Elections, Gaza, polarisation drive political crime to record high in Germany

By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) -A series of closely fought elections, the war in Gaza and deepening political polarisation helped drive the number of politically motivated crimes in Germany to a record high last year, with an especially sharp growth in far-right violence.

The number of such offences recorded by police surged 40.2% to 84,172 in 2024, a report published on Tuesday by the Interior Ministry showed, a record since such data began to be collected in 2001. The number of violent political crimes rose 15% to 4,107, the highest level since 2016.

"Last year we saw a massive expansion of politically motivated crime coming from the right," conservative Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told a news conference at which the figures were announced. 

"Forty-five percent of the victims of politically motivated violence were injured by right-wing perpetrators," he said.

He gave the example of assaults on gay pride parades by organised groups of far-right young people last summer.

Elsewhere, police recorded increased numbers of attacks on migrants, especially after several high-profile car-ramming and stabbing attacks on public events by immigrants, some of them asylum seekers.

There have also been increases in politically motivated crimes by the far left though such offences were far less likely to be violent, the data indicated.

Like other Western countries, Germany has been afflicted by tensions resulting from the rise of the populist far right, economic uncertainty and growing anger, especially among immigrant communities, at the government's support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The far-right Alternative for Germany scored its best-ever results in five elections - three regional, one national and one European - in 2024, calling for tighter immigration controls and even a departure from the European Union.

The nativist party was earlier this month officially classified as "right-extremist" by Germany's security services, which listed cases of its politicians dismissing naturalised immigrants as "passport Germans" and implying that immigrants from Muslim countries were more likely to be criminals.

But Dobrindt said he saw no reason to ban the AfD, a move some politicians have advocated. The AfD, now the second largest party in parliament, has denied posing a threat to democracy, says it opposes violence and has brought a legal challenge against authorities' characterisation of it as extremist.

"To ban a party we have to have evidence of an attack on the rule of law and democracy," Dobrindt said, "and the security services' recent assessment doesn't sufficiently demonstrate that."

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Mark Heinrich)