Das Thema „Sicherheit“ und die Linke

Erfahrungen und Strategien linker Parteien in den nordischen Ländern und Deutschland

Im Juni 2023 veranstaltete das Brüsseler Büro der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) einen Workshop in Malmö, Schweden, um den Austausch von Erfahrungen und Strategien zwischen verschiedenen linken Parteien zu fördern, die sich insbesondere nach dem russischen Einmarsch in die Ukraine mit dem Thema Sicherheitspolitik beschäftigen.

Am Workshop nahmen 20 Parteiaktivist:innen und Entscheidungsträger:innen der politischen Linken aus Dänemark, Finnland, Norwegen, Schweden und Deutschland teil.[1] Darunter waren sowohl Abgeordnete der nationalen Parlamente, Fraktionssprecher:innen in den Bereichen Sicherheit und Verteidigung als auch Mitglieder der Parteispitzen von Enhedslisten (Dänemark), Vasemmistoliitto (Finnland), Rødt (Norwegen), Socialistisk Venstreparti (Norwegen), Vänsterpartiet (Schweden), und DIE LINKE (Deutschland).

Der Workshop bot neben der Möglichkeit, sich über Analysen und Strategien auszutauschen, sich untereinander zu vernetzen und voneinander zu lernen, wichtige Einblicke in die Erfahrungen und Debatten linker Parteien in den nordischen Ländern und in Deutschland. Der Fokus lag auf zentralen Fragen und Herausforderungen für die Linke im Bereich der Sicherheitspolitik, einschließlich der heiklen Frage linker Strategien und Taktiken gegenüber militärischen und sicherheitspolitischen Bündnissen wie der NATO.

Der Workshop war Teil einer laufenden Veranstaltungsreihe der RLS Brüssel mit Schwerpunkt auf den nordischen Ländern.

Den vollständigen Bericht finden Sie auf der Website der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung – Büro Brüssel.

“Security and the Left” - Impact Workshop

On 8-9 June 2023 the Brussels Office of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) hosted a workshop in Malmö to facilitate the exchange of experiences and strategies between several left-wing parties grappling with the issue of security policy, particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The event was held face-to-face and invitation-only to guarantee an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality to participants.

The workshop brought together 20 party activists and decision-makers from the political left in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Germany.[1] Participation included current MPs, and members of party leaderships, from Enhedslisten (Denmark), Vänsterpartiet (Sweden), Vasemmistoliitto (Finland), Socialistisk Venstreparti (Norway), Rødt (Norway), and DIE LINKE (Germany).

Participants had the opportunity to exchange views on analysis and strategy, to connect and to learn from each other – gaining useful insights into the experiences of, and debates within, left parties in the Nordic countries and Germany. Through a dynamic mix of inputs and interactive discussions, the workshop concentrated on key questions and challenges for the left in the area of security policy, including the thorny question of left strategies and tactics towards military and security alliances such as NATO.

The workshop was part of an ongoing series of events with a focus on the Nordic countries organised by RLS Brussels.

Read the full report at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.  

Impact workshop: “The Left in Power”, Copenhagen 9-10 June

In June 2022, the Brussels Office of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung hosted a workshop in Copenhagen to better understand and compare the central issues, experiences and strategies of left-wing parties’ participation in, or support of, governments in the region. The event was face-to-face and by-invitation only to guarantee an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality to participants.

The workshop brought together 30 party activists and decision-makers from among the political left in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.[1] Participation included current MPs, members of the party leadership, and activists with experience at the regional and local level from Enhedslisten (Denmark) and Vänsterpartiet (Sweden), as well as DIE LINKE officials and elected representatives from several German states and state parliaments (Thuringia, Brandenburg, Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bremen and Hamburg).

Participants had the opportunity to exchange viewpoints on analysis and strategy, learn from each other and connect, gaining useful insights into the experiences and debates of left parties in the Nordic countries and Germany. A dynamic mix of inputs, interactive methods, small group discussions and strategy development, concentrated on a number of key questions, including the case for the “left in power”, strategies and tactics for making this a reality, and the question of placing limits or “red lines” on government participation.

The workshop was part of an ongoing series of events with a focus on the Nordic countries organised by RLS Brussels.

Read the full report at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

Don’t Panic - Analysis and Strategy on Right-Wing Populism

Over the past decade, many countries have seen the rise and consolidation of support for right-wing populist movements and parties. This development is being increasingly reflected in parliaments and governments alike and now poses a serious challenge, both to parties of the left and to the values at the heart of liberal democracy.

For the past two years, the Copenhagen-based Democracy in Europe Organisation (DEO) has teamed up with the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office (RLS) on a joint project to address the rise of the populist right and the future of European democracy. This collaboration brought together the political left in Germany, Sweden and Denmark for a number of workshops and has now culminated in the publication of a new anthology: Don’t Panic – Analysis and Strategy on Right-Wing Populism.

Contributors include political actors and analysts such as Swedish anti-fascist researcher Mathias Wåg, DIE LINKE policy advisor Kerstin Wolter, Enhedslisten MP Rosa Lund and Vänsterpartiet Party Secretary Aron Etzler, among others. Divided into three sections, the book examines the development of far-right populism in Germany, Sweden and Denmark and the counter-strategies and tactics deployed by the left. It is an informative and thought-provoking contribution to understanding and combating right-wing populism in Europe and sets out some visions for building a stronger left alternative.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office. 

Download the book as a PDF.

Kill-lists and Commandos: Germany has a Nazi Problem (2 parts)

The latest figures from the German government show a worrying increase in far-right violence in the country. Days after the government announced dramatic steps to combat far-right extremism in its military, far-right death threats originating in the police force were sent to a left-wing politician. After downplaying and ignoring the scale of the neo-fascist threat for years, the German government should take far more seriously the threat of far-right extremism pervading the German state and society.

Read the full article in 2 parts at BRAVE NEW EUROPE, here and here

Kill-lists and Commandos: Germany has a Nazi problem

Cross-posted at The Left Berlin. 

Seventy-five years after World War Two, far-right extremists have re-entered many parliaments across Europe in suits and ties, but their dark presence can be found in other, equally worrying places, including Germany's intelligence services and its military, the Bundeswehr. As a new global economic crisis unfolds, the neofascist threat inside and outside parliament should be taken very seriously indeed.

