When climate protection activists take to the streets in Germany, you often see the same message on many posters: system change instead of climate change. That goes too far for the protection of the constitution. He therefore observes some members of the movement.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies parts of the German climate movement as “influenced by extremists”. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” writes that some climate activists are therefore being observed using informational means such as informants. It is expressly not about activists of the “last generation”. Recently, they had regularly stuck themselves on German streets, smeared valuable paintings and climbed the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
These actions and the fatal accident of a Berlin cyclist are not the cause of the observation. The President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, recently even publicly protected the group: “At least at the moment I don’t see that this group is directed against the free democratic basic order, and in this respect it is not an object of observation for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” explained the 62-year-old lawyer Activists committed crimes, “but committing crimes doesn’t make this group extremist.” Even in Berlin, where the activists carry out most of the actions, demands such as a law to save food or an agricultural turnaround are not considered by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, according to the report end of democracy but only as a legitimate reform package.
On the other hand, the constitutional protection officers are said to be much more critical of the work of another group called “Ende Gelände” because they see capitalism as the cause of climate change and are therefore striving for a system change. In Hamburg, the group is to call for protests under the slogan “System change not climate change”, i.e. system change instead of climate change – that is an “unambiguous slogan”, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” quotes the local protection of the constitution as saying.
“Ende Gelände” is also said to be linked to the “Interventionalist Left” group, which considers the expropriation of companies, housing associations and the super-rich to be desirable. This is an “unresolvable contradiction to the Basic Law,” it says.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is also of the opinion that climate protection for individual groups is only an excuse for their actions. In fact, with their supposed commitment to climate protection, they would want to “shift democratic discourse”.
