"'All of this, for a quite a few years, was fairly harmless,' said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former German diplomat and a director at the Counter Extremism Project. 'They got fines and they harassed local authorities, but they weren’t planning large-scale violence. ... With Covid, this exploded. The right-wing extremists immediately realised that any type of severe societal crisis is something they can take advantage of.'"