On June 30, mere hours before assuming the rotating presidency of the European Council, Germany announced the drastic overhaul of its elite military special forces, the Kommando Spezialkräfte (“Special Forces Command” - KSK) due to links with right-wing extremism. The KSK has been suspended from any further deployments and exercises until at least October, and one of its four battalions - the 2nd Company - is to be disbanded entirely. Making the announcement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that the KSK had “become partially independent” from the chain of command, creating a "wall of secrecy" around itself, and had a “toxic leadership culture”. 

A decisive move against the KSK was long overdue - the 1,400-strong commando force has been under the spotlight for years now over its links to far-right and neo-Nazi elements. In 2017, a farewell party for a KSK commander from the 2nd Company was investigated after attendees threw pig heads, and played music by far-right rock band “Sturmwehr” while giving Nazi salutes (a punishable offence). Despite credible evidence of the incident, when none of the soldiers present admitted to seeing the Nazi salutes, the Bundeswehr concluded that the charge was “not confirmed”, and no action was taken.

In May this year, a trove of Nazi memorabilia and literature, stolen ammunition and explosives was discovered on the property of a 45-year old KSK officer in Saxony with known far-right politics who attended the same farewell party. Two kilograms of explosives, several thousand rounds of ammunition, a machine gun and other firearms were found, as well as an SS song book, far-right magazines, and neo-Nazi stickers. A subsequent working group set up to investigate the special commando unit presented its findings shortly before the government made its announcement - besides the disturbing conclusions about KSK members, it also noted with concern the disappearance of some 48,000 rounds of ammunition and 62 kilograms of explosives from the KSK’s arsenal. 

The government's move also followed weeks of controversy after Der Spiegel magazine published a KSK insider’s account of the unit. The whistleblower, a captain active in the KSK since 2018, revealed an internal culture where right-wing extremism was "known about," but either "ignored or completely tolerated." He described how one of his instructors used the code "Y-88" as a "call sign" (by which soldiers identify themselves in radio communications). The numbers 88 are a commonly-used code for the Nazi salute, while the letter “Y” bears a close resemblance to the "Lebensrune" ("life-rune”), another symbol used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Despite noticing the clear reference to Hitler, the whistleblower said recruits stayed quiet for fear of punishment. 

Far-right sentiments in the KSK have been on the radar for quite some time. As early as 2003, then KSK commander, Reinhard Günzel, was dismissed for publicly expressing solidarity with the anti-Semitic statements made by Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP Martin Hohmann. Hohmann was expelled from the CDU, but in 2017, re-entered the Bundestag (German parliament) as an MP for the far-right party Alternativ für Deutschland (“Alternative for Germany” - AfD). Günzel himself went on to become a popular speaker at far-right events, where he denied the scale of the Holocaust, attacked the Nürnberg war crimes trials, and praised the “courage and sacrifice” of German soldiers during World War Two.

A much larger problem

While the KSK has been repeatedly linked with the far-right, it is not alone in this regard, and there have been a rash of far-right incidents involving the Bundeswehr over recent years. In 2017, a German soldier, Franco Albrecht, was arrested after trying to retrieve a pistol and ammunition that he had hidden in a bathroom in Vienna airport. It soon emerged that Albrecht had lived a double life for two years, using a fake ID to register as a Syrian refugee in 2015. He was charged with planning to carry out “false flag” attacks on politicians or refugee rights advocates in an attempt to create a backlash against refugees. 

Ammunition, military equipment and Nazi-era paraphernalia were found in Albrecht's residence, accomplices were arrested, more ammunition recovered, and a larger terror network revealed. Despite Albrecht's actions, however, and the fact that his master’s thesis - completed before joining the military - contained extremist ideology and references to “race mixing” and the “dissolution of ethnic groups”, his Bundeswehr superiors only gave him a warning, and failed to alert the Militärischem Abschirmdienst (“Military Counter-Intelligence Service” - MAD). In November 2019, the Federal Court of Justice finally instructed the Frankfurt Regional Court to open a case against Albrecht for "preparing a serious, state-damaging act of violence”.

A visit to Albrecht’s barracks in Illkirch by then-Defence Minister (now President of the European Commission) Ursula von der Leyen, along with several Berlin journalists, revealed a hand-painted swastika near his weapon and a collection of Wehrmacht memorabilia. The same year, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that a network of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement has been growing for years at the Bundeswehr's university in Munich, and investigators discovered yet more memorabilia from Germany's Nazi-era army, the Wehrmacht, on display in troop barracks in Donaueschingen in the Black Forest. 

Defence Minister von der Leyen directed the German military to conduct a thorough overhaul, purging its links with the Wehrmacht, removing memorabilia from barracks and ordering some - but not all - military bases named after World War Two soldiers to be renamed, but the subsequent inquiry launched into the state of the Bundeswehr was condemned as too little, too late. Once touted as a possible successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, von der Leyen’s mishandling of the crisis - further undermined by obstruction from the military leadership - pushed her out of the political limelight until an opening appeared around the European Commission presidency. 

The Day X murder list

In 2017, Bundeskriminalamt (“Federal Criminal Police” - BKA) raids in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen - conducted, curiously, without the knowledge of state government or intelligence officials - revealed the existence of the Nordkreuz (“Northern Cross”) network. At first believed to be a “prepper” network, "Nordkreuz" possessed significant amounts of ammunition and firearms (one member alone had 10,000 bullets taken from police stores), and had ordered some 200 body bags and a supply of quicklime to dispose of bodies. A network of some 54 neo-Nazis, including far-right police, soldiers and members of the KSK, they trained regularly at police and army reserve shooting ranges. 

It later emerged that members of  "Nordkreuz" were plotting to murder several prominent German politicians, and carry out attacks on refugees and immigrants across Germany on an unspecified “Day X”. In preparation, they had circulated "kill lists" of politicians from Germany's main political parties - the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Greens and Die Linke - including Green Party leader Claudia Roth, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and former German president Joachim Gauck. Several members of an elite German police commando unit were linked to the network, and a submachine gun, over 55,000 rounds of ammunition, and several explosives were found in one former commando’s home.

