{"id":345030,"date":"2021-09-27T21:38:48","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T18:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/neo-nazis-are-still-on-facebook-and-theyre-making-money\/"},"modified":"2021-09-27T21:38:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T18:38:48","slug":"neo-nazis-are-still-on-facebook-and-theyre-making-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/neo-nazis-are-still-on-facebook-and-theyre-making-money\/","title":{"rendered":"#Neo-Nazis are still on Facebook. And they\u2019re making money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#Neo-Nazis are still on <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a>. And they\u2019re making money<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft\">\n        <\/aside>\n<p>BRUSSELS \u2014 It\u2019s the premier martial arts group in Europe for right-wing extremists. German authorities have twice banned their signature tournament. But Kampf der Nibelungen, or Battle of the Nibelungs, still thrives on Facebook, where organizers maintain multiple pages, as well as on Instagram and YouTube, which they use to spread their ideology, draw in recruits and make money through ticket sales and branded merchandise.<\/p>\n<p>The Battle of the Nibelungs \u2014 a reference to a classic heroic epic much loved by the Nazis \u2014 is one of dozens of far-right groups that continue to leverage mainstream social media for profit, despite Facebook\u2019s and other platforms\u2019 repeated pledges to purge themselves of extremism.<\/p>\n<p>All told, there are at least 54 Facebook profiles belonging to 39 entities that the German government and civil society groups have flagged as extremist, according to research shared with The Associated Press by the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit policy and advocacy group formed to combat extremism. The groups have nearly 268,000 subscribers and friends on Facebook alone.<\/p>\n<p>CEP also found 39 related Instagram profiles, 16 Twitter profiles and 34 YouTube channels, which have gotten over 9.5 million views. Nearly 60% of the profiles were explicitly aimed at making money, displaying prominent links to online shops or photos promoting merchandise.<\/p>\n<p>Click on the big blue \u201cview shop\u201d button on the Erik &amp; Sons Facebook page and you can buy a T-shirt that says, \u201cMy favorite color is white,\u201d for 20 euros ($23). Deutsches Warenhaus offers \u201cRefugees not welcome\u201d stickers for just 2.50 euros ($3) and Aryan Brotherhood tube scarves with skull faces for 5.88 euros ($7). The Facebook feed of OPOS Records promotes new music and merchandise, including \u201cTrue Aggression,\u201d \u201cPride &amp; Dignity,\u201d and \u201cOne Family\u201d T-shirts. The brand, which stands for \u201cOne People One Struggle,\u201d also links to its online shop from Twitter and Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>The people and organizations in CEP\u2019s dataset are a who\u2019s who of Germany\u2019s far-right music and combat sports scenes. \u201cThey are the ones who build the infrastructure where people meet, make money, enjoy music and recruit,\u201d said Alexander Ritzmann, the lead researcher on the project. \u201cIt\u2019s most likely not the guys I\u2019ve highlighted who will commit violent crimes. They\u2019re too smart. They build the narratives and foster the activities of this milieu where violence then <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ears.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/AP21267597170627-1.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024\" alt=\"This image captured from the Battle of the Nibelungs Facebook page on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 shows items for sale featuring the right-wing extremist group\u2019s name and logo. \" class=\"wp-image-19610467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/AP21267597170627-1.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1536 1536w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/AP21267597170627-1.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all 1024w, https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/AP21267597170627-1.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=512 512w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><figcaption>This image captured from the Battle of the Nibelungs Facebook page on Friday, Sept. 24, 2021 shows items for sale featuring the right-wing extremist group\u2019s name and logo. <\/figcaption><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">AP Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>CEP said it focused on groups that want to overthrow liberal democratic institutions and norms such as freedom of the press, protection of minorities and universal human dignity, and believe that the white race is under siege and needs to be preserved, with violence if necessary. None has been banned, but almost all have been described in German intelligence reports as extremist, CEP said.<\/p>\n<p>On Facebook the groups seem harmless. They avoid blatant violations of platform rules, such as using hate speech or posting swastikas, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>ly illegal in Germany.<\/p>\n<p>By carefully toeing the line of propriety, these key architects of Germany\u2019s far-right use the power of mainstream social media to promote festivals, fashion brands, music labels and mixed martial arts tournaments that can generate millions in sales and connect like-minded thinkers from around the world.