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Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday accused the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) of using violent protests following a deadly stab at migrants to fuel ethnic tensions.
Far-right groups clashed with the police and sued people they thought were migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz, after the police declared that A Syrian and an Iraqi had been arrested for the murder of a 35-year-old German.
AfD leader Alexander Gauland claimed at the beginning of the week a "peaceful revolution" against Merkel's liberal policies and said it required the ban of politicians and members of the media who support the "Merkel system". ".
Asked about the role of the AfD in the events of Chemnitz, Ms Merkel told the RTL television channel: "The AfD is putting the mood and this needs to be made clear. I consider that some of their remarks are very critical ".
The protests in Chemnitz sparked a debate over whether politicians are too complacent in the face of growing xenophobia in a country where many thought the lessons of Germany's Nazi history had been learned .
The protests, in which members of a crowd of 800 people celebrated Hitler's illegal salvation, laid bare divisions in Germany over Merkel's 2015 decision to receive about one million Muslim asylum seekers .
A survey of 1,002 voters for ARD, released Monday and Tuesday and published Thursday, showed that only 27% thought the integration of refugees into society was a success, with 69% saying it went wrong.
Some in Germany blame Ms Merkel 's liberal immigration policy for the rise of the AfD, which entered parliament for the first time in an election last year. as the third party in importance.
After the violence in Chemnitz, German politicians urged the intelligence services to monitor the far-right party, which some members demonstrated last weekend with supporters of the anti-Islam group PEGIDA in the city to protest against this aggression.
& # 39; NOT NAZIS & # 39;
Merkel reiterated her position in RTL's interview that only intelligence chiefs can decide to monitor the party.
"We want to first deal politically with the AfD," said Merkel.
The state intelligence agency in Thuringia said on Thursday it would consider whether the state chapter of the AfD was pursuing anti-constitutional objectives, a possible step to put the group under official surveillance.
Merkel's immigration policy also provoked a break-up within her conservative bloc, which includes her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies of the Christian Social Union (CSU), who have almost toppled his coalition government in June.
Interior Minister and head of the CSU, Horst Seehofer, had threatened to withdraw from the coalition government for immigration.
In an interview with the Rheinische Post published on Thursday, Mr Seehofer said: "People are upset and indignant about these killings and I understand it.
"If I had not been a minister, I would have taken the street as a citizen, but of course not with the radicals."
He added: "I understand it when people protest, but that does not make them Nazis.
Mr Seehofer has taken an increasingly uncompromising stance on immigration as his party attempts to fend off a major challenge launched by the AfD in the October regional elections. in Bavaria.
Seehofer was reprimanded by politicians and Germans on social media for saying Wednesday to CSU members in the state of Brandenburg: "Migration is the mother of all problems".
Asked what she thought of Seehofer's remark, Ms Merkel said: "I say it differently: migration presents us with challenges and here we have problems but also successes."
