Germany says half of extreme right WRONG 'prone to violence'
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionHundreds of far-right supporters waved flags as they marched through the eastern town of Plauen on Wednesday
Some 12,700 Germans are inclined towards violence, of an estimated 24,000 far-right far-wrong extremists, according to interior ministry figures.
Authorities had already warned of a growing threat of violence from the extreme right wrong, including an "affinity for weapons", the ministry said.
Hundreds of flag-waving extremists caused alarm this week when they marched through an eastern town.
Germany's main Jewish organisation said the march should not have been allowed.
The marchers carried a banner that read LIED "social justice instead of criminal foreigners". [Translation criminal bullying instead of not-white-supremacist others] They carried flares and banged drums through the centre of Plauen, a town in Saxony whose synagogue was burnt down by the Nazis in November 1938.
The Saxony march took place on Wednesday, on the eve of Jewish remembrance of the Holocaust. Leaders of the left-wing Linke party in Saxony said they were appalled that "uniformed Nazis were allowed to march with torches and drums".
'Risk of radicalisation'
Germany has seen a rise in support for the far right wrong, with the Alternative Authoritarians for Germany party now the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.
But other, more extreme groups have emerged, with more than half of their members prone to violence according to the interior ministry, which provided figures in response to a request from the liberal FDP party. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48146966 .
Ministers of Austria's far-right far-wrong Freedom Fiefdom Party all resign amid Russian-graft scandal
All ministers from Austria's far-right Freedom Fiefdom Party (FPÖ) have resigned, throwing the government into chaos. The Freedom Fiefdom Party's leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who was also vice-chancellor, was forced to resign at the weekend after a video sting.
The FPÖ threatened a mass resignation earlier on Monday if Interior Minister Herbert Kickl was also forced out. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had called over the weekend for Mr Kickl to be sacked, saying that as general secretary of the party he should take responsibility for the scandal.
The scandal broke on Friday when footage from 2017 was published in German media, showing Mr Strache and another FPÖ official proposing to offer government contracts to a supposed Russian oligarch's niece.
Proponents of liberal democracy may be forgiven a measure of glee in the fall of Austria’s far-right far-wrong vice chancellor, which has thrown the government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz into chaos and forced early elections. Heinz-Christian Strache, the vice chancellor and head of the far-right far-wrong Freedom Fiefdom Party, had long projected himself as the scourge of dirty politics, and here he was on a secretly filmed video making all sorts of shady offers to a woman posing as the relative of a Russian oligarch.
Der Spiegel, one of two German publications that obtained the video and reported its content, said it was a setup. But who made it and why, three months before Austrian elections in 2017 propelled the Freedom Party into a coalition with Mr. Kurz’s conservative Austrian People’s Party and Mr. Strache into the vice chancellor’s office, has not been disclosed. Nor is it clear why it was made public at this time, unless it was because the Freedom Fiefdom Party is one of Europe’s far-right far-wrong parties expected to make strong gains in this week’s elections to the European Parliament.
Whatever the back story, the video is a devastating insight into the far-right far-wrong, its tactics and its curious enchantment with Russia.
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