The statistics trap - How numbers produce right-wing extremism

There he sits on the podium. In May 2025, Alexander Dobrindt, now the official Minister of the Interior, will be sitting there instead of Nancy Faeser, who is still acting Minister of the Interior and has already been replaced at the beginning of April. BKA President Holger Münch is a constant presence on the podium, accompanying both his predecessor and successor.

On May 20, 2025, crime statistics were once again presented to the capital's journalists. They were presented jointly by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) at the Federal Press Conference (BPK) in Berlin. Instead of the general police crime statistics (PKS) presented on April 2, the current presentation focused exclusively on politically motivated crime (PMK). With so many figures, statistics and abbreviations, it's easy to get confused.  

These crimes are divided into so-called phenomenon areas, into left-wing and right-wing motivated crimes, into offenses based on foreign or religious ideology. The political media response to the PK, as shown here by the Tagesschau [1], can be summarized as follows. 

Worrying increases in all areas, the biggest problem with a share of 50 percent is still right-wing extremism. The number of cases is rising and when the number of cases rises - that is as certain as the Amen in church - political measures are called for. So far so normal.  However, if you delve deeper into the published 34-page police statistics [2], questions start to pile up. 

How did the case numbers come about? What is in the small print of the PMK? What is not there, although it should be? 

This is followed by a critique of the questionable way in which the BMI and BKA collect statistics. This is followed by an attempt to find answers to open questions and problems. As the saying goes? Don't believe any statistics that you haven't falsified yourself!

The "incoming statistics" problem

Politically motivated crimes - unlike crimes of general criminality in the "Police Crime Statistics" (PKS) - are generally assigned at the beginning of the proceedings (so-called initial statistics). 

This is stated right at the beginning of page 3 of the PKM in the explanations on the methodology of the survey. What does this sentence mean in concrete terms? The sentence means that a judgment is already made even before the police investigate. That means even more concretely: Swastika equals right-wing extremist. Period. If the investigation remains unsuccessful, if the perpetrator and motive for the crime remain unknown, the first presumed assessment of "right-wing extremist motivation" remains. This, in turn, leads to bizarre findings, which are confirmed by the responsible police departments on social media when citizens shake their heads. For example, if the car or office of an AfD politician is smeared with a swastika by unknown persons, this act is included in the statistics as being motivated by right-wing extremism. The possibility that a typical Nazi symbol was placed by an anti-Semitic Islamist or that it was even a false flag action by a left-wing extremist is also excluded from the initial statistics until evidence to the contrary is provided. Why is that?

The BKA's PKM is compiled using reports from the state criminal investigation offices, the LKAs. These have instructions on how to statistically record politically motivated crime. On page 17 of the authorities' form "Ausfüllanleitung zur Kriminaltaktischen Anfrage in Fällen Politisch motivierter Kriminalität (KTA-PMK)" [3] is the following sentence, which speaks for itself:

Right-wing propaganda crimes committed by unknown persons, in particular the distribution and use of banned National Socialist symbols, such as swastikas and SS runes, are to be assigned to the phenomenon area PMK - right-wing, if there are no facts to the contrary regarding the motivation of the perpetrator.

The problem of propaganda offenses

Gewalt ist nicht Gewalt. In groben Zügen werden Gewaltdelikte in drei Sparten unterteilt: in tatsächlicher körperlicher Gewalt, in Äußerungsdelikte (Hasskriminalität), in Propagandadelikte. Unter Propagandadelikten versteht man das Verbreiten von Symbolen und Inhalten, die als verfassungswidrig gelten. Das sind typischerweise Graffitis von Hakenkreuzen an Häuserwänden, das Rufen von Parolen wie „Heil Hitler“, allerdings vermehrt auch das Singen falscher Lieder. Stichwort Sylt und Döp-Döp. Nun haben auch große Medien festgestellt, dass die Propagandadelikte den Löwenanteil unter den politisch motivierten Straftaten darstellen.

Little attention is paid to the discrepancy in this main area of crime, which differs by a factor of more than 100 as far as the right and left are concerned. Expressed in bare figures? There were only 234 left-wing propaganda offenses in 2024 compared to 26,318 right-wing offenses. Here a statistical background noise, there an explosion in the number of cases. Why is that? To answer this question, you have to dig a little and end up with a question from 2018 [4, page 38]. AfD MP von Storch wanted to know what criteria must be met for a left-wing propaganda offense and what specific left-wing propaganda offenses there are. Here, too, the answer given by State Secretary Hans-Georg Engelke at the time speaks for itself. The key sentence?

There is no list of signs and symbols that are assigned to the PMK-left phenomenon.

That is strange. If you go through life with your eyes open as a citizen, you will come across a number of graffiti and symbols that suggest a left-wing to radical left-wing attitude. These include "ACAB", the numerical equivalent "1312" and many other antifa or anarchist symbols. Unlike right-wing propaganda offenses, they are rarely or never recorded statistically. 

The problem of the self-fulfilling prophecy

Germany's biggest problem is and remains right-wing extremism. This is the published opinion. Case numbers such as the figures from the PKM presented on May 20, 2025 serve as proof. What does this mean? It means even more experts, even more commissioners and advice centers, even more institutions in the noble fight against right-wing extremism. The logic behind this? The aim must be to reduce the number of cases in the fight against the right. And that is precisely where the mistake lies. The opposite is the case.

The legions of organizations merely ensure that more right-wing extremism is recorded and named. The number of right-wing cases increases due to more observation. This in turn legitimizes more observation in the fight against the right. This self-fulfilling prophecy is like the PCR test of the pandemic. The more PCR tests, the more people who test positive, the more pandemic. The more pandemic, the more widespread testing is needed. 

Of course, the methodology also works the other way round. Few organizations in the fight against Islamism and left-wing extremism mean low case numbers. Low case numbers mean even less funding. This is also a cycle.

This thesis put forward for discussion can be substantiated by a current case study. The number of right-wing extremist incidents at schools in Hesse exploded by several hundred percent in 2024 and in the year 2025 [5]. While there were "only" 37 incidents in 2023, this figure rose to 167 in 2024. How can a five-fold increase in right-wing extremism at schools in Hesse be explained from one year to the next? The answer lies in the small print of the article. The Hessian Ministry of Education had instructed all schools to pay more attention to right-wing extremism and to report it more frequently.

The problem of operational blindness

And if you are not willing, then I need violence? I put up with this sentence as a human being in the ballad of the Erlkönig, but not as a citizen of the German state. There are now enough phenomena about political violence, however motivated. The state observes this violence, tracks it, records it in statistics. There is only one phenomenon of violence that the state does not observe. The violence that emanates from the state itself is also not recorded.