DW: Intelligence report says that youth radicalization on the rise in Germany

A report by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency showed a rise in the number of right-wing and left-wing extremists in Germany in 2024, with a significant increase in the involvement of young people.

Despite this, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt rules out banning the Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

Germany’s new Federal Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, took office exactly five weeks ago on Tuesday, but he knows he is co-governing a country where society is increasingly polarized and where extremism is becoming more prevalent.

At the start of his press conference on the 2024 report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, he showed the cameras a graph showing how likely it is that people in Germany are expressing right-wing extremist views.

The Christian Social Union politician explained that their number was around 20,000 ten years ago, but that number has more than doubled since then.

Dobrindt stated that the number of potential right-wing extremists in Germany increased significantly in 2024 by about a fifth—from around more than 40,000 to more than 50,000 now.

This is a frightening number, as this is the first time the number of right-wing extremists in Germany has exceeded the 50,000 thresholds.

Dobrindt added that this number was expected, but it represents a turning point, especially since the domestic intelligence service estimates that approximately 14,500 of them are prepared to use violence.

In this context, this news recently made headlines: In mid-May, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office ordered the arrest of five members of the far-right terrorist group “Last Defense Wave”.

Security forces in five German states raided the group, which experts believe is—at least currently—the most extreme of Germany’s far-right groups.

The youngest member arrested was a 14-year-old minor.

The group is believed to have planned attacks, including on refugee shelters.

According to the German Interior Minister, “the pattern of rapid radicalization and determination of young people to act isn’t limited to the far-right scene… Attacks against the state are recorded almost daily”.

According to the German minister, “for example, Russian actors are spreading disinformation and launching cyberattacks at an ever-increasing rate… This has become evident since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine in the spring of 2022”.

“These foreign actors also often use young Germans for this purpose. These young people are referred to by experts as low-level agents,” Sinan Selin, deputy head of Germany’s highest constitutional body, explained.

Their numbers are also rising rapidly, “These are very young people, and this is particularly concerning to us, because they haven’t been ideologically formed over a long period of time, but they are radicalizing very quickly and are willing to move into action very quickly.”

According to the German Interior Minister, China is also steadily increasing its espionage, which is clearly targeting the German economy, with the number of left-wing extremists has also increased, albeit only slightly: from 37,000 to 38,000.

After a long period of relative stagnation, the activity of political Islamists prepared to use violence has also increased again in Germany.

The domestic intelligence service now estimates the number of potential Islamists in Germany at approximately 28,000, of whom approximately 10,000 are prepared to use violence.

The report also revealed that Islamist terrorist militias from abroad, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, often recruit young people.

The Islamic State (ISIS), in particular, has been particularly active in Germany since the start of the Gaza War following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.

“ISIS has succeeded in exploiting the Middle East and Palestine, integrating them into its extremism and narratives, and thereby influencing young people,” Sinan Selin said.

“However, overall, right-wing extremism remains the most serious problem in Germany today,” Minister Dobrindt said.

He added, “some 20,000 people considered openly right-wing extremists are members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is represented in the Bundestag, the strongest opposition party”.

It’s worth noting that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution itself recently classified the party as definitely right-wing extremist, but it no longer uses this description after the AfD filed a lawsuit against it.

Nevertheless, the German Interior Minister didn’t avoid the question that day in Berlin about whether the AfD should be banned.

Critics argue that banning the AfD would be time-consuming, overly complicated, and without any certain hope of success before Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

The federal government itself could submit such a request, but Dobrindt disagrees, saying, “I’ve left no doubt that the AfD is, in my opinion, a decidedly right-wing extremist party”.

“I believe the right thing to do is to confront the AfD politically and work to remove it from the political center… This means solving Germany’s problems,” he said.

And to push back the Alternative for Germany party: a feat that the mainstream parties have failed to achieve since the AfD’s founding in 2013, which has instead become increasingly extreme and increasingly popular among voters.