terrorism – Pike & Hurricane

Taking life in the name of ideology: Germany’s right-wing network

Merle Emrich — Sun, 17 May 2020 14:44:40 +0000

On 2 June 2019, the district president of the region of Kassel in central Germany, Walter Lübcke (CDU), was murdered. What was first suspected to be the crime of a lone perpetrator turned out to be the politically motivated killing of a man with profound connections to Germany’s right-wing network. What was long suspected by some, latest after the NSU (Nationalsocialist Underground) murders, and denied by others has become painfully obvious: 75 years after the defeat of the Third Reich, Germany is all but free of Nazis some of whom are willing to take other people’s life in the name of fascist ideology.

The assassination of Walter Lübcke

Almost a year after CDU politician Walter Lübcke was shot dead in his home, the federal prosecutor has filed charges against main suspect Stephan Ernst as well as his accomplice Markus H. Two weeks after the crime, DNA that could be traced back to Stephan Ernst had led to his arrest. Ernst confessed to the murder and stated that he acted alone. But then Ernst changed his lawyer to Frank Hannig, who is known to be part of the right-wing milieu by association with the Pegida movement, and withdrew his confession. He now claimed that he and Markus H. had intended to beat up Lübcke. According to Ernst, they got into a fight with the politician leading to Markus H. accidentally shooting him. Federal prosecution appears to dismiss the credibility of this second confession and views Ernst as the main suspect. But what were his motives?

In 2015, Lübcke spoke at a citizens’ assembly to inform the public on the setting up of a refugee centre close to Ernst’s home near Kassel. Members of the extreme right, including Ernst and Markus H., were in the audience and disturbed the event by making loud remarks on “the fucking state“. At some point, Lübcke seemed to have had enough and replied that whoever does not share its values “can leave this country at any time” which was followed by him being insulted as “traitor“. Markus H., then, uploaded a video of the event on YouTube resulting in several death threats by right-wing people against Lübcke.

Further aspects reinforce Ernst’s motive. He had made donations not only to the far-right AfD party but also to the Identitarian movement, and had spread hate comments online. He had been actively involved in the Hessian state elections by putting up campaign posters for the AfD, a party whose leading politicians frequently stand out through incidents such as describing Hitler and the NS regime as “bird poop in history” or being recognised as “fascist” by a legal court. Moreover, Ernst had been convicted seven times previously for serious bodily harm, attempted manslaughter and an attempted pipe bomb attack on a refugee centre. After his arrest for the murder of Lübcke two additional cases caught the investigator’s attention. Firstly, the attempted shooting of a teacher from Kassel known for his left-wing convictions in 2003. However, evidence is insufficient for the case to feature in the trial of Ernst. Secondly, a knife attack against Iraqi refugee Ahmed I. which might be relevant in court.

Deep into the brown bog

Not only is the murder of Walter Lübcke a politically motivated crime that sent ripples of shock throughout Germany, but it is also another one in a series of cases in which the German intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) appears to have either underestimated or ignored the threat of far-right terror. Since 2009 Ernst had no longer been in the focus of the Verfassungsschutz which had categorised him as inconspicuous, and neither was Markus H., despite all evidence pointing towards both of them being active in far-right circles. Even after 2009, both Ernst and Markus H. were present at at times violent Nazi protests, including the attack on a DGB (German Trade Union Confederation) protest in 2009 and the escalated protest in Chemnitz in 2018. And although questions on the exact details remain unanswered, both Ernst and Markus H. seem to be directly or indirectly linked to the NSU on whose death list the name “Walter Lübcke” had been found.

It is furthermore assumed that Markus H. acquired the murder weapon for Ernst, made possible by another failure of the Verfassungsschutz. Initially, Markus H. had been banned from owning a weapon due to his right-wing ideology and previous convictions i.e. for the use of an unconstitutional number plate and for shouting “Sieg Heil” and doing the Hitler salute at a pub in 2006. He filed a complaint against this ban and the court asked the Verfassungsschutz if they had information on Markus H. that would speak against him owning a weapon which they negated due to lack of knowledge about a document mentioning Markus H. hardly anyone had access to. Thus, Markus H. was legally able to purchase weapons.

