GERMANY: Attack & more – 9th May 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 9th of May twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany. This will be a shorter episode.

On Saturday the 4th, four men attacked and severely injured a politician from the Social Democratic party (or SPD) in the city of Dresden. Matthias Ecke, the leading candidate for the SPD in the state of Saxony for the European elections, had to be hospitalized. He posted a video on his social media pages showing his recovery and his gratitude to his supporters.

The attack on Ecke isn’t an isolated event. Just minutes before the assult, presumably the same group attacked an aid campaign of the political party the Greens not far away from the scene of the assault on Ecke. And on Thursday the 2nd, two politicians of the Greens were attacked in the city of Essen, North-Rhein Westfalia.

Just one day after the attack on Ecke, on Sunday the 5th, a seventeen-year-old German man turned himself in and confessed to being one of the attackers. By Monday the 6th, the police had identified all four suspects, but hadn’t taken any of them into custody. According to the police, none of the men posed a significant flight risk to justify an arrest. So far, the police say that the man who confessed was a right extremist.

Also on Sunday, thousands took to the streets in Dresden to protest against this climate of political violence and showed their solidarity and support for Ecke. Around three thousand people took part in the demonstration, including several high-ranking politicians of the SPD and the Greens.

On another note, in January, the SPD fell victim to a cyber-attack from the Russian group Fancy Bear or ATP28. The group took control of many email accounts and an unspecified amount of personal data and emails were lost. On Friday, the 3rd, the Federal Government revealed the names of the perpetrators and announced that they now knew that the attack came from Russia. It seems that the same group was responsible for the twenty fifteen hack of the Bundestag, the national parliament. The German government assumes that behind that group, the Russian spy agency GRU is pulling the strings.

Moving on, on Tuesday, the 7th, the Belgian police raided the offices of Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament from the right-extremist party Alternative for Germany, or AFD. Jian G, one of Krah’s closest advisors and employees, was arrested two weeks ago for espionage charges. He is accused of spying for the Chinese Government. Krah is only listed as a witness in the case against his former advisor, but the police might have found incriminating evidence against him in the raids. Krah was surprised at how long it took for the police to organize the raid since the arrest of his former employee was two weeks ago. According to the police, the delay was due to bureaucratic hurdles, since they needed permission from the parliament for the raid and had to ask for assistance from the Belgian police.

From Brussels to Berlin, where the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, held its national party convention over the weekend. The Christian-Democrats are trying to find their place in a much-changed global political landscape and grapple with their first years in the opposition since the beginning of the Merkler era in the early two thousands. To do so, they have written their first fundamental political program since two thousand seven. In the document, they called for a re-introduction of the draft, which the government abandoned in twenty eleven. The CDU positioned itself in favor of a contingent draft, which would mean that all young men and women would be encouraged to serve in the military, but not everyone will have to join the army; only the ones that want to.

Staying in Berlin, the city-state is the country’s most ardent enforcer of unconditional German support for Israel. The police routinely break up pro-Palestinian demonstrations and protest camps, or ban political figures from around the globe from entering Germany. Now, the senate in Berlin is discussing again the introduction of an Antisemitism-clause which would attach funding from the state for cultural institutions or social projects to a pledge against antisemitism. Critics fear an infringement on free speech and artistic freedom. It isn’t clear yer if the clause in its current form will go through closer constitutional inspection. However, many experts say that if the constitutional court challenges the clause, it will probably be thrown out.

And to close this edition, the governing coalition highly contested last year’s budget, and next year’s is shaping up to be another point of contention. On Monday the 6th, at a press conference, it became clear that most of the other ministers are not comfortable with Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s strict cuts to their budgets. It seems that the he might have lost this round of the power struggle, as he extended the deadline for the ministers to hand in their budget plans. Last year, Lindner had the backing of the SPD chancellor Scholz, but since this year the most vocal critics of the minister of finance’s policies are all SPD ministers, it’s not yet clear if Lindner will again have the chancellor’s backing.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks your joining us!

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