Right-wing Terror: “Currently not a Threat”?
In 2001, the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared that right-wing terrorism was "currently not a threat." In the same year, the terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) murdered Süleyman Taşköprü in his grocery shop in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld. At the time of the murder, three members of the NSU were wanted by the police as neo-Nazis in hiding. The security authorities were aware that neo-Nazis repeatedly used violence and openly discussed armed underground warfare. Individual groups were banned, among them the neo-Nazi network Blood & Honour Germany in September 2000. Nevertheless, the Blood & Honour network was able to remain active for years.
Blood & Honour saw itself as a political network, a fighting community for the "white race". The network and its bands openly called for a race war. Many song lyrics call for the murder of Black people, migrants, Jews, and political opponents. The network earned money for legal costs and political campaigns from the concerts and the sale of recordings. Numerous Blood & Honour activists supported the NSU in the spirit of the leaderless resistance strategy. Security authorities, on the other hand, interpreted Blood & Honour primarily as a network for the dissemination of National Socialist propaganda through music. To successfully circumvent the ban after 2000, it was often enough to stop announcing concerts under the name Blood & Honour. Although it was the same organizers and the same bands, and thus a persistence of a banned organization, the police usually let them go ahead. On 5 March 2005, for example, the well-known Blood & Honour bands Faustrecht and Legion of Thor were able to play in Marienthal under the watchful eyes of the police. Well-known Blood & Honour members such as the neo-Nazi Torben K., a founding member of the Free Comradeship Hamburger Sturm and temporary state chairman of the Hamburg NPD, continued to organize concerts in Hamburg.
Under the leadership of former Blood & Honour activist Klemens O., the Pinneberg Kameradschaft formed the terrorist group Combat 18 Pinneberg, based on the British model. The 18 stands for Adolf Hitler (1st and 8th letter of the alphabet) and is regarded as the armed wing of Blood & Honour. The group procured weapons, threatened political opponents and extorted protection money from neo-Nazis who distributed music. Although the police found Anti-Antifa lists and numerous weapons during house searches in 2003, the only convictions, in 2005, were of individual members who were found guilty of extortion.
In 2008, neo-Nazis banded together to form the Weisse Wölfe Terrorcrew. Like the Blood & Honour band Weisse Wölfe, after which the group was named, it shared a National Socialist world view and propagated the armed struggle of Combat 18. Members of the group were involved in racist attacks. The Weisse Wölfe Terrorcrew (they later added Hamburger Nationalkollektiv to their name) took part in neo-Nazi events throughout Germany. The group was banned in 2016 for openly espousing National Socialism and taking violent action against political opponents and refugees.
