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GERMANY: ARTICLE ON BLOOD AND HONOUR BAN
Reported in yesterday's online version of The Times
Berlin outlaws neo-Nazi rock music company
FROM ROGER BOYES IN BERLIN
THE sinister Blood and Honour group, Europe's largest
distributor of neo-Nazi rock music, was outlawed by the
German Government yesterday in its latest attack on
underground far-right culture.
The move follows raids on more than 30 apartments in
eastern Germany that have netted more than 6,400
compact discs and more than 60,000 videos and posters
featuring the illegal swastika symbol. Otto Schily, Interior
Minister, said that Blood and Honour, German Division
and an associated group, White Youth, would be banned
with immediate effect because both were in breach of the
law and abused constitutional freedom.
Although Blood and Honour numbers only 240 active
members, its influence stretches across Germany and
continental Europe. Named after the Nazi slogan, Blood
and Honour distributes and produces the music - known
as Oi! - that grips right-wing skinhead teenagers. The
group aims to politicise German youths.
Three skinheads recently sentenced for the murder in
Dessau of the African Alberto Adriano were sitting on a
park bench chanting a song called Sturmf�hrer, which is
about the murderous exploits of a grandfather in the SS,
just before they struck. The song comes from a compact
disc produced by the group Landser, which is linked with
Blood and Honour. One Landser text read out by the
judge states: "Africa for the apes, Europe for the whites,
stuff the apes down the toilet."
Landser and other groups, with names such as Final
Solution, a reference to Hitler's Holocaust, and the
Zillertal Turk-hunters, record their songs in Berlin cellars
or across the border in Poland. The recordings are then
pressed in the United States and come back to Europe via
Sweden, where Blood and Honour has its main
distribution centre.
Nazi rock is booming. In 1997 the German equivalent of
Special Branch registered 55 neo-Nazi rock bands. Now
there are more than 100. Since 1991 more than 500
neo-Nazi compact discs have been produced, with
distribution of up to 15,000. Last year 1.5 million
neo-Nazi compact discs were in circulation. Investigators
now have a distribution list of 1,500 addresses in
Germany and abroad.
Since the reunification of Germany ten years ago, far-right
activists have killed 93 people, according to the
newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Der
Tagesspiegel. The figure is more than three times the
official number.
