German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt presented the 2025 Report on the Protection of the Constitution on Tuesday. Germany is under pressure, the CSU politician said in Berlin. Russia, China, espionage and hybrid attacks define the external security picture.
At home, the report records 58,851 extremist crimes, including 3,294 violent offenses. Violence rose by a little more than 10% compared with the previous year.
Dobrindt’s most explosive claim is that right-wing extremism remains the greatest threat to the free democratic constitutional order. It is the political headline framing the agency’s entire report.
Yet the figures beneath it tell a more complicated story.
According to the report, the number of people classified as right-wing extremists has risen sharply. The main driver is the AfD. The domestic intelligence service assigns around 28,000 of the party’s roughly 70,000 members to this category. That is almost 40% of its membership. The figure does not describe convicted offenders. It does not describe a known terrorist cell. It does not describe 28,000 planned crimes. It is merely an intelligence assessment.
An Official Estimate Becomes a Statistic
At the federal level, the AfD is currently listed as a suspected case. An earlier upgrade to a confirmed right-wing extremist organization has been suspended following urgent legal proceedings. The main case is still ongoing.
Even so, the assessment is already having a statistical effect. The right-wing category is growing because the agency includes a large share of AfD members in it. How it arrived at this figure is not explained.
Yet an estimate becomes an official number. That is the real explosive point. If an agency were to classify 40% of the members of an immigrant organization as potentially criminal without presenting concrete attack plans or crimes committed by those individuals, the outcry would be enormous. In the case of the AfD, the same logic becomes an extremism statistic.
The report does provide more concrete figures: 1,395 right-wing extremist violent offenses were recorded in the previous year. It points to young right-wing extremists and groups such as the “Last Defense Wave”, whose members are alleged to have planned or carried out arson attacks on asylum accommodation.
The Left Targets Infrastructure
With left-wing extremism, the picture is different. Here, concrete crimes are rising. The number of left-wing extremist offenses jumped by almost 39% to 8,133. Violent offenses rose by nearly 61% to 856.
Attacks on critical infrastructure are particularly serious. Power lines, cable routes and railway lines are not symbolic targets. Anyone who sets fire to them hits commuters, companies, hospitals, care homes and households.
The Berlin power-grid attack in January 2026 has come to symbolize this new wave of left-wing violence. Around 45,000 households and more than 2,000 businesses were affected. The federal prosecutor’s office assumes the arson attack was motivated by left-wing extremism. The so-called Volcano Groups are under investigation.
Such perpetrators do not need to form a mass organization. A small circle is enough to hit a city. That is precisely why left-wing infrastructure violence is dangerous. It requires only a small number of people, causes major damage and then disappears back into conspiratorial milieus.
The domestic intelligence service describes this scene as hard to grasp. Groups form and dissolve, names change and claims of responsibility appear online. This is not guesswork about possible attitudes. It is investigative work following real attacks.
Imported Conflicts Are Growing Too
Alongside right and left, the report identifies another bloc: foreign-linked extremism. The number of people in this category rose to 33,850. Of these, 22,000 are considered willing to use violence.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) remains the largest group, with around 15,000 supporters. Turkish right-wing extremists are put at 13,500. Turkish left-wing extremists number 3,250.
Islamism is put at 28,645 people. The Salafist scene comprises 11,200. Religiously motivated crimes increased, with the overwhelming majority having an Islamist background. Among violent offenses, the report lists eight attempted killings and two completed killings.
Germany is therefore facing several security problems at once. Yet the report once again reduces them to the familiar main message about right-wing extremism. The underlying data points to a broader danger. Left-wing sabotage, Islamist violence and imported conflicts cannot simply be hidden behind the AfD figure.