In a development that will surprise precisely no one who has ever watched a documentary about the fall of the Weimar Republic, German intelligence has revealed they have identified nearly 60,000 far-right extremists lurking in the Fatherland. That is right, dear reader. Sixty thousand people who probably think the Third Reich was 'a bit unfair to Germany, actually.' British intelligence, in a fit of bureaucratic camaraderie, has shared its threat data with Berlin, presumably in exchange for a steady supply of Bratwurst and a promise not to invade Poland again.
Let us parse this number, shall we? 60,000 extremists. That is enough to fill Wembley Stadium with people who think the Holocaust was 'a bit overblown.' It is the population of a small city, but with fewer bookshops and more leather trousers. These are the sort of chaps who keep photos of Merkel in their crosshairs and spend their weekends goose-stepping in the Black Forest.
But wait, there is more. British intelligence sharing threat data. This is the same British intelligence that cannot find a lost USB stick in its own canteen. The same MI5 that spent years watching a potted plant because they thought it was a Russian spy. Now they are the ones handing out threat data. The Home Office has probably sent over a spreadsheet with conditional formatting and a VLOOKUP. 'Here you go, Hans. Column A: angry people. Column B: did they say something about the Jews? If yes, colour it red.'
And yet, the real question is: what took them so long? Germany has known about these people since the Berlin Wall fell. They were the ones shouting 'Ausländer raus' at Turkish grocers. They are the ones who post comments under news articles about immigrants with nary a hint of irony. But now, because someone in the Bundestag got a memo, it is a 'breaking story.'
Meanwhile, in Britain, we have our own far-right extremists. We call them 'Members of Parliament for the Conservative Party.' They are slightly better dressed, but the ideology is the same: a vague nostalgia for a time when the country was 'great' and everyone knew their place. But no, we do not share that data. That would be impolite.
So tip your glass (preferably filled with gin) to the German intelligence services. They have finally noticed the elephant in the room, or rather, the Reichsadler in the beer hall. And to our own intelligence services, who have proven that even in the world of espionage, you can never have too many spreadsheets. Prost, or whatever.
