We are all awash with shocking and enraging news, but this New York Times report about the infiltration of Germany’s special forces and army by right-wing extremists is deeply chilling and alarming. The narrative at times reads like a paranoid thriller, or the sketch of an an alternative universe where modern day Nazis plot a comeback in Germany, yet the nightmarish reality appears undeniable; after years of downplaying the threat and the existence of extremist networks,
The government is now waking up. Cases of far-right extremists in the military and the police, some hoarding weapons and explosives, have multiplied alarmingly [. . .]
Most concerning to the authorities is that the extremists appear to be concentrated in the military unit that is supposed to be the most elite and dedicated to the German state, the special forces, known by their German acronym, the KSK.
Just this last week, the German government disbanded one of its four special forces units, after determining that it was too compromised by right-wing members to continue in existence.
The situation only gets more dizzying, as it turns out that “German authorities are concerned that the problem may be far larger and that other security institutions have been infiltrated as well.” Such concerns seem grounded in reality, as “Over the past 13 months, far-right terrorists have assassinated a politician, attacked a synagogue and shot dead nine immigrants and German descendants of immigrants.” There are even worries that the military’s own counter-intelligence apparatus has been compromised.
Many right-wing soldiers are apparently planning for “Day X,” a time in the not-distant future when Germany’s current order will supposedly collapse. They appear driven by anti-Muslim paranoia, with the recent waves of Syrian and other Middle Eastern refugees viewed as an assault on the country and seeded with terrorists. The links to neo-Nazi organizations, and the way some KSK commandos engaged in Nazi salutes and sang SS songs, are grotesque, but more insidious for me is the overall anti-democratic and fascistic spirit of this sinister movement. After perpetrating the most unforgivable and haunting horrors in all of human history, for Germany to be wrestling with another right-wing movement dedicated to violence, demonization of ethnic minorities, and notions of national purity feels less like déjà vu and more like the beginnings of a waking nightmare. The Times report suggests that the German government downplayed signs of a right-wing movement for many years, which raises troubling questions about that country’s willingness to face the demons and descendants of its own past.
It is also more than unsettling that there would be a growing number of Germans who look back at Nazism and the horrors of World War II, and find any form of inspiration rather than the ultimate cautionary tale.
Other threads of the story seem worth pursuing. There are suggestions that some of the right-wing soldiers were influenced by their deployments to Afghanistan, perhaps feeding their anti-Muslim sentiments, raising a scenario in which the jihadists of September 11 may be indirectly responsible for the rise of neo-Nazism in Germany. There’s also the intriguing data point that half the suspected extremists in the KSK are from eastern Germany; it seems possible that the east, only part of Germany since 1990, has less of a democratic tradition that might otherwise dent the appeal of right-wing appeals.
We may be necessarily absorbed in our own existential fights right now, but the rise of heavily-armed, fascistic extremist networks in Germany, much less those that have infiltrated the armed forces, should very much be of concern to Americans. We did not lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers crushing Nazi Germany so that Nazism’s descendants could threaten the Germany democracy that we helped build, and defended through the Cold War. We may not have needed yet another reason to defeat Trump and destroy Trumpism, but we’ve got it: in this time of threat, democracy-loving Germans need a United States that fights right-wing extremism, not a president who cheers it on.