Andreas Speit News Today

Prince and the revolution The road to Bad Lobenstein, a small rural town of 6,400 people in Thuringia, eastern Germany, is shrouded in white. Thick fog hangs over fields of dense powdery snow and the tops of towering pine trees vanish into swirls of low-hanging clouds. As I descend the mountain into the valley, an idyllic-looking scene comes into […]

COVID pandemic can make teens easy targets for radicalization Teens at home under coronavirus lockdown are dealing with unprecedented uncertainty about their future. Teachers are seeing an upswing in "existential fears" that could make students easy targets for extremist groups. Lockdown is leaving teens more isolated than ever This story of extremism starts, like many in Germany, with Hitler. Specifically, a Hitler meme. Someone had posted the meme — illegal under German law for its Nazi ...

Originally published on December 10, 2020 11:49 am Four years ago, Simon Neumeyer enrolled in the Saxony State Police Academy in the eastern German city of Leipzig as a 19-year-old cadet. "At the time, I naively thought the police were 100% committed to law and order," he remembers. His naiveté began to wear off on the academys target-shooting grounds while he and his fellow cadets, guns in hand, listened to a lecture from their commander. "He told us we have to shoot well, because there are ...