Attacks on politicians in Germany are increasing – DW – May 6, 2024

The good news first: SPD politician Matthias Ecke is recovering from an operation after suffering a broken cheekbone and eye socket. The 41-year-old candidate for the European elections was knocked down and seriously injured on Friday evening while hanging up campaign posters in Dresden. Colleagues said Ecke plans to continue his campaign even after he recovers.

Four suspects aged 17 and 18 were identified by the police.

The bad news, however, is that anyone who is involved in politics in Germany is leading an increasingly dangerous life. The attack on the Social Democrats is just the tip of the iceberg: Local politicians in particular are attacked, threatened and insulted on a daily basis.

Max Reschke, chairman of the Green Party in Thuringia for a year, knows the threat.

“We saw a pile of dung in front of the door of our party offices, eggs on the windows, broken windows in several offices and also blown up mailboxes,” Reschke told DW. He said he and his colleagues were also threatened with physical assault.

“Violent language has definitely increased in recent years,” Reschke added.

Local politicians are increasing security

Green Party supporters in particular are increasingly being targeted by attacks. During the campaign for the local elections at the end of May and the European elections at the beginning of June, they decided never to go it alone. The activists were taught to always speak calmly to people, to de-escalate and not to allow themselves to be provoked.

“There are people who used to just think things and now say them out loud. They also like to try to intimidate families. And there are others who ensure that such thoughts are put into action. “Unfortunately, we experienced that in Dresden,” said Reschke.

An increase in election crime has been observed in recent years. In Essen, a large city in the most populous German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, two Green Party politicians were recently insulted and then physically attacked. One was injured in the attack.

In Brandenburg, angry demonstrators attacked the car of Green MP and Vice President of the German Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt and prevented her from driving after an election campaign appearance on May 1st. And in the medium-sized town of Gotha in Thuringia, the house of an SPD politician was set on fire in February after he organized a demonstration against right-wing extremism.

Reschke called for local politicians to be given more police protection. “It shouldn’t be the case that something has to happen first for people to act,” he said. “And society as a whole needs to ask itself which direction we want to go. I don’t think more violence and more fear makes sense.”

Political violence is increasing across Europe and the USA

In a recent representative survey by the opinion research institute Forsa among more than 6,400 mayors across Germany, 40% of those surveyed said that they or people close to them had been insulted, threatened or physically attacked. Some admitted that this had made them think about quitting politics.

However, this is not a purely German phenomenon. According to Sven Tetzlaff, head of the Democracy and Cohesion Department at the Körber Foundation, attacks on politicians have increased across Europe and also in the USA.

Tetzlaff told DW that social media has helped change public discourse. “People are inciting each other to express their hatred of the state, of the system, of politics, of ‘those at the top’. And we also know that the inhibition thresholds for physically attacking people drop significantly as language develops in this direction,” he said.

Democracy is under attack

The willingness to find a compromise or a balance of interests is decreasing, said Tetzlaff. “And that means that people then say: If my interests are ignored, then I reject the system, then I insult the politician who does not represent my interests,” he added.

“Stark im Amt”, an online portal for local politicians, was launched in 2021 by the Körber Foundation together with the German Association of Cities, the German District Council and the German Association of Cities and Municipalities. Every month, around 3,000 local politicians visit the site to learn about strategies to prevent and combat threats and hate speech online.

Tetzlaff fears that the latest attack on Ecke could cause local politicians to retreat out of fear for their own safety – a threatening scenario.

“If people no longer get involved at the first level of democracy, in the over 11,000 municipalities in Germany,” he said, then people will get the impression that democracy no longer works. “And if we no longer trust locally that this democratic state will continue to function, we will actually have a huge problem in Germany.”

This article was originally written in German.

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