AT first, German officials blamed fake news peddled on social media sites for helping to stoke rioting last week in the eastern city of Chemnitz, following the murder of a 35-year-old German man, allegedly by asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria. Then came word that an arrest warrant which names one of the chief suspects in the stabbing had been leaked and that the city’s police may have been infiltrated by the far-right.

In truth, neither reason is sufficient enough to explain the most serious neo-Nazi violence in Germany seen in years. From last Monday night’s incident which witnessed gangs attacking foreigners, giving the Hitler salute and chanting: “A dead foreigner for every dead German”, it is clear that Germany is facing something much more challenging than false Facebook posts and a few rogue police. The protests have exposed serious and dangerous divisions in German society following Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision in 2015 to allow more than one million migrants into the country.

It’s true that mobilization on the Internet for this particular incident might have been stronger than in the past, especially since the protests were fueled by the false claims the victim had intervened to protect a woman and that another man had been killed, both disseminated mainly by right-wing groups.

It’s also true that fake news stories circulating online travels much faster than the truth, are more believable than correct news and are very difficult to repudiate. Attempting to correct a fake story, which is already out there, journalists are de facto announcing the rumor; in the end, it’s not the denial that’s believed but the rumor.

And it is a serious problem if indeed far-right sympathizers infiltrated the local force in the east German state of Saxony where Chemnitz lies. Aside from the fact that publishing an arrest warrant is a crime under German law, what would a police force look like when it has hidden far-right elements embedded in it? There are fears of possible vigilante attacks after the leaked document gave the full name and address of one of the arrested men. Other migrants at the shelter where he was living spoke of their fear the building could be targeted.

The leak is similar to an incident earlier last month in which police forcibly prevented a television news crew from filming a demonstration by the Pegida anti-Muslim movement in Dresden. It later emerged they were acting after a complaint from an off-duty officer who doubled as a far-right protester and who was taking part in the demonstration.

However, all the proposed reasons why these protests and violent demonstrations are taking place in parts of Germany cannot hide the simplest explanation of them all: A lot of Germans are these days filled with hate toward certain groups who look and sound different from Germans or who come from elsewhere.

Merkel has repeatedly condemned the far-right protests and has overseen a steep decline in the number of people seeking asylum. Nonetheless, right-wing groups such as the AfD and Pegida — which entered parliament for the first time in 2017 with 12.6% of the vote and 94 seats — are bent on a bigger reduction and making immigrants regret it if they enter.

The fact that a Syrian and an Iraqi suspect are being held for the killing in Chemnitz is no reason to generalize that all foreign residents are trouble-makers or worse, murderers.

The targeting of migrants is becoming common in parts of Germany as a shocking number of people apparently feel no inhibitions scouring the streets for anyone who appears to be foreign, then assaulting them. And, in the absence of a reduced police force, like in Chemnitz, call for vigilante justice. Hate is spreading. Such racial intolerance in Germany was not too long ago a phenomenon; now it’s starting to be the norm as xenophobia takes to the streets.