The Guardian Today in Focus: What's behind the rise of Germany's far right?

A terrorist attack in Hanau is just the latest incident of far-right violence in Germany in recent years. It left local residents outraged, with many questioning the effectiveness of the police and security services in the battle against far-right extremism.

The Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief Philip Oltermann tells Anushka Asthana that this latest attack comes at a worrying time for Germany. There is political upheaval as Angela Merkel prepares to depart as chancellor, and meanwhile the far-right AfD is making gains. He says that while many in Germany’s security services were focusing on the rising threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, they have been accused of downplaying the threat from neo-Nazi groups.

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Politico: Controversial German domestic spy chief sent into retirement

The embattled head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency will be forced into immediate early retirement as a result of “unacceptable” statements, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced Monday.[...]

Maaßen’s position as president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) first came into question after he contradicted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s assertion that there had been a “manhunt” against foreigners in Chemnitz following the death of a German man, allegedly at the hands of at least two refugees.

Maaßen had also expressed doubts about the authenticity of a video showing local men chasing refugees — but was unable to substantiate his claims. [...]

In his speech last month to fellow European intelligence leaders, Maaßen claimed “radical” members of the SPD had seen his Chemnitz remarks as a chance to provoke a split within the coalition. He also spoke of “idealistic, naive and leftist foreigner and security policies,” and doubled down on his remarks questioning reports of a “manhunt” in Chemnitz.

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Politico: Merkel loses key ally in conservative rebellion

Most observers were convinced Kauder, with the support of Merkel and other party leaders, would easily beat Brinkhaus, who has virtually no public profile. Brinkhaus, who witnesses described as surprised by his own victory, received 125 votes to Kauder’s 112. [...]

In Germany’s stability-obsessed political culture such open rebellions, especially within the governing party, are rare. But conservatives in Merkel’s bloc — an alliance of two parties, the Christian Democrats and Bavaria’s Christian Social Union — have long taken issue with her handling of migration and other issues, such as the eurozone bailouts, grumbling that she has taken their party too far to the left. [...]

The turmoil over the botched dismissal of Germany’s domestic spy chief added to growing frustration over her leadership, however. The affair marked the second time since July that the so-called grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats came to the brink of collapse, largely due to infighting within Merkel’s camp that she struggled to bring under control.

The fact that Brinkhaus even decided to challenge Kauder was itself considered a small sensation, as it marked only the second time since 1973 that more than one candidate has run for the position. While the parliamentary leadership post is considered a key job within the center-right hierarchy, MPs normally leave the selection to top party officials.

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Spiegel: How the Alternative for Germany Has Transformed the Country

The AfD stands for an unprecedented political success, but also for a history of radicalization. Like any new party, breaking taboos is the AfD's lifeblood, but its shift to the right has continued unabated. And anyone who has stood in the party's way has gotten steamrolled. First it hit Lucke, the well-behaved co-founder and former party head; he was overthrown by the much more politically shrewd Frauke Petry. [...]

In January, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published a book titled, "How Democracies Die." In it, they write that in the decades since the end of the Cold War, liberal systems haven't been overthrown through force and military coups alone. More than anything else, democracy has been undermined non-violently through the election of anti-democratic politicians. [...]

For years, politics in Germany had been shaped by the old polarity between left and right. But those days are over. The question of identity now seems to be more important, which seemingly scrambles the party system. Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party is creating a new movement called "Aufstehen," German for "Stand Up," that she hopes will be a magnet for voters who would like to see a bigger welfare state and fewer immigrants. The move places additional pressure on the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has fluctuated between a culture of welcoming refugees and warnings of a loss of control since the refugee crisis. The business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), meanwhile, has morphed into a law and order party. And the only thing still holding the CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party, together is the fear of losing power. The only parties that seem to be profiting from the new political complexities are the Greens and the AfD. [...]

Slowly but surely, the AfD is also advancing into areas that possess even more powerful weapons than the military: the media and the world of culture. As the third-largest group in German parliament, the AfD has access to a number of administrative bodies, from the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the Stasi Records Agency, which administers the vast number of files kept by the East German secret police on its own citizens. When it comes to choosing its representatives for such bodies, the AfD sometimes seems to be intentionally trying to provoke. For example, for the board of the Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, which fights for gay rights, the AfD chose Nicole Höchst, who believes that homosexuals have an abnormal inclination to pedophilia.

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The Atlantic: Germany’s Summer of Identity Crisis

Over the summer, such questions have plagued Germany. A showdown between Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer over immigration policy nearly brought down Germany’s fragile government and highlighted the pressure the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has put on the country’s traditional parties. Soon after that, the German soccer player Mesut Özil, who is of Turkish descent, quit the national team over what he deemed discriminatory treatment from team members and fans alike. His comments about the everyday racism in Germany directed toward those who don’t look traditionally “German” prompted a wave of national soul-searching about what it actually means to be German. And the photos from Chemnitz forced difficult conversations about whether the country has learned from its past, and about the ways in which major cultural and economic differences in the former Communist East still persist. The situation shows “how nervous everybody is, and how little it takes to get the whole nation into a sense of general hysteria,” Jan Techau, the director of the German Marshall Fund’s Europe program, told me. [...]

Maassen’s comments were also particularly controversial because Germany’s intelligence services have a “problematic” history of being negligent when it comes to the far right, Matthias Quent, the director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena, told me. The Verfassungsschutz was created when the country was still divided and West German officials saw communism as the primary threat. In the years since, it has been criticized for not acting against right-wing extremists with haste. After the AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote in Germany’s federal elections last year, that issue took on an increased urgency. Experts have gotten “the impression that the Verfassungsschutz, [when it comes to] the right, is blind,” Quent told me. “It has in its historical tradition this very special focus on the left, but lets the far right do what the far right is doing.”

After his interview with Bild, Maassen quickly became a hero for supporters of the far right, who viewed him as a brave truth teller willing to defy the so-called lügenpresse (“lying press,” a term that traces its roots back to the Nazi era). At a demonstration in Köthen, a city in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt, one protester held up a sign saying thank you for the truth, mr. maassen.

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