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"Many civil servants feel that something has gone wrong, which is expressed in sympathies for the right-wing"
A spokesperson for Germany’s police union has confirmed the fears of a prominent conservative politician that large chunks of the police force are sympathetic to the far right. Some are even standing for elections on the AfD ticket.
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The police union comments came in response to Friedrich Merz a politician with Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party, who raised concerns that the police and army are being lost to the far-right, speaking Sunday he said; “We are apparently losing parts of the Bundeswehr [army] to the AfD. We are losing parts of the Bundespolizei [national police] to the AfD,"
In response, deputy chairman of Germany’s police union, Joerg Radek told the German newspaper Rheinische Post, on Sunday that Merz is likely to be right. He said, "Many civil servants feel that something has gone wrong, which is expressed in sympathies for the right-wing nationalist party spectrum...As a result, federal police officers have developed sympathies for the AfD. One late political consequence of this is that federal police are now running for office in state elections for the AfD,"
The Afd, which is the third largest party in parliament, takes a hardline anti-migrant stance and at the beginning of 2019 staged a mass walkout at the Bavarian parliament during a remembrance service for the Holocaust.
Germany’s police join Greece in having large numbers with far-right sympathies. At the 2012 Greek election, analysts studied polling booth data and determined that up to half of Athens’ police voted for the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, an organization often seen performing Nazi salutes and guilt of organizing mob attacks on migrants.
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