and other related crimes, frequently on the internet or over social media, Seehofer said.
In the most deadly incident, nine people with immigrant backgrounds were shot dead in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in February by a gunman who had called for genocide. Brinker said later that he had mistakenly forwarded the message and regretted doing so, and that he rejected “all forms of hatred and violence.”
The protests have brought together a broad range of demonstrators, including people opposing vaccinations, others who deny the existence of the coronavirus, mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and others.