Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is a hotbed of “institutional racism,” where Islamophobic, racist and offensive remarks are an everyday occurrence, a newspaper reported on Friday.
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Germany’s security service the Verfassungsschutz is a hornet’s nest of conflict, envy, jealousy and inappropriate insults, wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing inside sources.
And they aren’t just innocent office jokes. Employees of the department tasked with observing militant Islamists reportedly throw around deeply offensive, Nazi-affiliated words in private of the kind which would be unthinkable in a public setting.
These range from Herrenrasse, the German for “master race” to Muselmann – originally a German word meaning “Muslim man” later used by the Nazis as a slang word for emaciated death camp inmates who had surrendered to their fate – to Ölauge, a derogatory name for “greasy” dark-eyed foreigners.
In one case currently the subject of an internal investigation, an agency employee is said to have offended co-workers in his office by positioning a doll of a Teutonic Knight with his sword pointing at a miniature mosque, wrote the paper.
The highly secretive intelligence agency declined to comment on the investigation into the doll incident, but the paper reported mixed views among internal sources.
While some insisted the incident was an isolated, one-off occurrence, others told paper the issue of racism was not being dealt with at all within the agency.
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Published: 22 Mar 13 10:50 CET | Print version
Find this story at 22 March 2013
The Local/jlb