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Around a third of the members of the Left parliamentary group openly support groups that are monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the federal government or in their home states.

According to an evaluation by WELT AM SONNTAG, this applies to at least 20 of the 69 parliamentarians.

Six of them confirmed their membership in the organizations in question on request, others have publicly acknowledged them in the past, but left one request unanswered.

At least 15 members of the Bundestag are members of groups that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) counts as one of the “extremist structures of the party Die Linke”.

These include the Socialist Left, the Anti-Capitalist Left, the Communist Platform and Marx21.

According to the BfV, these alliances within the party are working towards a “fundamental system change”.

The Socialist Left currently has around 1,000 members.

According to its own account, the aim of the group is to overcome the capitalist system.

To this end, "the broadest possible alliances in the left-wing extremist spectrum" would be formed, according to the BfV's annual report.

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The Marx21 group recently hit the headlines.

On Saturday, the left elected the Hessian state parliament member Janine Wissler as the new party leader.

Wissler was a member of Marx21 when her candidacy was announced.

According to the BfV, the group, to which around 1000 members belong, is fighting for the establishment of a “communist social order”.

With a view to her candidacy, Wissler ended her engagement with Marx21 and the Socialist Left.

That was "customary and correct," said the candidate.

In terms of content, Wissler did not distance himself.

Anti-constitutional tendencies are also becoming clear in the ranks of the anti-capitalist left, which sees itself as a “bridge” between the Left Party and extra-parliamentary left-wing extremist movements.

One expects “the entire leadership of the left to speak out aggressively for expropriation / reappropriation and socialism,” it says on the association's website.

In the founding appeal, which the later party leader Sahra Wagenknecht also signed in 2006, the members invoked the fight against the “neoliberal party cartel”.

BfV observes three left-wing politicians

Many left-wing MPs are also members of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists (VVN-BDA).

The VVN-BDA is under observation in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, as a query in this newspaper revealed.

The Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that the group was classified as an "extremist" organization.

Three left-wing members of the Bundestag from these three federal states are committed to VVN-BDA.

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In North Rhine-Westphalia the association is seen as a left-wing extremist support organization of the German Communist Party (DKP).

In Lower Saxony, too, the protection of the constitution recognizes links to left-wing extremist groups and the DKP.

An observation does not take place in these two countries.

The VVN-BDA lost its non-profit status in November 2019 after the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution described it as the “nationwide largest left-wing extremist organization in the field of anti-fascism”.

Supporters of the VVN-BDA would not only campaign against right-wing extremism, but would also reject all “non-Marxist systems” as potentially fascist.

The Bavarian Left MP Simone Barrientos criticizes that it is unacceptable that “of all things the organization in which survivors of the Nazi terror came together” is classified as extremist.

The association was founded in 1947 by resistance fighters and those persecuted by National Socialism.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has scaled back the observation of individual left parliamentarians.

According to information from WELT AM SONNTAG, only three left-wing politicians are under observation nationwide - all because of their proximity to the banned Kurdish Workers' Party PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization in this country.

In the previous legislative period, 25 left-wing members of the Bundestag were in the sights of the security authority.

After several politicians of the party had legally defied their observation from 2013 onwards, the Federal Ministry of the Interior announced in 2014 that it would no longer allow members of the Bundestag to be observed “generally” in future.

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This is a small part of a large research that can be read today in WELT AM SONNTAG.

We will be happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.

Source: Welt am Sonntag