The group also had a longer list of names and addresses of some 25,000 left-wing “enemies”, compiled from data taken from police computers. While "Nordkreuz" had enhanced the list by conducting further research on their intended victims, the same basic list was also found in the possession of Saxony terror group “Revolution Chemnitz”. It was further distributed as an email attachment by Heiner Merz, state MP for the far-right AfD in Baden-Württemberg, who encouraged AfD members to "save, distribute and use the list" to target left wing individuals from their communities, saying “there are few limits to your imagination”. When the list turned up with "Nordkreuz", Merz claimed he had received it from an “antifa dropout”, and that he had been “deceived”. 

Fears of a "shadow army"

As the evidence piled up, fears and evidence began to grow of a secret “shadow army” within the German military - a fear that has existed ever since the Bundeswehr was formed, and reflecting concerns about the return of the kind of violent nationalist cells that developed in the German army during the 1920s. In January this year, the military counter-intelligence agency MAD reported that at least 550 serving Bundeswehr soldiers were being investigated for possible involvement in right-wing extremism, including 20 in the KSK. An additional 360 cases had been investigated in 2019, although only a small number of these managed to confirm far-right activity. 

In 2019, military counter-intelligence and Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz ("Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" - BfV) founded a joint working group, where they have discussed more than a thousand cases of possible right-wing extremism so far. Such cooperation is made necessary because the MAD’s responsibility is limited to active soldiers, while significant far-right activity is occurring within the army reserve. According to MAD president Christof Gramm, around 800 reservists have since been excluded from military exercises in recent months because of their “anti-constitutional attitude”. 

The MAD has been sharply criticised over its surveillance and reporting of far-right infiltration however. In 2017, the agency was subjected to an investigation by the parliamentary committee that oversees German intelligence services, and in February 2019, the MAD admitted that it had been consistently under-reported the numbers of right-wing extremist soldiers "to the outside world" and had consequently misled the Bundestag. 

There are also fears that the MAD itself may be infiltrated. In June this year, a senior investigator was suspended for tipping off KSK members to the raid in May. In 2018, another senior officer, Peter W., faced charges of alerting KSK soldiers to a planned raid on their Calw barracks in connection with the Franco Albrecht case. Peter W. is believed to have warned the KSK trainer, André Schmitt - the officer responsible for the unit’s military security and himself a longterm MAD source. Nonetheless, the MAD president continued to assert that his organisation had fully researched the possibility of a “shadow army”, and that no such entity existed. Authorities spoke only of “individual cases”.

Hannibal’s secret army 

In late 2018, a year-long investigation by journalists from the newspaper Die Tageszeitung (“taz”) revealed evidence of an extensive right-wing network, connected to but larger than the already discovered “Nordkreuz”. Around the same time, Focus magazine made similar revelations of an "underground army". This enlarged group was dubbed the “Hannibal network”, after the codename of its chat group administrator - the KSK trainer André Schmitt. Like "Nordkreuz", the Hannibal network was first considered to be a far-right “prepper” network, and was divided into regional groupings across Germany (West, South, East and North) mirroring Bundeswehr structures, along with further branches in Austria and Switzerland. 

Like its northern section "Nordkreuz", other parts of the Hannibal network made preparations for an anticipated societal breakdown on “Day X”, organising weapons depots and safe-houses, and undertaking paramilitary training. Driven by a “hatred for left wingers”, however, members of the network were also preparing to carrying out a possible military coup and developed plans for the mass killings of left-wing politicians and other “enemies”. Top of the list were Dietmar Bartsch and Sahra Wagenknecht, then-leaders of the left-wing party Die Linke in the Bundestag. 

Numbering around 200 individuals, in some ways the network resembled less a “shadow army” than a “shadow state”. Members included active, retired and reserve soldiers, police officers (including commandos from the Spezialeinsatzkommandos - the “Special Operational Units” or "SEK"), lawyers, judges, firefighters, civil servants and even members of the German security, military and intelligence authorities. 

A notably high number of members of the Hannibal network were parachutists. The parachutist training center at Altenstadt Air Base had been infamous in the 1990s for celebrating Hitler’s birthday and singing Nazi songs. Then-commander Fritz Zwicknagl - who was removed as a result - later went on to work for the AfD in the Bundestag. Another instructor with far-right connections, Andreas Kalbitz, remained at the training centre until 2005. He later became a co-leader of the AfD’s extremist faction, Der Flügel (“The Wing”), and sat on the AfD national executive from 2017 until 2020.

In May this year, the AfD executive voted narrowly to expel Kalbitz from the party for “technical reasons” associated with his supposed failure to disclose prior memberships in neo-Nazi organisations. Conveniently, the party application form on which he was required to list prior associations has since gone missing and - with considerable support inside the AfD, and several appeals still ongoing - Kalbitz's membership status remains unclear.

The "Uniter" Network

The soldier (and fake refugee) Franco Albrecht, who was stationed in the Alsace, was part of the southern Hannibal network, “Südkreuz” (“Southern Cross”), and is believed to have been in direct contact with Schmitt. When his arrest in 2017 triggered terrorist investigations into far-right networks associated with the Bundeswehr, Schmitt closed his chat groups, and shifted his focus to the conspiratorial “Uniter” grouping. Schmitt had first founded “Uniter” in Halle during 2012, supposedly to provide further training and insurance support to unite former and serving members of the security forces. However, the tiny grouping soon dissolved following an internal disagreement, and Schmitt founded the Hannibal network on the social media app Telegram in 2015. 

In 2016, however, André Schmitt had re-founded "Uniter" in Stuttgart - and with such a similar structure to “Hannibal”, emphasis on building ties to the military and security services, and “prepper” world-view, that it is widely considered to be an extension of the Hannibal network and its strategy. By the end of 2019, the new “Uniter” network claimed to have up to 2,000 members across Germany, including former members of “Hannibal” and members of the Bundeswehr and intelligence agencies, although the actual numbers remain unknown. And while the organisation denies he was ever a member, a “Uniter” badge was also found among Franco Albrecht’s possessions.

