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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDonald Trump : inspiration for mass shooters the world over
Mr. Trumps appeal to the political fringe has now added a new and unpredictable element to German politics at a time when the domestic intelligence agency has identified far-right extremism and far-right terrorism as the biggest risks to German democracy.
The authorities have only recently woken up to a problem of far-right infiltration in the police and military. Over the past 15 months, far-right terrorists killed a regional politician on his front porch near the central city of Kassel, attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle and shot dead nine people of immigrant descent in the western city of Hanau. Mr. Trump featured in the manifesto of the Hanau killer, who praised his America First policy.
In Germany, as in the United States, Mr. Trump has become an inspiration to these fringe groups. Among them are not only long-established hard-right and neo-Nazi movements, but also now followers of QAnon, the internet conspiracy theory popular among some of Mr. Trumps supporters in the United States that hails him as a hero and liberator.
Germanys QAnon community, barely existent when the pandemic first hit in March, may now be the biggest outside the United States along with Britain, analysts who track its most popular online channels say.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/world/europe/germany-trump-far-right.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Eliot Rosewater
(31,109 posts)Europeans?
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)Trump Emerges as Inspiration for Germanys Far Right
Among German conspiracy theorists, ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, the American president is surfacing as a rallying cry, or even as a potential liberator.
(...) It was only the latest evidence that Trump is emerging as a kind of cult figure in Germanys increasingly varied far-right scene.
Trump has become a savior figure, a sort of great redeemer for the German far right, said Miro Dittrich, an expert on far-right extremism at the Berlin-based Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation.
More here.