Berlin, a city that once prided itself on having more currywurst stands than political crises, has woken up to a truly staggering piece of intelligence. The Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s venerable spook shop, has dropped a dossier so thick with dread that even the most stoic of Berliners had to put down their steins. Their warning: there are nearly 60,000 far-right extremists currently scurrying about the Fatherland, like a nest of cockroaches that have been fattened on election leaflets and emboldened by anonymity.
Let us sit with that number, shall we? 60,000. That’s enough to fill the Allianz Arena in Munich with a crowd that would boo any player off the pitch for having a tan. These are not just your garden variety Leberkäse-munching malcontents; these are people armed with a worldview that would make a goose-stepping grandpappy blush. The BND, in their wisdom, has classified these citizens into categories: the violent, the volatile, and the merely appalling. But let’s be honest, if you’re in such a list, you’re probably not planning a bake sale for multiculturalism.
Imagine the bureaucracy required to track 60,000 potential troublemakers. That is a spreadsheet of epic proportions, a Kafkaesque nightmare of paperwork where the only thing moving faster than the databases is the radicalisation rate. And yet, as the report drifts through the corridors of power, one wonders: what will be done? Will they assign a social worker to each one? Perhaps a nice chat over a Kaffee und Kuchen? Or will the response be more Germanic in its directness? The report itself is characteristically thorough, detailing the shift from online bile to on-street violence, but the proposed response is as underwhelming as a warm beer at Oktoberfest.
Let’s talk about the profile of your average modern German extremist. He is not the shaven-headed oaf of yesteryear, swigging cheap vodka and reciting slogans from a pamphlet. Oh no. Today’s specimen wears smart casual, quotes Nietzsche out of context, and has a Twitter account with more followers than sense. They are organised, they are patient, and they are proliferating like a virus in a world of weak metaphors and weaker governance. The BND report notes that roughly one third of these individuals are considered potentially violent. That is 20,000 people who have decided that their preferred form of political discourse involves the application of knuckles to skulls.
Now, one must ask: why is this news to anyone? The far right has been knocking on Germany’s door like a persistent Jehovah’s Witness, except instead of pamphlets on salvation, they bring manifestos on racial purity. Perhaps the BND thought that by slapping a fresh coat of data on an old problem, the public would suddenly care. But we’ve all been down this road. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, except the driver is wearing lederhosen and shouting about the glories of the Reich.
The timing is, as always, impeccable. Just as the German government is twiddling its thumbs over energy policy and the cost of bratwurst, this report emerges to remind them that the real fire is burning under their own seats. What will be the response? A commission? A task force? A sternly worded letter to the heads of the extremist groups? One imagines the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, standing at a podium, declaring with a straight face that ‘we take this very seriously,’ while behind her, a party member is caught doing a Hitler salute in the cafeteria.
There is a deep, dark irony here. Germany, the nation that perfected the art of remembering its past, now finds itself staring into an abyss of its own making. 60,000 is not just a number; it is an indictment. It is a neon sign that says: ‘Your democracy has a mould problem, and it’s spreading.’ The extremists don’t need to win; they just need to persist. And persist they will, as long as there is a corner of the internet where a grievance can fester into a grenade.
So what do we do with this report? We can file it alongside all the others. We can nod sagely and then change the subject to something less depressing, like the price of a round in Berlin. But the 60,000 are out there, probably already planning their next rally, their next chat forum, their next unspeakable act of hatred. And the BND, the government, the whole bloody machinery of state, can only count them and hope. A more sobering thought I cannot imagine.
For now, I shall raise a glass of gin, the only reliable disinfectant for such news, and toast to the madness of it all. Germany, you beautiful, broken beast, you never cease to astonish. God save us from those who would save us.