The "Uniter" organisation has also been revealed to have an extensive connections and support among the more right-wing members of the CDU in the former East Germany. It has even claimed support within the military authorities themselves. When taz asked Schmitt to confirm in 2018 that he was in fact “Hannibal”, he accused the newspaper of “harassment” and threatened that “we will have no other option but to inform the MAD". Raids on houses of "Uniter" members have turned up numerous military items, while footage has been obtained of Uniter conducting illegal paramilitary exercises in southern Germany in June 2018. Schmitt has himself been charged for illegal possession of military items, including practice grenades taken from Bundeswehr reserves. 

"Uniter" was stripped of its non-profit status late 2019 and the network moved its base of operations to Switzerland. In June this year, the BfV finally confirmed that "Uniter" was in their sights, indicating that there was “sufficiently significant actual indications” for right-wing extremism in the organisation. Inaugural “Uniter” chairman and the network’s co-founder, Ringo M., was an active state intelligence officer in Baden-Württemberg when the group was set up. He resigned soon afterwards, and left the organisation in 2017, claiming it was “too militaristic”. Der Spiegel magazine revealed in May this year that Ringo M. is now assisting criminal police with their investigations.

Citizens in uniform?

Some commentators have tried to explain the apparent uptick in cases of far-right extremism in the Bundeswehr by reference to Germany’s abolition of compulsory military service in 2011, and some politicians are now calling for its reintroduction. With the elimination of compulsory service, or so the argument goes, the section of German society entering the military narrowed and became self-selecting, creating a problem with far-right recruits. The more sobering reality, however, is probably closer to the claim of Die Linke’s parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch - that far-right extremism in the armed forces is connected with “a culture in the Bundeswehr that has allowed and tolerated this for decades”.

From inception, the Bundeswehr was promoted as a "parliamentary army", made up of “citizens in uniform” to reflect Germany’s political plurality, and with a revised definition of military obedience that was meant to serve as a protective mechanism against Nazi-era excesses. However, the Bundeswehr has, from its creation in 1955, struggled with its association with the far-right and its image as a refuge for both historical and newly-minted extremists. In the late 1950s, the Bundeswehr hired 300 officers from the Waffen-SS to fill its ranks, and more than 12,000 Wehrmacht officers were soon serving in the Bundeswehr - including over 40 Nazi-era generals. 

In 2014, the release of secret papers from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), revealed what was widely suspected or known for decades - in the years directly following World War Two, around 2,000 former officers of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS had formed a secret army - the "Schnez-Truppe" - to protect the country from external threat of the Soviet Union and the internal threat of left-wing influence. According to the documents, it could call on up to 40,000 further fighters should the need arise, and it regularly carried out surveillance of left-wing politicians. The secret army's leader, the former colonel Albert Schnez, was also heavily involved in the discussions leading to the creation of the Bundeswehr, and went on to lead it from 1968-71.

Another key architect of the Bundeswehr, Hans Speidel, was a self-confessed Mussolini-style fascist who had served as Chief-of-Staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, while the first head of the Bundeswehr, Adolf Heusinger, was another high ranking officer with continuous service since before World War One. As the Cold War reached a crescendo, their experience - and anti-communism - made these senior officers valuable assets for the foundation of NATO, while their dubious history could be explained away under the heading “career soldier”. Speidel himself became the NATO Supreme Commander of the Allied Army in Central Europe in 1957. The BND document released in 2014 indicates that both Speidel and Heusinger were also aware of the secret army's existence at the time.

When the Bundeswehr launched in 1955, it did so at a military base in Augustdorf named after Rommel - known as "Hitler's favorite general”. In fact, until the middle of the 1990s, Germany had 50 military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers in Germany. Some of these barracks were newly built, and were given their names under the auspices of conservative Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß in the 1960s. In 2017, a report by left-wing party Die Linke showed that between 1995 and 2016, sixteen such Bundeswehr bases had been renamed, while another nine bases were considering a change. The Augustdorf base, however, bears Rommel’s name to this day, as does another in Dornstadt.

The National Socialist Underground

The Bundeswehr's structural tolerance for the far-right also brought it into contact with the most notorious terror group in recent German history - the “Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund" (National-Socialist Underground - NSU). The NSU - a terror organisation of three extremists supported by some 100-150 far-right associates - is held responsible for multiple bombing attacks and bank robberies, 43 attempted killings and 10 murders, most of them of people of Turkish heritage, in Germany between 2000 and 2007. 

Twenty years ago, neo-Nazi extremist and key NSU supporter André Eminger had barely begun his military service when he reportedly told his supervising officer: "I identify as a National Socialist." It was hardly a shock - he wore a tattoo reading "Blut und Ehre" (“blood and honor”) - the Hitler Youth motto and name of a far-right group now banned in Germany. Despite his admission, however, Eminger continued in the military - including undergoing weapons training - for the next ten months.

The NSU had a far more concerning relationship with the intelligence services, however - in particular with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the BfV. Investigations have revealed that members of the NSU and their close circle were informers on the BfV payroll and the intelligence services have been accused of actually helping to rebuild the far-right scene in the state of Thuringia. An intelligence agent reporting to the BfV on the activities of the far-right was even a witness at one of the killings, raising serious questions about BfV knowledge of NSU activities.

The BfV has also been criticised for actively obstructing investigations into the NSU’s activities. Shortly after the existence of the group became public in 2011, many BfV files related to the NSU were destroyed - some were shredded soon after the official investigation had begun. The BfV president Heinz Fromm resigned in disgrace, but any remaining BfV files on the NSU have been redacted or remain inaccessible. During the high-profile trial, BfV agents and informants were only allowed to give limited testimony - or in some cases, none at all.

Extremism and the deep state

Fromm’s successor as BfV president, Hans-Georg Maaßen, was himself forced to resign in controversy. During the 2018 Chemnitz protests, where public footage showed an angry right-wing mob "hunting” for “foreign-looking” people, Maaßen claimed the BfV had seen no evidence of any such incidents - a spurious claim echoed only by the far-right AfD. Soon afterwards, it came to light that Maaßen had also passed sensitive information to members of the far-right party, leading to calls for his resignation across the political spectrum - except, predictably, from the AfD. To smooth things over, Maaßen was initially granted a role in the Interior Ministry, but he was placed on early retirement after he used his farewell speech as BfV president to accuse "radical left-wing" forces in the German government of conspiring to remove him because he had criticised the government's "naive" and “left-wing" security and migration policies.

