Bremen bans right-wing group Phalanx 18

Times of News

6 years ago

The German city-state of Bremen banned and dissolved the right-wing group Phalanx 18 on Wednesday, saying it aggressively promoted anti-constitutional ideology.

Phalanx 18 followed a national socialist ideology, Bremen Interior Minister Ulrich Mäurer said announcing the ban.

The ban and dissolution followed shortly after several apartments were searched — three in Bremen and one in Lower Saxony.

Bremen authorities stated that it had taken the decision to ban the group due to it being involved in provocative and aggressive activities as well as promoting music with right-wing ideas.

All activities of the group are now banned, including internet and social media activity.

Phalanx 18 organized right-wing gatherings

Phalanx 18 had planned an event for November 9 in Bremen with bands “Hermunduren” and “Zeitnah” — which have right-wing extremists as band members — were due to perform at.

The event was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 1938 “Night of Broken Glass” when Nazis violently attacked Jewish homes and businesses.

“In light of the right-wing extremist ideology of this event it is clear to see that the event was not intended to commemorate but rather to insult the Jewish victims of National Socialism,” said Mäurer, on banning the group’s event.

Members of the group were also implicated in involved in violence on a well-known street filled with bars and restaurants in the city-state, according to German newspaper taz.

The ban follows calls for politicians to ban another right-wing extremist network known as Combat 18, an offshoot of Blood and Honour group, which is banned in Germany.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland

Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team’s defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch – but people would not want “someone like Boateng as a neighbor.” He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: “We can’t be blackmailed by children’s eyes.”

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alice Weidel

Alice Weidel generally plays the role of “voice of reason” for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians “pigs” and “puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Frauke Petry

German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must “use firearms if necessary” to “prevent illegal border crossings.” Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Björn Höcke

The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame” and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year – leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Beatrix von Storch

Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts – but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. “People who won’t accept STOP at our borders are attackers,” the European lawmaker said. “And we have to defend ourselves against attackers.”

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Marcus Pretzell

Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote “These are Merkel’s dead,” shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Wendt

The member of parliament in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andre Poggenburg

Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to “get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus” — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Alexander Gauland – again …

During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be “disposed of” back to Anatolia. The German term, “entsorgen,” raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

… and again

Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD’s youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany’s responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a “glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history.”

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks

Andreas Kalbitz

The Brandenburg state AfD chief admitted in 2019 to attending a 2007 rally in Greece by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party at which a swastika flag was raised. “Der Spiegel” had published a leaked report by the German embassy in Athens naming him as one of “14 neo-Nazis” who arrived from Germany for the far-right rally. Kalbitz released a statement saying he took part out of “curiosity.”

Author: Dagmar Breitenbach