According to the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) Office for the Protection of the Constitution, extremists in Germany are exploiting the energy crisis for their own purposes. They organized themselves primarily via messenger services such as Telegram, said the head of the NRW constitutional protection, Jürgen Kayser, the “Rheinische Post”. There are hundreds of channels, some with 80,000 subscribers. “I think services like Telegram pose a threat to democracy if the rule of law can no longer enforce its rights. And that’s what we’re currently seeing at Telegram,” he said.
There is currently no evidence of widespread violent riots or popular uprisings. However, “current issues such as the energy crisis are taken up in the extremist scenes,” says Kayser.
The reason for this is that other polarizing issues such as corona protection measures no longer play a major role in society. “And so these people look for topics that concern the population and then use them to radicalize people,” said Kayser. This is currently primarily the topic of energy and a recession that may result from it. The NRW constitutional protection has, among other things, the right-wing extremist and anti-democratic scene in view.
