An incident last week in Dresden, when police detained a TV crew filming a far-right demo against German Chancellor Angela Merkel has done nothing to quell persistent suspicions about links between the far-right scene and Germany's security forces.

Those rumors were only strengthened with the subsequent revelation that the supporter of the anti-migrant PEGIDA movement who harassed the reporters and complained to the authorities was himself employed by the Saxony state police department.

The journalist in question — from public broadcaster ZDF — accused police of effectively acting as the "executive" arm of PEGIDA.

The case has generated plenty of political fallout at national level. Chancellor Merkel on Thursday stressed her "strong commitment to press freedom" and said that demonstrators "must accept they may be filmed by the media."

Justice Minister Katarina Barley described the incident as "truly worrying." Opposition politicians and journalist organizations, meanwhile, were suggesting that PEGIDA represented a threat to Germany's democratic order, and so could not be allowed to gain access to security forces.

Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), declared to Focus magazine, "The fact that state police employees are marching with PEGIDA is not tolerable, as far as I'm concerned." He also demanded a disciplinary procedure "with the aim of removing [the protester] from service."

'A wake-up call for the police'

By Thursday, the incident had made it onto the minutes of the interior policy committee meeting in the Saxony parliament. State Interior Minister Roland Wöller announced afterwards that the PEGIDA supporter in question would be asked to "interrupt his holiday, so that we can speak to him soon." The aim, Wöller added, was to "establish the facts" before deciding on "further measures."

Valentin Lippmann, the Green party's representative on the interior policy committee, told DW that he had got the impression from the hearing that the police were "overwhelmed by the situation," which had led him to the conclusion that, "we need a more open handling of mistakes and problems in the Saxony police, and a thorough initiative for political education."

Christian Hartmann, spokesman for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the state, tried to strike a balanced note. "On the behavior of the police officers on the ground, we should say that they clearly acted correctly," he said in a statement. "I would on the other hand have expected that in this tense situation they had kept an eye more on the TV crew's press work."

He described the incident as a "wake-up call" for the police in Saxony. "We must ask ourselves to what extent the police can tolerate views and opinions in its ranks that are not in harmony with social peace," he added.

Read more: Are journalists under threat in Germany?

Meanwhile, Rafael Behr, professor at the Hamburg police academy, defended the police against the accusation of institutional racism. "This debate currently lives on assumptions and presumptions that can't be empirically proved," he told DW.

He also suggested that such media accusations were not helpful. "Among police officers they trigger outrage and create an attitude that starts on the defensive," he said.

The PEGIDA group believes that Germany is being 'Islamized'

Saxony in the firing line

The incident was embarrassing for Saxony State Premier Michael Kretschmer, who took to Twitter to criticize the behavior of the reporters before the supporter's link with the police emerged.

Kretschmer took office last December having promised to clean up the state's reputation as a stronghold for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The populist party forms the largest opposition group in Germany's national parliament, the Bundestag.

Police in Saxony have been accused of a lax approach to the far-right scene on several occasions in the past. In May 2016, at least one police officer in Leipzig was revealed to have close contact with the far-right, anti-Islam scene. And just three months earlier, a video of a policeman in the town of Clausnitz taking a refugee into a headlock provoked a nationwide debate on police violence.

And there was further uproar that year when an officer wished PEGIDA demonstrators at the German Unity Day being held in Dresden, a "successful day."

Read more: Why Germany's far-right flourishes in Dresden

Watch video 12:03 Share Countering right-wing extremism Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2SwE9 Countering right-wing extremism

Protecting democracy

However, the suspicions about far-right sympathies among police is not confined to Saxony. As police expert Rafael Behr told DW, police forces are "characterized by the areas in which they work."

The case of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist cell that murdered at least 10 people, raised many questions about the ambiguous role of informants in the far-right scene, who were apparently protected by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency, .

The job of the BfV is to defend Germany's democratic order by tracking and spying on political extremists – especially those whose intention is to threaten democratic principles like press freedom. The fact that the BfV paid neo-Nazi informants who apparently failed to point out a terrorist group in their midst raised concern.

Read more: German AfD radicalized by far-right grassroots

Pointed denial

In Dresden, police chief Horst Kretzschmar rejected the accusations his officers colluded with PEGIDA protestors to hamper media coverage of the demonstration. However, a complaint against the police has been submitted to state prosecutors.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alice Weidel Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Frauke Petry German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Björn Höcke The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year - leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Beatrix von Storch Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts - but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Marcus Pretzell Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Wendt The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Poggenburg Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland - again ... During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks ... and again Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andreas Kalbitz The Brandenburg state AfD chief admitted in 2019 to attending a 2007 rally in Greece by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party at which a swastika flag was raised. "Der Spiegel" had published a leaked report by the German embassy in Athens naming him as one of "14 neo-Nazis" who arrived from Germany for the far-right rally. Kalbitz released a statement saying he took part out of "curiosity." Author: Dagmar Breitenbach



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