Police officer is said to have shared Holocaust denial on Facebook for years

The “Standard” reported this on Saturday with reference to the “Stop the Right” platform, which had discovered the relevant Internet activities. His Facebook contacts included numerous FPÖ politicians, as well as the former Chief of General Staff Robert Brieger. The police officer has been sharing and posting racist and anti-EU content under his real name since 2015, sometimes even links to relevant sites and neo-Nazi narratives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is equated with Hitler, the Greens with National Socialists, and the murder of millions of Jews is denied.

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Lies from neo-Nazi circles

For example, he shares a post about the Rhine meadow camps. These were prison camps that the Allies operated along the Rhine for German prisoners of war from April 1945. A website he shares as a post claims that German dead were dug up there and passed off as Jewish corpses in order to manipulate the number of victims of the Holocaust. A lie that is often spread in neo-Nazi circles. In 2016, he shared an article from a right-wing site that said “Adolf Hitler didn’t gass Jews, but Jews gassed non-Jews en masse!” headlines.

Contacts with FPÖ and NPD politicians

His 3,700 Facebook contacts include numerous politicians from the FPÖ, NPD and supporters of “The Third Way”, as well as police officers and members of the armed forces. In another posting about the Rhine meadow camp with the headline “A secret chapter of German history,” the former chief of general staff and now chairman of the European Union Military Committee, Robert Brieger, commented: “Above all, it is a secret chapter in the history of the victors.” A request from “Standard” about this in Brieger’s office remained unanswered for the time being.

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“Didn’t attract any negative attention”

An inquiry to his former employer, the Styria State Police Directorate, as to whether they knew about the postings, was answered as follows: “During his active service, the retired officer did not attract any negative attention from either the Southeast Styria District Police Command or the Styria State Police Directorate.” But even in retirement it is about the reputation of the police, said the spokesman.

First, the public prosecutor’s office must examine the facts, he explained, “if it is then brought to the attention of the LPD, then the service authority must also carry out an internal examination.” The service law also applies in retirement. In any case, “Stop the Right” will present a statement of the facts.