The problem on the far right is serious but overrepresented in official accounts, which lack a category for Islamism.
The German government recently announced that 2019 saw the most antisemitic hate crimes since it began collecting data in 2001. In all, 2,032 antisemitic incidents were reported to German police last year, marking a 13 percent increase over 2018. That certainly fits with the steady drumbeat of stories about rising global antisemitism. However, the German government’s announcement quickly turned cockeyed, as “93.4 percent of the crimes were “ascribed to far–right wing perpetrators, ” according to a report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).
Now, the far right in Germany — as elsewhere — is undoubtedly antisemitic. Nazism literally originated there. However, crediting the German far right for nearly all attacks on Germany’s Jews oversimplifies a situation that calls for much more careful analysis.
Some politicians and members of the media may prefer this take, but unquestioningly accepting it won’t keep Germany’s 200,000 Jews safe. It would be better to embrace reality, including two major flaws in this too-convenient narrative. First, there are known problems with the way Germany collects its antisemitic crime data. Second, numerous surveys show that antisemitism is a broader problem that spans German society.
Let’s start with the first point. In classifying antisemitic incidents, the German government uses five categories: right-wing, left-wing, foreign ideology, religious ideology, and (the rarely used) unknown. The categories have remained unchanged since 2001. At this point, they are inadequate.
Remko Leemhuis, acting director of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office, agrees that there are classification problems. He explained in a phone interview that, if “the police can’t apprehend someone, they automatically mark it down as right-wing extremism.” In other words, reporting on German antisemitism is inherently skewed; the category “right-wing” expands simply because the police don’t consistently use “unknown” when they should.