Germany’s secret service is concerned about seemingly innocent letters on vehicle licence plates that may convey covert right-wing extremist messages.
The Department for the Protection of the Constitution of the State of Brandeburg in East Germany has issued a leaflet warning citizens of the hidden meanings of certain combinations.
As Germans are largely free to choose the letters and numbers on their plates these could be used to convey radical messages.
The brochure bears the colourful title Abuse of car licence plates – an information by the constitutional protection agency on enemies of democracy.
As first reported by news site Apollo News today, it is being distributed in the State’s vehicle registration offices.
The leaflet lists 15 examples of combinations of letters and numbers which may “indicate a right-wing extremist context”. The list starts at FG – which apparently could stand for Führers Geburtstag (Fuhrer’s birthday) – and ends at WP – potentially shorthand for White Power.
HC might just stand for hatecore, a preferred musical genre of neo-Nazis, and KC could mean Kategorie C, a band popular among the same group of people.
VL might be code for Vernichtungslager (extermination camp) and WK could stand for Weltkrieg (World War).
Numbers are no less innocent with 25 potentially alluding to Blut & Ehre (blood and honour) due to B and E’s respective position in the alphabet. In a similar manner 198 could just be code for S (19th letter) and H (8th letter) – the Nazi greeting Sieg Heil.
And 204 as well as 2004 are similarly suspicious as they could be a birthday greeting to Adolf Hitler whose FG falls on April 20th.
While several obvious abbreviations have long been banned from German licence plates – such as HJ (Hitlerjugend, Hitler youth), KZ (Konzentrationslager, concentration camp) and SS (Schutzstaffel) – the groups of letters and numbers are still legal.
Interestingly, many of the highlighted combinations double as abbreviation for some German districts. The first one-to-three letters on every German licence plate correspond to the district where the vehicle is registered.
Presumably, the inhabitants of the districts of Freiberg (FG), Hainichen (HC), Kronach (KC), Marburg (MB) and Wittstock (WK) will be hard-pressed to demonstrate their anti-fascist mindset when driving in the State of Brandenburg – which is unavoidable for Wittstockers as their district is located there.
The brochure was even discussed in the Interior Committee of the Brandenburg State Parliament on December 12.
Lena Kotré, chairwoman of the Brandenburg Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, called the leaflet “absurd”, urging her fellow MPs: “You all tell me your licence plate. Within 10 minutes I certainly will have found a way to interpret them as code.”
