Despite the high search pressure from the judiciary and the police , hatred and hate speech remain a major problem on the Internet in Bavaria. Even if the number of reported crimes fell slightly to 1186 in 2022, it remains at a high level. In particular, the number of antisemitic crimes remains alarmingly high. This emerges from the hate crime situation presented in Munich on Monday. From 2019 (1016) to 2021 (1225), the number of hate crimes in Bavaria rose by around 20 percent, one reason being hostility in the wake of the corona pandemic.
According to Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, hate speech crimes dominated the statistics in almost 50 percent of all cases, followed by insults. “When people are victims of, for example, their nationality, skin color, religious affiliation, gender or sexual orientation, we speak of hate crime, a particularly reprehensible form of crime,” said Herrmann.
Even though antisemitic crimes have fallen by around 30 percent (358 cases), Herrmann sees no reason to give the all-clear. In 2021, the number of offenses reached a new high of 510 cases (2019: 310 cases; 2020: 353 cases).
Xenophobic crimes were also at a high level. “After a significant increase from 988 in 2019 to 1288 crimes in 2020, we have seen a slight decrease in recent years.” The high number of crimes against queer, i.e. non-heterosexual people, is striking. Crimes against LGBTIQ people increased by around 230 percent from 2019 (29 cases) to 2022 (96 cases).
