‘COVID-19 feeding extremism in Germany’

Germany’s far-right has grown more radical during the COVID-19 pandemic, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Tuesday while presenting a report on threats to the country's democratic order. Ca

Germany’s far-right has grown more radical during the COVID-19 pandemic, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Tuesday while presenting a report on threats to the country's democratic order. Calling right-wing extremism a "major problem", Seehofer told reporters that the scene had often hijacked more moderate protests against government measures to combat the coronavirus. "We have to be particularly concerned about the fact that the mainstream demonstrators didn't draw a line between themselves and the far-right ones," he said. The 2020 report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic security watchdog found a 3.8% rise in the number of people considered right-wing extremists last year, to around 33,300 people. About 40 percent of those people -- 13,300 -- were considered "violent, prepared to use violence or violence-supporting".