Maaßen’s association with the AfD - which holds 89 seats in the German Bundestag and has now been elected into every German state parliament - is particularly concerning, not only because of the organisation’s connections to far-right groups, but also because of its own brand of far-right politics. In September 2019, a German court ruled that Björn Höcke - co-leader of the AfD's hard-line wing, Der Flügel - could legally be called a fascist as the description "rests on verifiable fact". Der Flügel has some 7,000 members - around one fifth of the AfD total membership. In March 2020, the BfV classified Der Flügel as "a right-wing extremist endeavour against the free democratic basic order”, incompatible with Germany’s Consitution, and placed the group under close intelligence surveillance. Despite demands - and promises - to dissolve, Der Flügel appears to continue to exist.

Attempts to monitor the far-right are facing political hurdles too. On June 1, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the chief of the state intelligence service in Saxony had been replaced after refusing to delete all data collected on AfD politicians. The newly-elected conservative Prime Minister of Saxony, Dirk-Martin Christian, had demanded the move in accordance with the special protections MPs usually enjoy as a result of their mandate. The AfD, however, is under intelligence surveillance throughout Germany over to its links with the far-right, and other German states have taken legal advice supporting the continued gathering data on the party. The move is therefore unique to Saxony, and is all the more concerning as the Saxony branch of the AfD is considered one of the most extremist.

In fact, despite the AfD's associations with far-right and neo-Nazi politics, Germany’s governing CDU remains divided over whether or not it should work with the party at state, or even federal, level. The conservative CDU - currently in a federal “grand coalition” government with the centre-left SPD - is suffering an identity crisis, as many former CDU voters flock to the AfD - especially in underdeveloped and marginalised parts of the former East Germany. In order to regain lost ground, many CDU members are keen to end the "grand coalition" and return the party to a position clearly on the right wing of the spectrum. Many of these calls also urge an end to the “cordon sanitaire” that other parties have placed around working with the AfD, leading to a tense political stand-off.

Far-right attacks on the rise

Meanwhile, the numbers of violent far-right attacks in Germany continue to rise. German Interior Ministry figures, released in April this year, recorded 986 acts of attempted or perpetrated far-right violence in 2019, over 600 of them targeted at holders of political office, and revelations of the Nordkreuz "kill list" in 2019 coincided with the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke in his home by a man with known links to the far-right, including with the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD) and the German branch of the British fascist terrorist group Combat 18. 

In October last year, a synagogue in the city of Halle was attacked on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. After killing one person but failing to enter the building, the attacker then drove to a nearby Turkish kebab shop and shot dead a customer there. The gunman, a 27 year-old neo-Nazi, had learned to handle weapons in the Bundeswehr, but no indication of his right-wing beliefs was recorded in his military file. 

In 2018, eight members of the neo-Nazi terrorist Freital Group, from near Dresden - a bastion of the far-right - were found guilty of terrorism-related crimes, including multiple attacks on refugee shelters, and in November last year the city of Dresden itself declared a "Nazi emergency”. Also in 2018, police arrested several men for carrying out racist crimes and setting up the right-wing terrorist organisation “Revolution Chemnitz”, while in February this year police arrested twelve members of a far-right terror cell “Group S” that was preparing attacks on mosques in 10 German states in order to start a race war. Members of "Group S" had also discussed making attacks on prominent Greens politicians.

Also in February, a far-right gunman killed nine people of immigrant backgrounds and injured five more at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt. While the attacker has not been linked with any extremist group, he left behind a manifesto entitled "Message to the entire German people", in which he expressed his racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islam and misogynistic views plainly.

According to Interior Ministry figures from 2019, Germany has at least 24,000 far-right extremists, more than half of them prone to violence, but this figure is likely - again - to be an underestimate. In June this year, Focus magazine revealed that many German neo-Nazis - including members of the NPD and The Third Way - have been travelling to Russia to carry out paramilitary training in camps run by the right-wing white-supremacist Russian Imperial Movement near St Petersburg.

On July 3, magazine Der Spiegel reported that a reservist from Lower Saxony had been suspended after being found with a list of the telephone numbers and private addresses of 17 top politicians and celebrities, including federal Ministers, state Prime Ministers, and current and former leaders of the Greens and Die Linke. The reservist was a participant in two right-wing extremist chat groups on WhatsApp. The list of names came from the larger “Orbit” leak of politician data in January 2019, and has been circulated among far-right chat groups ever since 2019, although the BKA is unsure who created the refined list. A similar Facebook chat group of reservists called "Zuflucht" (“Refuge”) has also been exposed, where participants discussed private armament and, again, fighting a possible "racial war".

On June 27, a district councillor for Die Linke in Bavaria, Stefanie Kirchner, was attacked from behind by a man with a knife. The attacker tried to strangle her, and hurled anti-left abuse. Kirchner was able to free herself, but the attacker escaped. Several days later, on July 3, Janine Wißler - head of Die Linke’s state parliamentary delegation in Hesse - revealed that she had received multiple death threats in February, signed “NSU 2.0", targeting both her and her family. Only days after making this revelation public, Wißler received further death threats. 

The threatening messages bore similarities to several death threats sent to lawyer Basay-Yildiz, who had represented families of the victims in the NSU trial. In both cases, the messages included sensitive personal information taken from police databases, and were signed “NSU 2.0”. In the case of Basay-Yildiz, a chat group of officials with right-wing content was discovered, and several civil servants lost their jobs, but no one was charged. According to evidence obtained by Frankfurter Rundschau, it looks likely the death threats against Wißler also originated from within the police force.

The dangers of "business as usual"

As the spate of incidents has grown - including a surge in fire and bomb attacks on refugee shelters - so has the political pressure on the government and authorities to respond. Konstantin von Notz, deputy president of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, has described the situation in the Bundeswehr as a “structural problem”, while BfV president Thomas Haldenwang, has called far-right extremism and terrorism the "biggest danger to German democracy today." After promising a strengthened security response, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer banned the neo-Nazi group Nordadler (“Northern Eagles”) on June 5, following raids across the country. Nordadler is the third far-right group to be banned in Germany this year, after Combat 18 in January and the United German Peoples and Tribes group in March.

