Germany
appears to be inadequate appreciation of the seriousness of the problem. On the whole, the debate over right-wing extremism has not contributed much toward elucidating the phenomenon, partly because it has induced people to see right-wing extremism in relative terms.81 For example, many citizens hold the mistaken impression that acts of extremism committed by left-wing extremists counterbalance those of right-wing extremists. Although this attribution of violence to leftist extremism is almost always unfounded, it means that the focus on specifically rightwing violence is lost because of baseless reports over-hastily issued by the security authorities.82 Despite widespread talk about left-wing extremists, no far-left murders or perpetrators have been identified. The authorities are even quick to attribute certain acts to global Islamic terrorism (which really does pose a threat), although here again there are often no facts to support those allegations.83 This sort of fear mongering alarms the population and encourages misjudgments concerning current threats to internal security. It should not be surprising that the review of NSU crimes and the investigation of its support network have proved to be difficult tasks. As already noted, the investigative and security authorities have done a poor job of confronting and remedying the menace of right-wing extremism. Their failure is obvious not only in the NSU fiasco, but also in the sobering tally of at least 149 deaths and thousands of injuries since 1990 that are attributable to right-wing violence. A recent statement by the Munich Re81 A more detailed account may be found in Britta Schellenberg, “Strategien gegen Rechtsextremismus und Vorurteilskriminalität: Was muss getan werden, um den Nationalsozialistischen Untergrund und seine Ideologie erfolgreich zu bekämpfen?” in Manuela Glaub and Karl-Rudolf Korte (eds.) Angewandte Politikforschung: Festschrift für Werner Weidenfeld (Wiesdbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2012), pp. 419 – 430. 82 For example, the burnings of cars and baby carriages in Berlin were quickly categorized as farleft acts, but the accusations proved to be groundless. Another example is furnished by the Bavarian Report on the Protection of the Constitution, which mentioned an initiative against right-wing extremism known as a.i.d.a. as a case of left-wing extremism. It took an absurd marathon of legal complaints to confirm once and for all that this attribution was untenable. 83 For example, in December of 2012, a bomb was placed in a purse at Bonn’s Main Train Station, allegedly by Islamic terrorists. The Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans Peter Friedrich, commented that Germany is now “in the sights of Jihadi terrorism.” However, if one keeps checking up on these cases as they drag on, it usually turns out that the accusations are untenable.
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IN EUROPE
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