In fact, Ernst might have been involved far more in the extreme right movement than anyone dared to imagine when he was first suspected of having assassinated Lübcke. Evidence, in form of a photo, emerged which suggests that Ernst is part of the militant Nazi network Combat 18 (by now illegal in Germany); founded in Great Britain in 1992 and taking root in Germany in the early 2000s as a militant branch of the Blood & Honour network whose members helped out the clandestine NSU terrorists. After the arrest of Ernst, right-wing extremist Mike S. posted a comment on Facebook in solidarity with Ernst: “I stand behind comrade E., in good times as well as in bad times.” Information published by Der Spiegel, including a photo taken at the pub Stadt Stockholm after a NPD protest in 2002, proves that Ernst was not only an acquaintance of Mike S. but that he was also in contact with Combat 18 leader Stanley Röske who is rumoured to have hosted NSU terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt at his birthday party in 2006. German intelligence and security services however don’t seem to show much concern due to this network which prepares for right-wing terror and a “war of races”.

Hannibal, Uniter e.V. and the Nordkreuz network

Two years prior to the assassination of Lübcke another case shed light on Germany’s Nazi network. During razzias in August 2017, illegally hoarded weapons and ammunition along with 200 body bags and death lists including about 5000 names of left-wing politicians and anti-fascist activists were found. None of the accused people were convicted for attempted terror, but merely for illegal possession of weapons. Among them are right-wing populist and lawyer Jan-Hendrik H. and (by now former) detective superintendent Haik J. who were investigated on suspicion of terror as police had found a police-internal ground plan of a local politician’s flat who was under police protection. Marko G., police officer for the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) and temporarily the Special Deployment Commando (SEK) who himself was hoarding ammunition, took part in the trials solely as a witness.

What connects the people whose homes were searched during these razzias is that they were part of the Nordkreuz group – one of many chat groups that could be traced back to a man named André S. alias “Hannibal”. Reconstructed chat conversations revealed the content of its members’ conversations: assassination fantasies about left-wing people, sympathising with the NSU, references to Hitler having “fought hard for the German ethnicity”, their perceived threat of Russia, Islamist terror and refugees.

Members of both Uniter – a club founded by André S. – and the right-wing chat groups hosted by him include former and active police officers and soldiers. The aim of André S. appears to have been to build a network of soldiers, police officers and representatives of public authorities who fear that in the case of a catastrophe the state won’t be able to upkeep public order. One of their strategies is to build a combat force called “Defence”. What led to the unearthing of this network, that neither the MAD (Military Counterintelligence Service) nor the Verfassungsschutz seemed to have noticed or taken seriously, was the arrest of one of the chat group’s members, Special Force Command soldier Franco A.

In early 2017, Franco A. was arrested at the Vienna airport because he had hidden a gun there. During the investigations it turned out that he was registered as Syrian refugee “David Benjamin”, possibly as part of a plan to commit attacks which were supposed to be the starting point for right-wing riots ultimately leading to a coup. He also appeared to have been involved in a plan to free imprisoned Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck and to blow up the memorial for the Jewish Rothschild family in Frankfurt. Apart from a death list and the gun Franco A. had hidden at the Vienna airport, additional weapons – some of which had swastikas carved into them – and explosives, a manual on how to build a bomb, a guerilla guide which is popular among members of the extreme right and Wehrmacht relics were found in his possession.

A further alarming detail in the case is that Maximilian T., fellow soldier and friend of Franco A., worked as assistant of Jan Nolte, member of parliament for the AfD. His position granted him access to parliament without having to go through a security check, as well as access to, among others, the office of Green party politician Claudia Roth whose name had been found on one of the network’s death lists.

The Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt, however, dismissed charges against Franco A. for the preparation of a serious criminal offense endangering the State. Only Mathias F., another friend and army comrade of Franco A., was convicted for illegal possession of weapons but merely received a suspended sentence. Meanwhile, the German government continued to deny the existence of any kind of right-wing network and the connection between the individual cases. Furthermore, many questions remain unanswered, among them, why Franco A. had not been noticed before. After all, he had clearly revealed his right-wing ideology in his Master thesis in 2014. He had argued that immigration was the cause of a contemporary genocide of Western European peoples and that the Jews were to blame for it, and justified the use of violence in contexts of “protection of the identity of the own people” against “foreign elements”. Even though the German army was aware of Franco A.’s Master thesis, they merely classified it as a bad academic work.

The murder of Lübcke and the cases connected to the Nordkreuz network demonstrate that the failures of the Verfassungsschutz in the context of the NSU are not a single case, but rather a symptomatic and structural problem. In part it might be related to personal faults of the former head of the Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who had speculated on videos of the right-wing mob that chased after foreign looking people in Chemnitz (2018) being faked, who accused the Left party of being “left-wing radicals” and Antifa as “extremists”, and who is now criticising mainstream media for calling out conspiracy theories related to corona and those who spread them. But to a great extent, the blindness towards far-right extremism of the Verfassungsschutz and the government, might be due to the intransparent structures and processes of the Verfassungsschutz which lead to the disappearance or almost complete inaccessibility of documents and thus people like Stephan Ernst falling under the radar, as well as an unwillingness to admit that there is the danger of right-wing violence and terror in Germany of all places.

“Offer for idiots” (left). “Brown politics in blue colour” (right).

Anti-fascism

In his book Paris – Boulevard St. Martin No. 11 German-Jewish communist and résistant Peter Gingold wrote: “The most meaningful and precious thing in German history is and remains the anti-fascist resistance.” In an appeal to the generation born after him to continue in the tradition of antifascist resistance and to act based on a sense of justice he confessed to having it found unimaginable that, after 1945, “the following generations would be – yet again – confronted with nazism, racism, with reviving nationalism and militarism.” And yet, augmenting xenophobic sentiments and nationalism, the presence of fascist soldiers, lawyers and police officers, the existence of Nazi networks in Germany and beyond speaks a clear language, pointing precisely to this unimaginable scenario.

Since 1970 more than 250 people have died due to right-wing terror. Yet, it was not until the NSU murders – due to their scale and the failure of the Verfassungsschutz to uncover the clandestine fascist network earlier and thus prevent deaths – and the assassination of Walter Lübcke – a white man and member of the German political elite – that focus fell on the continued existence of Nazism in post-1945 Germany both in international and national media, and politics. A profound examination of the structures of the Verfassungsschutz needs to happen and Germany has to increase its awareness of the uncomfortable truth of fascist terror. Yet, while politics and intelligence services remain (partially) blind on the right eye, the ordinary citizen can still do their part, whether individually or as a group, to stand up and speak out against racism, fascism, xenophobia and other forms of hate, injustice and discrimination. And after all, antifascism, in Germany and elsewhere, does not start with the legal prosecution of those who have already committed violent acts. It starts with resisting and calling out fascist ideology already in its earliest stage.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Identitären-Demo in Berlin, 17.06.2016, Tim Lüddemann, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Chemnitz: AfD-Trauermarsch und Gegenkundgebung (1), Tim Lüddemann, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Chemnitz: AfD-Trauermarsch und Gegenkundgebung (2), Tim Lüddemann, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Solidarität verteidigen – United against racism & fascism, Rasande Tyskar, CC BY-NC 2.0

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Portrait of a female warlord

Oliver Ösmark — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:00:11 +0000

The Taliban are well-versed in crime. En masse, they’ve effectively run the gamut of all crimes founded on a total contempt for humanity, in all its forms, except for those that abide by the constrictive and unaccommodating codification of ethics only they have authorship of. As is common among terror organizations and their death-worship, they set those enthralled under their tyranny up to fail, and relish in imparting the brutal—many times fatal—penalties for noncompliance. Amorality and psychopathy are rewarded with the spoils of their “holy” war, and in a society which offers no commensurate glory for the person with little aspiration for the homicidal narcissism of the Taliban Jihadist, fear prevails.

