Police on Their Way to the Right?<\/strong> The issue of police and right-wing extremism is en vogue in the media. This article demonstrates the connections between three topics: the (lacking) investigative attention paid to right-wing motives; the police approach in dealing with far-right offenders; and the existence of far-right networks and racist attitudes within the police. In the name of combatting right-wing extremism, security authorities are endowed with expanding powers that are insufficiently applied for this purpose but allow for the criminalization of other phenomena labeled as extremism. This gap between institutional expansion and reluctancy towards substantial change explains right-wing attitudes and networks that reach into security authorities, and the exploration and addressing of which has not been politically implementable so far.<\/p>\n Day X for Civil War. Investigating the \u201cNordkreuz\u201d Network<\/strong> In the summer of 2017, a network of (in part former) soldiers and police officers is made public in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania whose members are suspected of planning to kidnap and kill leftists. Among other things, they allegedly prepared for civil war in chat groups with names like \u201cNordkreuz\u201d. More than three years later, it must be assumed that large parts of this network are still undetected and remain potentially dangerous. The article analyzes the inadequate investigation and the lacking political will that are responsible.<\/p>\n No Nazis \u2013 in the Civil Service<\/strong> After numerous cases of right-wing activities in the security agencies were made public, more and more federal states are responding by expanding the vetting of applicants and reintroducing standard queries to the domestic security service. However, a reissue of the government decree on radicals (\u201cRadikalenbeschluss\u201d) would not be promising.<\/p>\n Block, Defer, Ignore. Disciplinary Action on Far-Right Police Officers<\/strong> One police scandal is followed by the next in Germany. Most of the time, police officers have little to worry about, even though the applicable disciplinary laws provide for countermeasures. The fact that there are hardly any consequences in most cases is not so much an issue of lacking legal possibilities, but rather of structural prevalent \u2018esprit de corps\u2019 and self-reinforcing tendencies.<\/p>\n Belated Ban<\/strong> For decades, the neo-Nazi network surrounding \u201cBlood &Honour\u201d and \u201cCombat 18\u201d has been playing an important part in international and German right-wing terrorism. After denying the existence of \u201cCombat 18 Deutschland\u201d for more than 20 years, and an extraordinarily restrained approach by the domestic intelligence service, the Interior Ministry banned the organization in January 2020. The ban comes belated, and only covers a fraction of the militant network still in operation.<\/p>\n Right-Wing Attacks in Berlin-Neuk\u00f6lln<\/strong> For years, a series of right-wing attacks has been ripping through Berlin\u2019s Neuk\u00f6lln district. Authorities are slow to investigate. Franziska Nedelmann is a lawyer representing one victim of the attacks. Lukas Theune is a lawyer representing the family of BurakBekta\u015f, whose murder in 2012 has not been resolved to this day.<\/p>\n Anti-Terrorism at a Snail\u2019s Pace<\/strong> Only after the attack in Christchurch, the European Commission and the Council began to take seriously the threat of violent far-right extremism. But no progress has been made in the phenomenon\u2019s cross-border combatting. Some member states are slowing down the passing of political resolutions and classify terrorist attacks as mere \u201cextremism\u201d.<\/p>\n A Number For Everybody<\/strong> The federal government has proposed a bill that would utilize the tax identification number, which has been individually assigned since 2008, as a universal identification number for the whole population. This unique identification mark is supposed to accelerate the digitalization of public administration while preventing mistakes and erroneous multiple entries. The new law would effectively create a personal license number, allowing for the personalized aggregation of data collected by different agencies. Thereby, old blueprints from the old federal republic would finally be implemented \u2013 while drawing on the traditions of the GDR.<\/p>\n Chronologies Instead of Critical Reappraisal<\/strong> When dealing with issues of domestic security, police unions are an important voice ever-present in public. In recent years, several works have been published depicting the history of these unions in the German federal republic. However, the studies largely confine themselves to simple chronologies of the developments, thereby missing the opportunity to discuss and examine union history in the context of societal change.<\/p>\n Fatal Gunshots by the Police in 2019<\/strong> According to official data published by the Interior Minsters\u2019 Conference, German police purposefully fired at individuals 62 times and at objects in 42 cases. Police shootings injured 30 people and killed 15. Press evaluation by Cilip retraced 13 of those cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thematic Focus: All the Right Things Police on Their Way to the Right? by Dirk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cilip-124","category-summaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-dev.daten.cool\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Dirk Burczyk<\/p>\n
\nby Sebastian Wehrhahn and Martina Renner<\/p>\n
\nby Sarah Schulz<\/p>\n
\nby Laura Wisser<\/p>\n
\nby Hendrik Puls<\/p>\n
\nAn interview with Franziska Nedelmann and Lukas Theune (by Benjamin Derin and Friederike Wegner)<\/p>\n
\nby Matthias Monroy<\/p>\nNon-Thematic Contributions<\/h4>\n
\nby Dirk Burczyk<\/p>\n
\nby Malte Meier<\/p>\n
\nby Otto Diederichs<\/p>\n