The recent surge in extremism in Germany also coincides with the political growth of the AfD over the last decade, their far-right rhetoric emboldening many extremist elements, with often deadly consequences. This problem is not limited to Germany either - a report last September from the European Union (EU) police agency, Europol, warned that far-right groups across the bloc were actively recruiting from the police and military to increase their capacity for violence.

The successes of far-right parties in countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, alongside the rightward shift of governments in Poland and Hungary, is a sobering reminder that extremist ideas are growing in broader support and acceptance across the EU. Nor can this growth in far-right political forces over the past decade be dissociated from the politics of austerity enforced by the EU institutions and other agents of neoliberal “business as usual” over the past decade. The current economic crisis is likely to result in another, deeper, recession - characterised by unemployment, social cuts and the further privatisation of public assets - and will once again produce a fertile breeding ground for the far-right.

The numbers of armed extremists remain relatively small - despite the plots of various “prepper” networks there is certainly no threat of a mass insurgency or military coup - although ongoing investigatons are likely to lay bare deeper tentacles in the Bundeswehr and German state. Clearly, however, Germany’s problem with the far-right runs both long and deep - both within and outside the state, including inside the very state agencies meant to monitor it - and, despite recent revelations, the size and extent of extremist networks remains unclear. 

These networks and their many connections with politicians, the military and state agencies pose a unique series of challenges as we head into a new economic crisis, and the social turmoil that this will almost inevitably bring. Should far-right parties like the AfD successfully exploit the social turmoil arising from the downturn, it will only further encourage violent extremists to take matters into their own hands. Worse yet, it also raises the spectre of the far-right parties entering government in a number of EU member states unless credible political alternatives can be found to keep them out.

As a German-led EU begins the task of papering over the cracks of the latest economic crisis while preparing a new round of brutal austerity, it is incumbent on political forces of the left - and all forces that cherish democracy and social justice - to present such an alternative to the neoliberal model that is impoverishing and excluding working class communities across the continent. Such an alternative - denying oxygen to the far-right, empowering working class communities, and instilling sustainability at the centre of our social model - is urgent and long overdue. If we fail to build a new world of solidarity out of this deepening crisis, there are others waiting in the shadows to take their own, much darker, turn.

Germany: Liberals and conservatives join with fascists to oust the left from state government

(Elke Wetzig/ Creative Commons)

On February 5, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) joined forces with the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany - AfD) to remove a left wing government from power.

This major political upset is the first time since World War Two that a German government has assumed power with the help of a far-right party. It represents a first - but probably not last - breach of the “cordon sanitaire” that mainstream parties had placed around the AfD, rejecting all collaboration with a party that is being increasingly seen as a fascist threat.

For the past five years, the small former East German state of Thuringia has been governed by a rare “Red-Red-Green” coalition of the socialist Die Linke (“The Left”), the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Greens. Even more unusually, the largest party in this formation was Die Linke, and their leader Bodo Ramelow took on the role of state Premier.

In last year’s state election, while Die Linke’s vote increased a further three points to 31 percent - and 29 seats - their allies slumped. The SPD fell to 8 percent and lost a third of its seats, while the Greens also went backwards, only narrowly crossing the 5 percent threshold required to enter parliament. As a result, the three-party left-coalition government lost its majority.

On the other hand, the AfD surged to 23.4 percent, doubling their seats to 22, while the CDU, whose election campaign was centred on one removing the socialist Ramelow and his left coalition from power, fell 12 percent to an historic low, and lost 13 seats. The FDP, who had spent the previous five years in the political wilderness, scraped over the 5 percent threshold by only 73 votes.

With the far-right on the ascendant, there was some pressure on both the CDU and FDP to provide external support to allow the governing left coalition to return to work. Both parties refused.

The vote on February 5 was therefore a key test for finding a formula for government. The first two rounds proved inconclusive, with Ramelow winning first 43, then 44 votes - more than the Red-Red-Green coalition but still short of the 46 seat majority in the 90 seat parliament.

His rival, the AfD candidate Christoph Kindervater, scored 25 and then 22 votes. While the AfD holds only 22 seats it seemed that three members of the CDU had voted for the fascists’ candidate in the first round, while the rest of their party abstained.

A strong taboo is attached to the AfD, whose leader in Thuringia - Björn Höcke - is particularly notorious. In a 2014 email to colleagues, Höcke advocated abolition Section 130 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalises "incitement of hatred towards other groups of the population”, a  move that would have legalised Holocaust denial.

Höcke - who leads an extreme-right wing within his party - has marched along side open Neo-Nazis and repeatedly criticised Germany for its “moronic” commemoration of the Holocaust, advocating a "remembrance policy change by 180 degrees”. In September 2019 a court in Thuringia ruled that it was not only legal - but also “based on a verifiable factual basis” - to describe Höcke as a “fascist”.

Despite this, there is an ongoing debate in the CDU - both in Thuringia and across Germany - about how to deal with the rise of the AfD. One wing of the party supports the “cordon sanitaire” and refusing any form of collaboration with an increasingly openly fascistic AfD.

Others in the party, however, are concerned that after nearly a decade of a federal “Grand Coalition” with the centre-left SPD, the CDU is losing its right-wing supporters to the insurgent AfD. They therefore advocate working with the AfD to “bring them inside the tent”, and thereby - they hope - moderate them.

With no candidate winning in the first two rounds, the vote went to a third round, in which a simple majority of votes in favour would be enough to win. With Ramelow 20 votes ahead of the AfD candidate, and with the CDU abstaining, it looked likely that his Red-Red-Green alliance would be returned, albeit as a minority government.

Then, out of the blue, the FDP put forward their candidate, 54 year old Thomas Kemmerich, for the position. While Ramelow again won 44 votes, the AfD unexpectedly abandoned their candidate, throwing their full support - and votes - behind Kemmerich.

