Germany Bans Skinheads Blamed in Hate Acts

In the first move to curb recent right-wing violence, German Interior Minister Otto Schily on Thursday banned Blood and Honor, a skinhead group blamed for inciting racial hatred through music, magazines and the Internet.

The action is seen as a prelude to an eventual government shutdown of the larger far-right National Democratic Party, which has been accused of harboring neo-Nazis and fanning intolerance in Germany’s volatile eastern states. Government officials last month asked a Constitutional Court panel to investigate the party--known as the NPD, its initials in German--to determine whether there are legal grounds for outlawing it.

Germany has been shaken this summer by a spate of hate crimes, particularly in the depressed eastern states, where angry and idle youths vent their wrath against foreigners they see as competing for jobs and welfare benefits. At least four people died and dozens were injured in the attacks, which have prompted an outpouring of anti-rightist protest as well.

Schily conceded that the government has no evidence directly implicating Blood and Honor’s approximately 300 German followers in the violence of the past few months. But he said authorities felt that they had to act against the international skinhead group because it disseminates racist music and organizes concerts and rallies that seek “to poison the hearts and minds” of vulnerable youths.

“It is enough that they adopted the goal of spreading Nazi ideology,” Schily said in justifying the ban, which makes public assembly, distribution of materials and other activities by the group illegal. “There is a connection there, because these concerts and music produce a certain atmosphere or predisposition for the use of violence.”

Those arrested for skinhead violence often tell police that they were inspired by racist music or literature, he added.

Germany is the first country to ban Blood and Honor, which has chapters across Europe as well as in the United States, Australia and South Africa, in addition to an estimated 350 Web sites on the Internet. The German group was established in Berlin in 1994 and has attracted about 200 adults as well as the 100 minors who constitute its White Youth wing.

Police raided more than 30 locales just before Schily’s announcement and seized hate literature, CDs and videos containing racist music, as well as bank records showing the group had resources in the tens of thousands of dollars, the interior minister said.

Bavarian Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein, although a conservative opponent of Schily’s ruling Social Democratic Party, applauded the move against the skinhead group and urged the federal government to take the next step in curbing racist violence by banning the NPD.

The NPD has several thousand members nationwide and representatives in state and municipal parliaments in the troubled eastern states.

A report by the special investigative panel on allegedly illegal activities of NPD members is expected next month, and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has vowed to make full use of any evidence that would justify banning the party.