BERLIN (Reuters) - Membership in a network of far-right groups that claim allegiance to the pre-war German Reich surged in 2017, Germany’s domestic intelligence service said…
The number of Reichsbuerger - “Reich Citizens” - movement adherents, who say the modern-day Federal Republic of Germany is illegitimate, rose by 65 percent, the agency said in its annual report issued on Tuesday…
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Guilt by Association?
Many of the Reichsbuerger, who say they still owe allegiance to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich defeated in World War Two, have affinities with the violent far-right milieu from which the NSU killers sprung.
>the reference is to the 3 member group "National Socialist Underground" that went on a political crime spree between 2000 - 2007
900 Nazi Extremists
''The German government regards only about five percent of the group as “extremists’ but that was a rise of almost 80 percent from the previous year - from 500 in 2016 to 900 last year.
Annuda Shoah
“There are elements and patterns of argument pointing to anti-Semitic ideology (in these groups),” the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (the government's) annual report said, adding that the majority of the 16,500 groups’ members were (adult) men…
Gun Ownership among these Germans
Many Reichsbuerger and Selbstverwalter citizens own guns and around 7 percent have weapons permits, compared to 2 percent of the population overall, the report showed.
“In 2017 around 1,100 members of the Reichsbuerger and Selbstverwalter (Reuters mixes apples with oranges) obtained a gun license, posing a high-risk group within the scene which is drawing the attention of security authorities.”
Despite the increase in the numbers of identified far-right sympathizers, far-right violent crime dropped 34 percent overall in 2017, the report showed.
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