<\/p>\n<p>But simply cutting off such groups could have unintended, damaging consequences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t want to head down a path where we are telling sites they should remove people based on who they are but not what they do on the site,\u201d said David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p>Giving platforms wide latitude to sanction organizations deemed undesirable could give repressive governments leverage to eliminate their critics. \u201cThat can have really serious human rights concerns,\u201d he said. \u201cThe history of content moderation has shown us that it\u2019s almost always to the disadvantage of marginalized and powerless people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>German authorities banned the Battle of the Nibelungs event in 2019, on the grounds that it was not actually about sports, but instead was grooming fighters with combat skills for political struggle.<\/p>\n<p>In 2020, as the coronavirus raged, organizers planned to stream the event online \u2014 using Instagram, among other places, to promote the webcast. A few weeks before the planned event, however, over a hundred black-clad police in balaclavas broke up a gathering at a motorcycle club in Magdeburg, where fights were being filmed for the broadcast, and hauled off the boxing ring, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n<p>The Battle of the Nibelungs is a \u201ccentral point of contact\u201d for right-wing extremists, according to German government intelligence reports. The organization has been explicit about its political goals \u2014 namely to fight against the \u201crotting\u201d liberal democratic order \u2014 and has drawn adherents from across Europe as well as the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Members of a California white supremacist street fighting club called the Rise Above Movement, and its founder, Robert Rundo, have attended the Nibelungs tournament. In 2018 at least four Rise Above members were arrested on rioting charges for taking their combat training to the streets at the\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/charlottesville-a-year-later-north-america-us-news-ap-top-news-virginia-b8560c3ebaac4deb9043bb695f2eb1db\">Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia<\/a>. A number of Battle of Nibelungs alums have landed in prison, including for manslaughter, assault and attacks on migrants.<\/p>\n<p>National Socialism Today, which describes itself as a \u201cmagazine by nationalists for nationalists\u201d has praised Battle of the Nibelungs and other groups for fostering a will to fight and motivating \u201cactivists to improve their readiness for combat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But there are no references to professionalized, anti-government violence on the group\u2019s social media feeds. Instead, it\u2019s positioned as a health-conscious lifestyle brand, which sells branded tea mugs and shoulder bags.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExploring nature. Enjoying home!\u201d gushes one Facebook post above a photo of a musclebound guy on a mountaintop wearing Resistend-branded sportswear, one of the Nibelung tournament\u2019s sponsors. All the men in the photos are pumped and white, and they are portrayed enjoying wholesome activities such as long runs and alpine treks.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on Facebook, Thorsten Heise \u2013 who has been convicted of incitement to hatred and called \u201cone of the most prominent German neo-Nazis\u201d by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the German state of Thuringia \u2014 also maintains multiple pages.<\/p>\n<p>Frank Kraemer, who the German government has described as a \u201cright-wing extremist musician,\u201d uses his Facebook page to direct people to his blog and his Sonnenkreuz online store, which sells white nationalist and coronavirus conspiracy books as well as sports nutrition products and \u201cvaccine rebel\u201d T-shirts for girls.<\/p>\n<p>Battle of the Nibelungs declined to comment. Resistend, Heise and Kraemer didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook told AP it employs 350 people whose primary job is to counter terrorism and organized hate, and that it is investigating the pages and accounts flagged in this reporting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission, or are engaged in violence,\u201d said a company spokesperson, who added that Facebook had banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations, including groups and individuals in Germany. The spokesperson said the company had removed over 6 million pieces of content tied to organized hate globally between April and June and is working to move even faster.<\/p>\n<p>Google said it has no interest in giving visibility to hateful content on YouTube and was looking into the accounts identified in this reporting. The company said it worked with dozens of experts to update its policies on supremacist content in 2019, resulting in a five-fold spike in the number of channels and videos removed.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter says it\u2019s committed to ensuring that public conversation is \u201csafe and healthy\u201d on its platform and that it doesn\u2019t tolerate violent extremist groups. \u201cThreatening or promoting violent extremism is against our rules,\u201d a spokesperson told AP, but did not comment on the specific accounts flagged in this reporting.