The decade of the 2020s started with crises and war. The first cases of the respiratory disease Covid-19 pandemic appeared in Germany in January 2020. The infection control measures set in place to contain the pandemic severely restricted public life.

In proteste, the Querdenken movement [lit: lateral thinking] was formed by people who denied the danger or even the existence of the coronavirus. Many spread anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives, declared Germany to be a dictatorship, and called for the government to be overthrown. Their demonstrations and chat groups became a nationwide rallying point for the extreme right, conspiracy theorists, right-wing esoteric groups and Reichsbürger, anticonstitutional revisionist groups and individuals who reject the legitimacy of the modern German state.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began in February 2022. Parts of the extreme right and the Querdenken movement mobilized to support Russia. Other issues they addressed included mobilization against refugees and climate change denial.

The terrorist attack on Israel by the Islamist Hamas and the murder of more than 1,400 people on 7 October 2023 started a new war in the Middle East. Subsequently there was a massive increase in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide – Hamburg was no exeption.

In 2023 alone, the counselling center for victims of right-wing, racist, and anti-Semitic violence, empower, documented 993 incidents of right-wing violence in Hamburg. There was also a significant increase in violence against queer people.

In January 2024, media reports about a secret meeting of the AfD sparked nationwide protests against the party. At the meeting, leading AfD members discussed plans for the mass expulsion of people with a migration background with neo-Nazi Martin Sellner and others. Tens of thousands of people took part in protest demonstrations in Hamburg. Nevertheless, the AfD’s approval ratings continued to rise nationwide. In state elections in September 2024, the party received the most votes in Thuringia and the second-most in Saxony. The governing parties took up the populist debate, which had hitherto been dominated by the AfD and declared migration to be the core political problem, and introduced new measures, including the controversial payment card for refugees and temporary border controls.