Marburg (dpa / lhe) – According to experts, the major raid against a group of so-called Reich citizens should be an opportunity to sharpen the view of the scene, especially in the cities and communities. “We need to raise awareness at the municipal level that this movement exists and we should use a certain amount of local effort to ensure that such foreign-looking movements are taken very seriously and not downplayed as cranks,” said Reiner Becker, head of the Democracy Center Hesse, on Thursday of the German Press Agency.
Because in the municipal administrations, members of the scene are often the first to be noticed, for example when they do not accept official notifications or refuse an identity card. But not only in the cities and communities, but in general, the focus should be more on prevention and political education, said Becker in Marburg. The Democracy Center is located at the university there.
According to the federal prosecutor, the “Reichsbürger” group, which was targeted by the raid on Wednesday, is suspected of having formed a terrorist organization that wanted to use armed force to install a new government and would have accepted the dead. A suspected ringleader was arrested in Frankfurt.
“It’s very worrying that parts of the scene are radicalizing themselves and wanting and planning something like an overthrow,” Becker continued. This can be explained to some extent “by the partial socio-political upheavals of recent years.”
According to Becker, the scene in Hesse, with around 1,000 members, is anything but small. It is more of a diffuse, diverse network with many nodes that also reach into organized right-wing extremism or the esoteric scene. It is explosive that the hitherto relatively isolated Reich citizens have found new “opportunity areas” in recent years. As an example, the expert cited that supporters of the scene not only marched along as a matter of course at some lateral thinker demonstrations in Hesse, but also stood on stages.
