Germany Cracks Down on Neo-Nazi Music Ring

Posted by Lisa Derrick, La Figa at 9:55 AM on March 8, 2009.

This week German authorities, including 800 police, raided residences and offices across the country, confiscating 45,000 CDs, more than 170 computers and some 70 weapons in a huge operation designed to stamp out the manufacture and sale of neo-Nazi themed music.

Under the German constitution creating the lyrical content and selling neo-Nazi music is a crime, although possessing it isn't. The investigation began two years ago when officials at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution discovered an online auction house selling neo-Nazi music.

Lead prosecutor Sigfried Mahler said:

Music represents the gateway through which young people are lured in. Millions of euros of business is done every year producing and distributing recordings of extreme right-wing music...Using aggressive, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic lyrics, they spread extreme right-wing ideas and expressions of hate.

Police and prosecutors from the politically motivated crimes division at the Federal Prosecutor's Office spent the past two years spent analyzing data concerning some 20,000 sales, 1,000 recordings and 800 registered users from that initial investigation, and succeeded at uncovering the distribution structure and feel they have made significant contribution in combating racist and neo-Nazi subcultures, though no arrests have been made.  Police have not released the name of their main suspect in the ring, but he is believed to be a 34-year-old man from the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Tagged as: music, germany, nazi, neo-nazi, neo-nazi music