As I said this has been going on for ages, they wanted a excuse , they found one, but this is nothing new and nothing particular to Frau Merkel.
Activities since 1992
In 1991, German neo-Nazis attacked accommodations for refugees and migrant workers in Hoyerswerda (Hoyerswerda riots), Schwedt, Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt and Elsterwerda[citation needed], and in 1992, xenophobic riots broke out in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. Neo-Nazis were involved in the murders of three Turkish girls in a 1992 arson attack in Mölln (Schleswig-Holstein), in which nine other people were injured.[2]
German statistics show that in 1991, there were 849 hate crimes, and in 1992 there were 1,485 concentrated in the eastern Bundesländer. After 1992, the numbers decreased, although they rose sharply in subsequent years. In four decades of the former East Germany, 17 people were murdered by far right groups.[3]
A 1993 arson attack by far-right skinheads on the house of a Turkish family in Solingen resulted in the deaths of two women and three girls, as well as in severe injuries for seven other people.[4] In the aftermath, anti-racist protests precipitated massive neo-Nazi counter-demonstrations and violent clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists.[citation needed]
In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Bombing of Dresden in World War II, a radical left group, the Anti-Germans (political current) started an annual rallye praising the bombing on the grounds that so many of the city's civilians had supported Nazism.[5] Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neo-Nazis started holding demonstrations on the same date.[citation needed] In 2009, the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland youth group of the NPD organised a march but urrounded by policemen, the 6,000 neo-Nazis were not allowed to leave their meeting point. At the same time, some 15,000 people with white roses assembled in the streets holding hands to demonstrate against Nazism, and to create an alternative “memorial day” of war victims.[6]
In 2004, the National Democratic Party of Germany won 9.2% in the Saxony state election, 2004, and 1.6% of the nationwide vote in the German federal election, 2005. In the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election, 2006 the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and thus also state representation.[7] In 2004, the NPD had 5,300 registered party members.[8] Over the course of 2006, the NPD processed roughly 1,000 party applications which put the total membership at 7,000. The DVU has 8,500 members.[9]
In 2007, the Verfassungsschutz (Federal German intelligence) estimated the number of potentially right extremist individuals in Germany was 31,000 of which about 10,000 were classified as potentially violent (gewaltbereit).[10]
In 2008, unknown perpetrators smashed cars with Polish registrations, breaking windows in L18 kilometers from Szczecin, about 200 Poles settledcknitz, 18 kilometers from Szczecin, about 200 Poles live. Supporters of the NPD party were suspected to be behind anti-Polish incidents, per Gazeta Wyborcza.[11]
In 2011, eleven years after the first of 10 murders on Turkish-rooted people between 2000 and 2007 a hitherto unknown Neo-nazi group, the National Socialist Underground could finally be linked to it.[12]
In 2011, Federal German intelligence reported 25,000 right-wing extremists, including 5,600 neo-Nazis.[13] In the same report, 15,905 crimes committed in 2010 were classified as far-right motivated, compared to 18,750 in 2009; these crimes included 762 acts of violence in 2010 compared to 891 in 2009.[13] While the overall numbers had declined, the Verfassungsschutz indicated that both the number of neo-Nazis and the potential for violent acts have increased, especially among the growing number of Autonome Nationalisten ("Independent Nationalists") who gradually replace the declining number of Nazi Skinheads.[13]
In the 2014 European Parliament election, the NPD won their first ever seat in the European Parliament with 1% of the vote.[14]