On June 27, 2001, Süleyman Taşköprü was murdered by the right-wing terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) in Hamburg. The police did not consider a racist motive for the crime and the NSU remained undetected until it unmasked itself ten years later. In the year of the murder, the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution declared that right-wing terrorism was “currently not a threat”.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA, the focus of public attention shifted to Islamist terror. Anti-Muslim racism increased sharply. Hamburg was declared the “most dangerous city” in Germany during the election campaign for the 2001 parliamentary elections. The demand for “internal security” was a key campaign issue and also shaped day-to-day politics. In this climate, the new “Rechtsstaatliche Offensive” party under Ronald Schill achieved 19.4 percent of the vote in the 2001 municipal elections in Hamburg. For the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic, a right-wing populist party, in coalition with the CDU and FDP, was in control of a state government.

Despite both the Kameradschaft Hamburger Sturm and the Blood & Honour network having been banned the year before, neo-Nazis continued their activities in Hamburg. There were still right-wing rock concerts, demonstrations, and racist attacks. The far right focused on the fight for “intellectual influence” on historical images, for the “honor of the Wehrmacht”, and against the alleged “bombing terror of the Allies”. The Hamburg NPD opened up to the militant neo-Nazi scene, members of which increasingly took on leadership positions in the party.