German police on Tuesday morning carried out a series of raids against members of a far-left extremist group which allegedly plotted attacks on right-wing groups and a violent communist revolution.
The Saxony State Criminal Police Office said that it searched apartments in Zwickau, Dresden, Leipzig, Saalfeld, Bremen, and Hamburg as part of a broader law enforcement operation throughout four states targeting the “Zwickau Collective”.
The Saxon Ministry of the Interior identified the group as a Marxist-Leninist organisation that is affiliated with the “Red Youth Germany” network, which boasts dozens of outposts across the country.
In its 2025 report on far-left extremism, the North Rhine-Westphalia Office for the Protection of the Constitution included the Red Youth Germany association, saying that it has openly embraced the ideology of communist tyrants like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
“The goal is the dictatorship of the proletariat—that is, establishing the Communist Party as the central power following the revolution—in order to strip the opposition of its influence and subsequently transition society toward communism. In such a society, there is no separation between party and state,” the report stated.
According to Bild, the federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution reportedly has seen indications that the Zwickau Collective was seeking to overthrow the current system and install a communist state through a “violent revolution”.
The Zwickau Collective is said to have become active online during 2020, including on platforms like Instagram, where the group regularly promotes communist goals, posts Marxist symbols, and shows itself participating in protests, local public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk reported.
Among their posts online, the group is said to have expressed support for their “comrade” Maja T, a transgender Antifa radical who was jailed in Hungary over a hammer attack.
According to the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Police Terrorism and Extremism Prevention Center (PTAZ), 12 suspects are currently being investigated.
The suspects, aged 18 to 36, are believed to have engaged in a conspiracy to form a criminal organisation with the purpose of attacking political opponents and causing property damage. So far, police have made five arrests.
Die Ziet reported that four of the arrests were made on the basis of previous warrants, while the fifth was made after a 20-year-old allegedly assaulted a police officer during a raid on Tuesday morning.
MDR reported that the LinX task force, which specialises in left-wing extremism, is currently heading up the investigation into the Zwickau Collective.