With good reason. More than 10,000 civilians in Afghanistan were killed or injured last year, of which 47% is attributed to Taliban actions. These numbers have been stable since 2014, from which they escalated at a worrying rate in 2009. The UN estimates that civilian casualties have exceeded 100,000 since the organization began documenting the impact of the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Much like ISIL’s genocidal murder and abductions of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children shortly after declaring themselves a state in June 2014, the Taliban have their own sins yet to be answered for.

In the mid-1990’s, the Taliban committed to a strategy of fear and bloodshed targeting civilians. UN officials stated that between 1996–2006 there had been as many as 15 massacres. One such was the attack on Mazar-e Sharif in August 1998, representing one of the single worst examples of killings of civilians in the wars that have raged in the Afghan region since the Soviet invasion of 1979. In what is considered an act of ethnic cleansing, the Taliban launched an attack on the city and began killing an estimated 5,000-6,000 ethnic Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks indiscriminately. This society of dread and servility under threat of death will have shaped generations that have known little else but war.

Kaftar, the dove of war

In the mountains outside of the Baghlan Province in northern Afghanistan, an ex-commander with the mujahideen that fought the Soviet forces operates out of a compound with an alleged 150 fighters. Her name is Bibi Aisha Habibi and she is Afghanistan’s only known female warlord. She is referred to as Kaftar, or “dove” in Dari; a diminutive sobriquet—by one account—given to her by her father because she would quickly move from place to place as if she were a bird. She was born in 1953, in the village of Gawi in Baghlan province’s Nahrin District, the daughter of an important community leader, or arbob. She was one of the middle children of 10, and, being as she remembers it, her father’s favorite. She’d follow him around as he worked to settle disputes and give advice to villagers on matters of farming and family affairs.

She was engaged at the age of 12 to a man 10 year her senior. This was normal practice for most girls living in rural Afghanistan; where around 80% of the Afghan population live. Unlike other girls she wasn’t removed from public life and it was agreed—and consented to by her husband—that she’d continue to be allowed to act on her father’s behalf as an arbob. She took pleasure in working as an intermediary in marriage disputes; sometimes forcing families to allow women to choose whom they wanted to marry. Also, she implemented rules to reduce dowries, which was an obstacle for many couples not able to marry under previous conditions. In the wars to come, her husband would stay at home with their 7 children while she rode into battle.

In 1979, the Soviets invaded. A group of Soviet commandos swarmed her mountain and killed many villagers, including her son. She took to Jihad and against the Soviet forces for the next ten years. She lost family both to the Soviets as well as the Taliban which was in conflict with the mujahideen. After the Soviets, the Taliban would eventually take Kabul and control up to three-fourths of the country. In the years to follow, Kaftar would lose brothers, sons, nieces, and nephews to the Taliban.

She considers herself a collector of lost and exiled men. Her fighters consist of ex-Taliban, ex-mujahedeen, fighters of dejected ethnic minorities compelled to take up arms against the threat of bandits, brigands, and Taliban. Yet, she has herself lost family that swore allegiance to the Taliban and has, on numerous occasions, been a target of assassination attempts orchestrated by relatives. Regarding this she says, “It’s really painful when your own family members come to kill you, and then later it’s painful when you kill them.”

War all the time

With the U.S. invasion in 2001, she thought that peace would be imminent. The Taliban were routed to the south and east part of the country by coalition forces and trained Afghan security forces. Armed unaffiliated militia groups like Kaftar’s were seen as a destabilizing factor, and in 2006—convinced by the prospect of peace—she agreed to surrender most of her and her fighters’ weapons as a part of the UN’s Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups programme.

