Janine Wissler, chairwomen of the Hesse state parliamentary faction of the Left Party, has repeatedly received email death threats signed “NSU 2.0.” Her personal data had earlier been retrieved on a police service computer.
NSU 2.0 is a reference to the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU), whose members were responsible for the murder of at least nine people with an immigrant background and one policewoman between 2000 and 2006.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—SGP) and the World Socialist Web Site strongly condemn these attacks, which, according to current knowledge, are based on a right-wing extremist conspiracy within the Hesse police force.
On Saturday, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported the death threats made against Wissler and described the results of its own research. According to the report, a police computer in the state capital, Wiesbaden, had retrieved private data of the Left Party politician in February. Shortly thereafter, Janine Wissler received two letters containing abuse and threats, as well as personal data that is not publicly accessible.
The letters evinced similarities to threats made against Frankfurt lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız, who represented the family of an NSU murder victim in court. Since the summer of 2018, Başay-Yıldız has received several threatening letters containing coarse insults, which were also signed “NSU 2.0.”
In response to the Frankfurter Rundschau article, Wissler again received a death threat by email.
On Thursday, Hesse State Interior Minister Peter Beuth (Christian Democratic Union—CDU) was forced to issue a press release in which he admitted that a right-wing network in the police force could no longer be ruled out. The signature “NSU 2.0” raised this suspicion, Beuth said. He announced—as he had done before—a “thorough investigation.” He said he would appoint a special investigator to relentlessly probe the threats against Wissler and the lawyer Başay-Yıldız.
The investigations carried out so far, which have all come to nothing, indicate what all this means. The NSU murders took place under the eyes of the domestic secret service and at least two dozen of their Confidential Informants. However, despite years of legal proceedings and numerous committees of inquiry, the close involvement of the secret service in this series of murders has been suppressed.
This cover-up has strengthened the right-wing terrorist networks in the state apparatus. After the first “NSU 2.0” letter to Başay-Yıldız threatening to “slaughter” her then two-year-old daughter, a right-wing extremist chat group was uncovered in the Frankfurt city police. The police officers exchanged pictures of Hitler and swastikas. A policewoman from this group had retrieved the data used in the threatening letter about Ms. Başay-Yıldız’ family and her home address from the internal police computer. In December 2018, six police officers, five of them in Frankfurt's Precinct 1, were suspended from duty.
In response, “NSU 2.0” sent a second threatening letter to Başay-Yıldız. The right-wing terrorists felt so secure that they openly expressed their connection to the Hesse police. They wrote, “You [vulgar insult] are obviously not aware of what you have done to our police colleagues.”
Even then, it was clear that these were not individual cases, but a far-reaching right-wing terrorist conspiracy in the police force. Interior Minister Beuth is now following the same pattern as that pursued by his predecessor, Volker Bouffier (CDU), the current Hesse state premier, in the case of the NSU.
When Halit Yozgat was murdered by the NSU in Kassel in 2006, Bouffier concealed for as long as possible the fact that Andreas Temme, an officer from the Hesse state Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as the secret service is called), responsible for overseeing the Confidential Informants, was present at the scene of the crime. When the matter could no longer be concealed, he granted Temme only limited permission to testify. The relevant files are still under lock and key and are to remain so for another 30 years.
As a result, the right-wing terrorist conspiracy within the state apparatus remained undisturbed. Its next victim was Kassel’s district president, Walter Lübcke (CDU), who was shot in cold blood on the terrace of his house on June 2 of last year. The suspected murderer, Stephan Ernst, frequented the same Kassel neo-Nazi circles as the NSU and had for three decades been known to the police and secret service as a violent right-wing criminal.
The murder of Lübcke was the prelude to a whole series of right-wing terrorist assassination attempts. On 9 October 2019, more than 70 participants in a Yom Kippur celebration in Halle escaped mass murder only by luck. The right-wing extremist assassin Stephan Balliet shot two passers-by after he failed to gain entry to the synagogue.
On 19 February of this year, a right-wing extremist terrorist shot dead nine people in the Hesse city of Hanau and injured six others, some of them seriously. The massacre took place in two shisha bars, which are mainly frequented by immigrants. The investigating federal public prosecutor general spoke of the perpetrator’s “deeply racist attitudes.” A few days earlier, the police had arrested 12 right-wing extremists on suspicion of preparing simultaneous massacres in several mosques.
Right-wing extremist conspiracies in the Army have long been known. Last week, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) was forced to partially dissolve the Special Forces Command (KSK) because more and more details about right-wing terrorist networks have come to light. However, as with the police, the restructuring of the KSK does not serve to combat and eliminate the right-wing networks, but to cover up and maintain them.
Now the right-wing terror is being directed against a politician of the Left Party. This is a serious warning.
Representatives of the government and all parties in the Bundestag (federal parliament) have expressed “great concern” about the death threats against Janine Wissler and have declared their support. They did the same thing after the massacre in Hanau, the assassination in Halle and the cold-blooded murder of Walter Lübcke. As usual, they stressed their “horror,” their “consternation” and their sympathy with the relatives of the victims.
In truth, there is no institution within the entire political establishment—among the parties, the investigating authorities and the judiciary—that is willing and able to stop the right-wing conspiracy in the state apparatus.
The same politicians and parties that are now warning of the “dangers to democracy” have created the ideological climate and political conditions for the right-wing terror. This is directly linked to the return of German great-power politics and a frenzied program of military rearmament, which is being massively promoted by the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, supported by all parties in the Bundestag.
To implement this policy, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other extreme right-wing forces have been systematically promoted by the ruling elite. The AfD functions as the political wing of right-wing terrorism. The security apparatus, which is riddled with right-wing networks, is its state wing, and the grand coalition government is its protective umbrella and enabler.
The only way to stop right-wing terror is to mobilise the working class based on an international socialist programme.
Despite its deep political differences with the Left Party, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei calls for the defence of Janine Wissler and active political opposition to the attacks against her. It is high time to stop the conspiracy between the grand coalition, the state apparatus and the extreme right. No return of Germany to aggressive great-power politics! For a socialist programme against fascism and war!