The privileged track of politically motivated violence
The attack suffered Friday evening in Dresden, in eastern Germany, by this MEP, also head of the SPD list in the Saxony region for the European elections in June, is not the first targeting the latter month of political representatives. According to the police, the 41-year-old elected official was “hit” by four strangers while putting up posters. He had to “receive medical treatment in hospital.”
Matthias Ecke was “seriously injured and requires surgery,” said the Saxony SPD federation. Before this attack, a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Green party, in the same street, was also hit “with punches and kicks”, said the police, who suspect the same group of attackers. The investigation was entrusted to the State Protection services, meaning that the possibility of politically motivated violence is favored.
“If a politically motivated attack (…) is confirmed a few weeks before the European elections, this serious act of violence constitutes a serious attack against democracy,” reacted Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. She invokes the responsibility of “extremists and populists, who fuel a climate of increasing violence through totally disproportionate verbal attacks”.
“The seeds sown by the AfD are germinating”
SPD officials in Saxony directly questioned the role of the far-right AfD party, which has seen strong growth in the polls over the past year. “The seeds sown by the AfD and other right-wing extremists are germinating. Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly consider us, the democrats, as game (…),” lamented Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional leaders of the SPD party. The AfD leadership also condemned the attack on Matthias Ecke.
Questioned by AFP, residents of Dresden confided their shock. “I find this terrible. They want to put up election posters here or are traveling here, and then people beat them up. This is not possible,” said Matthias Janzen, 40.
The last of a sad list
Thursday evening, two elected officials from the Greens, a party which governs with the SPD, were attacked in Essen, in western Germany, and one of them hit in the face. Last Saturday, a few dozen demonstrators attacked the vice-president of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt, an elected environmentalist, after a public event in eastern Germany. His car was blocked and police reinforcements had to be called.
These attacks are the result of “discourse, of the atmosphere created, of bringing people against each other and of pitting them against each other,” lamented Olaf Scholz. “We must oppose it together.”
According to Armin Schuster, Minister of the Interior of Saxony, where an important regional vote will be held on September 1, 112 politically motivated crimes linked to the elections have been recorded in the Land since the start of the year – including 30 against incumbents. political functions or elective mandates. “What is absolutely worrying is the intensity with which the attacks are currently increasing,” Armin Schuster said on Saturday.
At the end of April, the Greens of the Land of Saxony reported “four incidents in half a day” against party poster pasters, denouncing “a new level of escalation”. “This outbreak of violence is a warning,” said Head of State Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Saturday.
The head of EU diplomacy Josep Borrell condemned “unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives”. According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed in 2023 against political representatives in Germany compared to 1,806 the previous year, but 2,840 in 2021, the year of legislative elections.
