Blood & Honor: Far-right network in court

The security authorities are increasing the investigative pressure on the violent neo-Nazi scene in Germany. A group of ten will be on trial in the summer.

As of June, ten neo-Nazis have to face a court in Munich because they are said to have continued the banned right-wing extremist Blood & Honor network underground, as a court spokesman pointed out NDR-Request confirmed. From 2016 to 2018, the right-wing extremists are said to have set up the structure of the Blood & Honor Division Germany and created subdivisions in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia. In addition, individual defendants are accused of incitement to hatred and using symbols of unconstitutional organizations. Blood & Honor was banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2000.

The best-known defendant is the neo-Nazi Stanley R., whose apartment was searched again on April 6, 2022 as part of the nationwide raid against right-wing extremists. Now the federal prosecutor is investigating R. and 20 other people because they are said to have illegally continued another banned neo-Nazi group: Combat 18 Germany. The 18 stands for the first and eighth letters of the alphabet and thus the initials of Adolf Hitler.

When Combat 18 Germany was banned by the Ministry of the Interior at the beginning of 2020, R. was considered the leading light. Combat 18 Germany and the group members “glorify National Socialism, spread racial hatred and anti-democracy and propagate anti-Semitism,” the Federal Administrative Court found. Born in Greifswald in 1976, Stanley R. has been active in right-wing extremist circles for decades.

Up to five years imprisonment possible

From June onwards, the 2nd Criminal Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court will investigate whether the accused made themselves punishable with their activities for Blood & Honour. Initially, the court scheduled 25 days of hearings until October. In addition to alleged ordinary members of the right-wing extremist network operating underground, the alleged head of Germany and the “section heads” from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia are also accused. Violation of the ban on association – i.e. continuing a banned organization – is punishable by a fine or imprisonment for up to three years. Ringleaders can be imprisoned for up to five years.

The investigators struck in December 2018: During simultaneous searches, 15 buildings were searched in Bavaria, Thuringia, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt. The public prosecutor’s office initially obtained arrest warrants against four suspected ringleaders and the then Combat 18 Germany squad Stanley R. But the right-wing extremists were quickly released. With the raid before Christmas 2018, the investigators apparently prevented a CD with neo-Nazi music from circulating.

Popular songs

Initially, the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office indicted eleven suspects in January 2021. The proceedings against one of the accused have since been discontinued subject to conditions. “By distributing and marketing the Blood & Honor brand,” according to the Attorney General’s Office, the accused are said to have pursued the goal of “spreading the right-wing extremist ideas and worldview of this banned organization.”

Music CDs with banned right-wing rock songs and merchandising items with banned neo-Nazi symbols were to be brought to the scene. Four of the defendants are also accused of having produced a CD sampler with inciting songs and brought it to Germany. Combat 18 man Stanley R. is said to have been involved through his good international contacts.

During the raid in 2018, the investigators confiscated extensive CD stocks – including hard right-wing rock. In an English-language song, for example, there is a call to fight Jews. “We must fight together and kill the parasites,” it says. In another song, the Holocaust is denied: “But the Jews fill their pockets even more with the six-million lie.” The investigators at the Niederbayern police headquarters in Straubing evaluated the secured data for around two years. Among other things, the four-strong investigative team had to work their way through a large amount of monitored and secured communication.

To NDR-Information came from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The defense attorneys for the accused wanted to NDR-Do not comment on the procedure.