The CDU, too, abandoned their previous position of abstention to vote for the FDP candidate, who was narrowly victorious with 45 votes. It is difficult to consider these moves as coincidence, even if no formal coalition negotiations between FDP and CDU were conducted.

So, despite the party winning barely 5 percent of the vote, the Free Democratic Party’s candidate was elected Premier, thanks to an unholy alliance with the CDU and the fascists, effectively tearing down the 75-year post-war cordon sanitaire against the fascists.

Reaction

The negative reaction was immediate, and visceral. Emergency demonstrations were called outside the FDP's national offices in Berlin and in other cities around the country.

Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, Die Linke’s Chair in Thuringia, dumped the congratulatory bouquet unceremoniously at Kemmerich’s feet and turned on her heel. She later described the vote as a “clear pact with fascism”.

Die Linke co-chair Bernd Riexinger said the decision was “a bitter day for democracy” and "a taboo-breaker that will have far-reaching consequences",  while Bundestag group leader Dietmar Bartsch called on Kemmerich to resign and for fresh state elections to take place.

The Greens also called for Kemmerich’s resignation, while SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil described the election as "the historic low point in German post-war history”. Germany's foreign minister Heiko Maas, also from the SPD, described the election as "completely irresponsible".

The reaction from the centre-right, however, was much more mixed.

Federal lawmakers from Kemmerich’s own party criticised the result, calling on him not to accept his election because of the AfD support.

Markus Söder, chair of the CDU’s Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), condemned the CDU’s actions in Thuringia as "unacceptable”, while CDU national leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also criticised the Thuringia chapter of her own party, also calling for Kemmerich to resign and for new elections.

But Federal Government Commissioner for the East, Christian Hirte (who is also Vice-President of the CDU in Thuringia), congratulated Kemmerich for ousting the Red-Red-Green alliance.

CDU member, and former head of the Germany’s domestic spy agency, Hans-Georg Maaßen, celebrated the result as a “huge success”, saying “the main thing is that the socialists are gone”. He saved his criticism for his own party instead, accusing the CDU of abandoning its own members, and advocated an immediate political shift to the right.

A controversial figure, Maaßen was placed on “early retirement” from his role as spy chief in 2018 after he openly criticised the government and was accused of passing sensitive information to the AfD. In fact, the AfD even considered nominating Maaßen for the head of government in Thuringia, but he declined.

Thuringia's CDU state leader Mike Mohring responded to criticism of the vote by saying: "We are not responsible for the voting behaviour of other parties”, and the CDU in Thuringia has rejected calls for fresh elections, which would require a two-thirds majority to call.

It would also be conceivable that Kemmerich himself calls for a vote of confidence that he would hope to lose. To survive, he would need an absolute majority - 46 votes. If he lost, the parliament could vote for a new Premier. Neither of these options seem certain, and the AfD has indicated it would be happy to lend its ongoing support to a CDU-FDP minority government.

Although both the CDU and the FDP immediately ruled out a coalition with the AfD, the vote was a dangerous step towards the normalisation of a fascist force in Germany, with consequences that go far beyond one state.

The vote in Thuringia has an even more worrying precedent. Exactly ninety years ago, Thuringia was the first German government to incorporate the nascent Nazi Party into its ministry. Then - as today - the conservatives wanted to “tame” the Nazis by involving them in government. The rest is history.

As right-wing extremism expert Matthias Quent told newspaper Vorwärts immediately after the vote, unless the major parties and civil society react firmly and decisively, “a stream of [fascist] brown will pour out of little Thuringia into the rest of the Republic”.

Germany: Left-wing politician car-bombed as attacks on refugees rise

Die Linke councillor and refugee activist, Michael Richter

Just after midnight on Monday 27 July, a bomb exploded in the car of left-wing politician and refugee activist, Michael Richter, in the town of Freital, on the outskirts of Dresden in eastern Germany.

Richter, a 39-year old town councillor for the socialist party Die Linke (“The Left”) was not in the car at the time, and fortunately noone was harmed by the blast, which damaged a nearby car.

While police are yet to assign blame, Richter is certain that the attack came from right-wing groups in the area, who have threatened him repeatedly in recent months over his campaigning work for refugees.

"I am one of the faces in Freital who say we are for asylum, and I think that's the reason for the attack," Richter said after the blast.

"Threats have now become reality. They are trying to scare me, but I will not give up,"

Germany has seen a steady rise in violence against asylum seekers in the past year, with the German Federal Ministry of the Interior recording 202 attacks in the first six months of 2015 alone, compared to 162 in all of 2014 and 58 in 2013.

Thermopylae or Versailles? Greece deal threatens to destroy the European project

Europe, as we know it, appears to be over. 

The promise of a peaceful integration of capitalist equals lies tattered on the floor of a negotiation room in Brussels. There, the SYRIZA-led Greek government finally succumbed to the blackmail, economic carpet-bombing and “mental water-boarding” of the institutions of European capitalism.

The final weeks of the debt negotiations culminating in a cynical political coup against Greece have laid bare the undemocratic, technocratic nature of the European Union (EU), which operates as a thieves’ kitchen to protect vested financial interests at an incalculable human cost.

For many, the brutal humiliation of the Greek government and people heralds the end of the dream that the EU could be softly nudged towards a benevolent economic and political union. For others on both the political far left and far right, it provides further justification for a perspective of exiting the EU to return social and political issues to a primarily national level.

German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, an intellectual figurehead of European integration, told The Guardian on 17 July that the outcome of the negotiations means that the “European Council is effectively declaring itself politically bankrupt”. 

Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman, described the terms of the deal as “madness”, and argued that “[w]hat we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the Eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line.”

“This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief … it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for,” he said. 

Germany: SPD wins Bremen election amid record low voter turnout

The German city-state of Bremen went to the polls on May 10

Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has narrowly held on to power in the city of Bremen, Germany’s smallest state, after elections on May 10 saw the governing coalition returned with a diminished majority amidst a record low voter turnout.

While the SPD still topped the poll with 32.9 percent, its vote share was down 5.7 percent on the 2011 election, and marks its worst ever result in Bremen.

The SPD has governed the city-state – one of Germany’s main industrial centres – continuously since the end of World War Two. Bremen, with a population of only 655,000, has been hard hit by a gradual decline in the local shipbuilding industry and by weakened public finances.

