Arson attacks in Hamburg: Why are left-wing radicals attacking the railway?

A week ago, three cable shafts burned in Hamburg at night. The next day, several trains were canceled and travelers and commuters waited angrily on the platforms. : She suspects a criminal organization behind the perpetrators. A letter of responsibility had previously appeared on the left-wing radical media site “Indymedia”.

But why do left-wing radicals shut down train tracks in the first place, so to speak, make the proletariat wait for the train to work?

What initially seems contradictory has a tradition in the militant left-wing scene: arson attacks on railway cables have been a regular occurrence for years. They affect freight transport as well as ICE routes or the Berlin S-Bahn. They can hardly be prevented: even with the help of the 2,000 new cameras that Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has proposed, the extensive German rail network could not be monitored completely.

Even a fence would probably not help: with a total of 34,000 kilometers of tracks, it would be almost twice the circumference of the earth.

An attack on the critical railway infrastructure can therefore cause major damage quite easily and usually without any noticeable traces. Petrol cans are deposited in cable shafts with timer fuses under the cover of darkness. If everything is burned out, hardly any traces can be saved. Perpetrators are almost never caught.

Cat and mouse game against state and corporate power

The reasons for the attacks vary widely: They can usually be found in long pamphlets that appear anonymously on the Internet blog “Indymedia” or are leaked to newspapers. Often it is not directly against Deutsche Bahn or its customers, but rather the attacks are intended to act as a means of pressure or revenge against “state power”: In 2020, perpetrators paralyzed the Berlin S-Bahn ring in order to use “targeted chaos”. To prevent the eviction of a left-wing house project.

This year, the authors of a letter threatened again during the criminal trial against Leipzig left-wing extremists: “For every year in prison, there will now be 1 million in property damage nationwide!” This can be caused relatively quickly by cable fires. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, arsons by politically motivated left-wing criminals on vehicles, machines or infrastructure cause property damage amounting to millions of euros every year.

The perpetrators also give ideological reasons for the fact that, in addition to construction cranes from real estate companies or warehouses from large corporations, rail connections are also repeatedly attacked: “If we want to abolish capitalism, why not start here, with the infrastructure that supports it?” ask the authors in the current letter of confession from Hamburg.

It seems that they had no plan to stop the traveling working class. The perpetrators explain in detail that they only set fire to freight transport hubs: “Usually a train carrying exploitative goods rolls along here every 10 minutes, day and night.” For the authors, this definition includes everything that is put from the water to the rails here in Hamburg: coal and iron ore as well as fast fashion.

The perpetrators either did not intend to – or accepted – the fact that a number of passenger trains were canceled the next morning because of the fires. Ultimately, the “revolutionaries (…) see themselves as having a responsibility to attack the wealth of the global north.”

Deutsche Bahn is also declared an enemy

The port of Hamburg, as a hub for global trade, is repeatedly the target of left-wing radical attacks, but also of climate-related protests. In addition to blocking the abstract “neocolonial” and “exploitative system”, the perpetrators this time also name Deutsche Bahn as a specific enemy: a DB subsidiary is participating in the expansion of the “Tren Maya” in Mexico. The tourist train is supposed to take vacationers from the beaches of the Caribbean to the famous sites – and in the process threatens nature and villages. The UN criticized the project and indigenous people protested. With the attack on the train, the perpetrators want to “show solidarity,” they write.

Already in 2011, the “Spiegel” analyzed: Instead of murdering individual officials as they once did, the new militant left has apparently zeroed in on the infrastructure of global society. At that time, left-wing radicals around Berlin deposited eighteen gasoline containers in cable shafts along railway tracks – only two exploded; the detonators had gotten wet and failed.

Instead, a debate broke out about the new left-wing danger. Boris Rhein from the CDU raged that the perpetrators were irresponsible fanatics who were taking rail customers hostage. The railway offered a reward of 100,000 euros for information.

Is the scene becoming more radical?

According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the radical left-wing scene is growing; last year the authority classified a good 10,000 people in Germany as violence-oriented. At the same time, the number of crimes motivated by left-wing extremism is falling – by around 37.4 percent in 2022. In addition to the high amounts of damage regularly caused by arson or damage to property, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is also concerned about radicalization: Individual, close-knit groups are again prepared to use physical violence against opponents – up to life-threatening injuries. At the beginning of the year, young Germans in Budapest beat suspected right-wing extremists with death clubs.

The group led by Lina E., who was convicted in Dresden at the end of May, was also accused of similar attacks on neo-Nazis. During the trial it became clear that the state is now taking tougher measures against the left-wing scene: Lina E. was not accused of the individual acts, but was primarily accused of founding a criminal organization according to Section 129 of the Criminal Code – the same accusation that is now being made the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office raised after the arson attacks in Hamburg. It has already been used against the last generation.

If the police are investigating the formation of a criminal organization, they can also meticulously examine the suspect’s environment. During the investigation against Lina E., the Leipzig scene complained about brutal house searches, bugging and repression. The head of the “Linx Special Commission,” which was founded in Saxony in 2019 to curb left-wing extremism, sees successes with this new approach: “The scene operates in a somewhat more reserved manner.”

At the same time, those familiar with the scene warn that young leftists could become radicalized through the brutality of state power they experience.