But disarmament hasn’t proved an effective strategy for peace in a culture already plagued by unresolved endemic conflicts. The Taliban were revived with a fresh dynamism. Troubled by family feuds of tit-for-tat violence and regular death threats made by the Taliban, Kaftar has experienced none of the peace promised to her by the UN and the “democratic transition of power” heralded by the war against the Taliban.

As the U.S. prepares to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, many fear the return of Taliban rule. This time, however, her fighters aren’t prepared for active revolt. The legitimacy granted to the Taliban by the current peace talks give them a political advantage over the poorly armed rural resistance fighters. In a 2014 interview, she says that she would like to seek asylum outside of Afghanistan, but has to ensure the passage of 30-40 of her family members first. Without help or enough weapons, she fears that the extremist militants will target her and her family. “I was proud of my career,” she says. “But since I have been getting threats and I’m struggling and suffering, now I think I should not have become a commander. I wish I would have been just a normal housewife. That no one would know me, no one would come to talk to me, and I would have been just a normal housewife. Now I am sitting awake at night, always on guard, with a gun, ready to protect myself.”

Blood can’t wash blood

While she has, in her own way, worked to moderate the divides between men and women, and has taken an unlikely role in her society as the leader of a community and armed fighters, she is not a respected woman among warring factions and squabbling relatives. The old Afghan proverb “Zar, zan, zamin”—gold, women, land—still motivates violence in a culture of guns and rivalries. Until the paradigm of fundamentalism and lawlessness is dismantled by means of education and stable government institutions, the rule of the sword will persist and those able to fight will give their lives to protect those they hold dearest.

Kaftar knows this life all too well, but doesn’t wish it on the generations to come. The life of a warrior is a precarious one, but if it comes to the choice between fighting and submission, the prospect of subservience under Taliban rule will always inspire bloody insurgency. Despite her hardships, she knows this: “It makes no difference if you are a man or a woman when you have the heart of a fighter.”

Photo credits:

Afghanistan Observes 2007 International Peace Day, United Nations Photo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

High Moon over Nili, Afghanistan, United Nations Photo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Afghanistan-1, Ekaterina Didkovskaya, CC BY-NC 2.0

100331-F-2616H-011, Kenny Holston, CC BY-ND 2.0

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The Biggest Delusion about Terrorism

Evgenia Isaeva — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 12:45:19 +0000

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims”. Most people have probably heard this expression at some point in their lives. But not many have acknowledged how wrong it could be. Unfortunately, this idea is quite often taken for granted. For some reason people assume that the majority of terrorist attacks are committed by Muslims. However, the real situation turns out to be completely different from what most people think – adherents of other religions as well as non-religious people commit terrorist attacks quite often, too. When it comes to thinking of terrorism, most people tend to imagine a person blowing himself up in a public place. But, in fact, it would be more correct to think of terrorism as a violent act intended to intimidate population and pursue political goals.

9/11 has altered many peoples’ perceptions.

So how come so many people have a wrong idea of terrorism? Why do they always associate terrorism only with Islam and almost never see Christian, Buddhist or Jewish criminals as terrorists? Perhaps, we should blame the media and the way it presents information and portrays Muslims. If a crime is committed by a Muslim, it will draw more attention and provoke heated debates. An incident will be discussed in the media over and over again. Most likely, it will be viewed as a ‘terrorist attack’ straight away. Whereas, when an act of terrorism committed by a person or people of a different religion occurs, less attention is paid to the discussion about religious views of the person, and it will take time to confirm that the incident was a terrorist attack. In fact, many events would not be covered by the media at all. For example, not many people have heard of Italian anarchist group FAI that had already been operating and posing threat to national security in Italy and some other countries in Europe for more than 10 years. Criminal activity of this non-religious terrorist organization is rarely covered in the news.

