Daily Sabah reported yesterday that the German authorities have conducted raids in several parts of Germany on suspected members of a far-right group called the National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland. According to authorities, about 40 people are under investigation. The group’s members are suspected of glorifying Nazism and in some cases harboring “violent fantasies” (1).
Quite surprisingly, Ku Klux Klan is not a new addition on the far-right scene in Germany. German journalist Frederick Obermaier has been investigating the Ku Klux Klan in Germany and he has written a book about it (2). Obermaier told in an interview in 2017 that the German authorities have been aware of some KKK activity in Germany for decades. However, the amount of KKK members in Germany has been very small compared to USA. According to Obermaier, there have been “close relations” between US Klan groups and German Klan groups over the past 30 or 40 years. The German groups admire the American Klan and hope to become as big as the KKK in USA (3).
While Obermaier was reporting about the killing spree committed by National Socialist Underground NSU between 2000 and 2007, he found links to the Ku Klux Klan in Germany (3). Süddeutsche Zeitung told in 2016 that the only living member of the NSU terror cell, Beate Zschäbe, had reportedly attended at least two KKK gatherings (4). The NSU murdered 10 people, mostly Turkish immigrants, between 2000 and 2007 (5).
References:
1) “Police probe 40 members of German Ku Klux Klan” Daily Sabah 17.1.2019
https://www.dailysabah.com/europe/2019/01/17/police-probe-40-members-of-german-ku-klux-klan
2) Obermaier, Frederick & Schulz, Tanjev: Kapuzenmänner: Der Ku-Klux-Klan in Deutschland. DTV Premium, Munich 2017.
3) “‘The KKK is active here in Germany'” Deutsche Welle 22.2.2017
https://www.dw.com/en/the-kkk-is-active-here-in-germany/a-37668846
4) “Four Ku Klux Klan groups active in Germany, says govt” The Local.de 25.10.2016
https://www.thelocal.de/20161025/four-ku-klux-klan-groups-in-germany-report-kkk
5) “Neo-Nazi murder gang member jailed for life in Germany” Reuters 11.7.2018
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