It now suffers from Germany’s highest unemployment rate, at 11 percent, as well as high levels of debt. According to a recent report by German charity Der Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband, nearly a quarter of people in Bremen live in poverty, more than any other German state.

The level of political engagement has suffered as a result, with barely fifty percent of the electorate turning out to vote in this election – the lowest turnout in any poll in modern Germany history. 

Germany: Blockupy protests target Europe's financial hypocrisy

Tens of thousands protested in Frankfurt on March 18

The protests that met the official opening of the new European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt on March 18 were largely symbolic – not only because bank staff had already moved in last November, but also because the building itself represents the ugly hypocrisy lying at the heart of the European project.

Over 20,000 anti-capitalist protesters took to the streets of Frankfurt last week to coincide with the heavily-policed opening, taking part in mostly peaceful protests in the German financial capital to oppose the ECB’s “asphyxiating” economic policies.

Included in the ranks of the protesters were representatives of Germany’s main opposition party, the left-wing Die Linke, German trade union Verdi, the Greek ruling party SYRIZA, and Podemos from Spain, as well as unions, NGOs and grass-roots activists from 39 European countries.

Across the Eurozone, the ECB – part of the “Troika”, along with the International Monetary Fund and the Eurogroup – is playing a central role in forcing national governments to cut public spending, privatise infrastructure and push down wages while unemployment and poverty continue to increase.

These policies have caused untold misery and suffering for millions of Europeans in order to maintain a system of corporate profits and a false sense of economic order in the name of “austerity” and “growth”, but have also given rise to powerful popular resistance movements across Europe – particularly in Greece, Spain and Ireland.

Germany: Hamburg elections a win for SPD and smaller parties, but a blow against Merkel

State elections in Hamburg on February 15 saw the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) retain control of the traditionally left-wing city-state, while smaller parties of the left and right also made gains.

The SPD won 45.7 percent of the votes, equal to 58 seats in the city legislature – a result down 2.7 percent on the record margin it won in 2011. Having now lost the absolute majority the party held prior to the vote, SPD Mayor Olaf Scholz will need to find a coalition partner in order to form government.

The most likely candidate for this role is the Green Party, which has already indicated its willingness to enter a coalition. The Greens took 12.2 percent of the vote, a slight increase on the 2011 result.

On the other hand, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the biggest loser, dropping by 6.1 points to only 15.9 percent of the vote – barely enough to keep second place ahead of the Greens.

It was the party’s worst ever result in Hamburg and its worst result in a state election since 1959, and – when viewed in light of the 20 percent the CDU lost in 2011 – the result suggests that the conservatives are truly in crisis in the Hanseatic port city.

25 years after the Berlin Wall, socialists set to form government in Thuringia

Nearly twenty-five years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialist party Die Linke (“The Left”) looks set to form government in the eastern German state of Thuringia for the first time.

After two months of uncertainty following state elections held on September 14, the way has been cleared for Die Linke to enter government as senior coalition partner in December, alongside the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, after nearly 70 percent of SPD members in Thuringia voted to enter a coalition government on 4 November.

While Die Linke has governed at a regional level before, as a junior partner to the SPD in Berlin and Brandenburg, this marks the first time they will lead a government.

It also marks the first time since German reunification that a socialist party will take charge of a government – a breakthrough for a party that has been treated as a pariah by the political and media establishment.

Germany: Free marketeers made to walk plank, Pirates gain

Elections in the German state of Saarland on March 25 have dealt a heavy blow to the federal coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) retained its 12-year hold on power, holding steady at 35.2% of the small state’s voters. But Merkel's allies at a federal level - the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) - were wiped out at the state polls.

The FDP’s share of the vote dropped from 9.2% in 2009 to a tiny 1.2%, well below the 5% required to enter parliament.

Nationally, the FDP is polling at barely 3% - down from a high of 14.6% at the last federal elections. It was booted out of five state parliaments last year, a trend that seems set to continue.

The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) increased its vote by 6% to 30.6% - not enough to dislodge the CDU from government, but enough to force it into a power-sharing “grand coalition”.

The vote for the anti-capitalist party Die Linke (“The Left”) dropped from 21% to only 16.1%, giving it 17 seats in parliament.

This relatively poor result came despite Saarland being home to Die Linke’s popular and outspoken former leader Oskar Lafontaine, once dubbed “the shadow Chancellor” for his ability to influence German politics.

Germany's presidency: corrupt incumbent out - obnoxious right-wing ideologue in.

German President Christian Wulff resigned on February 17 after prosecutors applied to have his presidential immunity stripped in a corruption scandal.

Wulff has been accused of having received a series of kickbacks from businessmen, including a home loan of 500,000 euros (paid via an anonymous bank cheque) in 2008.

He is also accused of receiving favourable car deals, free hotel-stays, free airline upgrades and other perks during his time as premier of the state of Lower Saxony.

When German tabloid Bild threatened to publish the allegations, Wulff left voice messages on the editor's phone threatening "war".

As more corruption accusations surfaced, prosecutors in Hannover, capital of Lower Saxony, asked the Bundestag (federal parliament) to lift Wulff's presidential immunity.

Faced with the destruction of his credibility, Wulff resigned. He now faces possible charges and the loss of his parliamentary pension.

Under the German system, a new president must be elected within 30 days of the resignation of his predecessor.

Germany: Spies target left-wing party

Germany’s domestic spy agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has been exposed for spying on left-wing MPs.

German magazine Der Spiegel said on January 23 that the BfV spied on MPs from Germany's biggest left-wing party, the socialist Die Linke ("The Left").

Der Spiegel said the intelligence agency had 27 of Die Linke's members in the Bundestag - more than one third of its federal MPs - and a further 11 members of state parliaments, under surveillance, costing 390,000 euros a year.

The BfV spends about 590,000 euros a year on surveillance of the neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD), linked to violent racist terror groups.

Unlike the marginal NPD, Die Linke is Germany's fifth largest party, with representation in almost every state parliament and in the national Bundestag.

The individuals being spied on weren't "fringe" members either, but leading party members and MPs ― many are in the party’s “moderate” wing.