Investigation of the statistical data provided by FBI and Europol indicates that religion does not have much to do with terrorism. Indeed, religiously inspired terrorism is a rare phenomenon. According to a Europol report, less than 2% of total amount of terrorist attacks in Europe are based on religious beliefs. In the US, where Muslims are frequently portrayed as perpetrators, Islamic terrorist attacks make up only 6%, which is even less then the number of terrorist attacks committed by Jewish extremists. Most of the terrorist acts are committed by adherents of other religions or have nothing to do with religion at all. Still, mostly terrorists are believed to be Muslims. Incidents with involvement of terrorists that are not connected with Islam are hardly ever discussed. The reason for that might be the fact that terrorist attacks committed by Islamists usually take lives of many people at the same time, while terrorist attacks committed by other factions usually claim only a few people’s lives.

So what is and is not associated with terrorism?

On the 24th of March 2015, the world witnessed the airplane crash in the French Alps that claimed the lives of 150 people. A few days later it was reported that the plane was crashed deliberately by the depressed co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. This person was called a ‘mass-murderer’ for his actions, no one accused him of being a terrorist. If Andreas Lubitz was somehow connected with Islam, then, the stereotype about terrorist attacks would probably be applied to this case without any explicit consideration, and some lights on the incident would be shed on the incident in a different way. But he was not a Muslim, and his religious views are not mentioned anywhere in the news reports. Therefore following this logic, it is fair to assume that terrorism is mostly associated with Islam simply due to labelling by the media.

Commemorating the terorist attack on Utoya

Another example of people’s unwillingness to label a non-Muslim person as a terrorist can be found in examining Norway attacks in 2011. A Norwegian perpetrator inspired by right-wing extremist ideology, Anders Behring Breivik, first blew up a car in the centre of Oslo, and then opened fire at teenagers in a summer camp on the island of Utøya. The horrible events that took place there shocked the whole of Europe, and provoked a lot of discussions and debates about the personality, objectives, and mental health of the murderer. This case, though, was not discussed much in the media outside of Europe.

Even though that case is now considered as terrorism, it took quite a lot of time to define it as such. In fact, a year had passed after the incident when the Norwegian court came to the conclusion that what Breivik had done was a terrorist attack. Especially in the beginning people tried to somehow justify his actions. Mental disorders were one of the main arguments to explain Breivik’s behavior. It is also important to mention that in this case religious views of the perpetrator inspired his actions. However, not in the usual way. As the terrorist claimed, he was ‘a 100% Christian’ and the reason for his actions was islamophobia. Perhaps reasons for the extreme length of the investigation as well as the trial to determine his punishment where that Norway aims to bear an image of being a safe country free from such severe crimes as terrorism, and that Breivik’s religious views did not fit in with the stereotypical concept of a Muslim-terrorist. Although no Islamic implications as a driving force for this massacre were found in this case, it is still a terrorist attack.

Still, even after the Norwegian court announced their verdict and proclaimed Breivik a terrorist, not everyone agreed with the statement. Deborah Orr, a journalist who works for ‘the Guardian’, announced that “Anders Behring Breivik is not a terrorist, he is a mass-murderer”. But what exactly makes some people distinguish terrorism from mass-murder? In this case especially, the event had political implications – Breivik’s actions were directed at the Norwegian government and their immigration policies.

Getting back to the initial belief of Islam being tightly connected with terrorism, it is important to mention once again that this idea is completely wrong and is mostly imposed on people by the media. As statistics reveal, religious implications and Muslims in general are not associated with terrorist attacks as often as most people imagine. Adherents of other religions as well as non-religious people led by extremist ideologies constitute the majority of terrorists. Therefore, people should not think of terrorism as committed only by Muslims and see all believers of Islam as terror suspects. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslim.

By Evgenia Isaeva

Image credit:

Picture 1: Jason Powell, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 2: Dmitry Valberg, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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