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Claus, who wrote a book on the extreme right martial arts scene, said that the sports brands in CEP\u2019s data set are \u201call rooted in the militant far-right neo-Nazi scene in Germany and Europe.\u201d One of the founders of the Battle of the Nibelungs, for example, is part of the violent Hammerskin network and another early supporter, the Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin, also known as Denis Nikitin, has been barred from entering the European Union for ten years, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Banning such groups from Facebook and other major platforms would potentially limit their access to new audiences, but it could also drive them deeper underground, making it more difficult to monitor their activities, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s dangerous because they can recruit people,\u201d he said. \u201cProhibiting those accounts would interrupt their contact with their audience, but the key figures and their ideology won\u2019t be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thorsten Hindrichs, an expert in Germany\u2019s far-right music scene who teaches at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, said there\u2019s a danger that the apparently harmless appearance of Germany\u2019s right-wing music heavyweights on Facebook and Twitter, which they mostly use to promote their brands, could help normalize the image of extremists.<\/p>\n<p>Extreme right concerts in Germany were drawing around 2 million euros ($2.3 million) a year in revenue before the coronavirus pandemic, he estimated, not counting sales of CDs and branded merchandise. He said kicking extremist music groups off Facebook is unlikely to hit sales too hard, as there are other platforms they can turn to, like Telegram and Gab, to reach their followers. \u201cRight-wing extremists aren\u2019t stupid. They will always find ways to promote their stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>None of these groups\u2019 activity on mainstream platforms is obviously illegal, though it may violate Facebook guidelines that bar \u201cdangerous individuals and organizations\u201d that advocate or engage in violence online or offline. Facebook says it doesn\u2019t allow praise or support of Nazism, white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism and bars people and groups that adhere to such \u201chate ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Facebook\u202f\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/technology-business-europe-germany-coronavirus-pandemic-0d5a34a4b78a64f9507ca97b1e41728c\">removed almost 150 accounts and pages<\/a>\u00a0linked to the German anti-lockdown Querdenken movement, under a new \u201csocial harm\u201d policy, which targets groups that spread misinformation or incite violence but didn\u2019t fit into the platform\u2019s existing categories of bad actors.<\/p>\n<p>But how these evolving rules will be applied remains murky and contested.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you do something wrong on the platform, it\u2019s easier for a platform to justify an account suspension than\u202fto\u202fjust throw someone out because of their ideology. That would be more difficult\u202fwith respect to human rights,\u201d said\u202fDaniel Holznagel, a Berlin judge who used to work for the German federal government on\u202fhate speech issues\u202fand also\u202f contributed to CEP\u2019s report.\u202f\u201cIt\u2019s a foundation of our Western society and human rights that our legal regimes do not sanction an idea, an ideology, a thought.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, there\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a> from the folks at the Battle of the Nibelungs. \u201cStarting today you can also dress your smallest ones with us,\u201d reads a June post on their Facebook feed. The new line of kids wear includes a shell-pink T-shirt for girls, priced at 13.90 euros ($16). A child pictured wearing the boy version, in black, already has boxing gloves on.<\/p>\n<p><em>EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story is part of a collaboration between The Associated Press and the PBS <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> FRONTLINE that examines challenges to the ideas and institutions of traditional US and European democracy.<\/em>\n                        <\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/09\/27\/neo-nazis-are-still-on-facebook-and-theyre-making-money\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#Neo-Nazis are still on Facebook. And they\u2019re making money&#8221; BRUSSELS \u2014 It\u2019s the premier martial arts group in Europe for right-wing extremists. German authorities have twice banned their signature tournament. But Kampf der Nibelungen, or Battle of the Nibelungs, still thrives on Facebook, where organizers maintain multiple pages, as well as on Instagram and YouTube,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":345031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/09\/AP21266550987553-1-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[116622,73629,4974,43905,74887,4976,49],"class_list":["post-345030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-9-27-21","tag-extremism","tag-facebook","tag-germany","tag-neo-nazis","tag-social-media","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}