"Recruiting Members via SNS"...Germany Cracks Down on Two Youth Neo-Nazi Groups

German Federal Prosecutors Raid 50 Locations Including Homes of 36 Suspects

Number of Far-Right Suspects Aged 14 to 17 Doubles in One Year

Arson and Attacks on Politicians... "Online Far-Right Culture"

German investigative authorities have launched a large-scale crackdown on two youth neo-Nazi organizations accused of committing hate crimes against immigrants and sexual minorities.

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According to Yonhap News Agency, citing ARD and other broadcasters on the 6th (local time), the German Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) carried out raids on more than 50 locations, including the residences of 36 members of the far-right groups Deutsche Jugend Voran (DJV; German Youth Forward) and Jung und Stark (JS; Young and Strong), on charges of forming a criminal organization. The operation involved over 600 police officers from 12 of the 16 federal states, including Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony.

Local media reported that most of the main suspects identified as ringleaders of these groups are teenagers, with the youngest member being 16 years old. Authorities consider the two organizations, which are linked to the neo-Nazi party die Heimat, to be violent groups that attack left-wing activists, immigrants, and sexual minorities. The weekly magazine Der Spiegel noted, "Prosecutors appear to be aiming to gain a detailed understanding of the organizational structure through these raids."

Neo-Nazi groups are actively recruiting young members through social networking services (SNS). According to the federal government, the number of far-right crime suspects aged 14 to 17 more than doubled from 1,785 in 2023 to 3,852 in 2024.

Julian M (24), considered the leader of DJV, was sentenced last year to three years and three months in prison for assaulting supporters of the antifascist movement Antifa and threatening to kill former group members who had left the organization.

Eight teenage members of another neo-Nazi group, Letzte Verteidigungswelle (LVW; Last Defense Movement), were brought to trial last year on charges of setting fire to refugee shelters and other locations and drawing the Nazi symbol "Hakenkreuz." Berlin authorities criticized this as "a provocation targeting violence-prone youth within the online far-right culture."

In addition, a number of terror attacks against politicians that occurred in connection with the 2024 European Parliament elections in June were also found to be the work of these youth neo-Nazi groups. About two months before the German federal election in December of the same year, four far-right youths aged 16 to 19 assaulted two local politicians from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) near a Berlin subway station. At the time, the Berlin SPD issued a statement strongly condemning the incident, saying, "The election campaign has started with a Nazi attack on democracy."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.