Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and white supremacy, attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases to create a fascist state.
The National Democratic Party of Germany is a far-right and Neo-Nazi political party in Germany.
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyites and Maoists.
The Popular Association – Golden Dawn, usually shortened to Golden Dawn, is a far-right ultranationalist political party in Greece. Golden Dawn rose to prominence during Greece's financial crisis of 2009, becoming the third most popular party in the Greek parliament in 2012. Its support has since plunged, and it failed to enter parliament in the 2019 election. The criminal trial against the leaders, frequently described as the largest Nazi trial since Nuremberg, lasted more than five years.
Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) was a militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in the UK in 1985 by a wide range of anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations.
The far-right in Germany slowly reorganised itself after the fall of Nazi Germany and the dissolution of the Nazi Party in 1945. Denazification was carried out in Germany from 1945 to 1951 by the Allied forces of World War II, with an attempt of eliminating Nazism from the country. However, various far-right parties emerged post-war, with varying success. Most parties only lasted a few years before either dissolving or being banned, and explicitly far-right parties have never gained seats in the Bundestag post-WWII. The closest was the hard-right Deutsche Rechtspartei, which attracted former Nazis and won five seats in the 1949 West German federal election and held these seats for four years, before losing them in the 1953 West German federal election. This was until the election of Alternative for Germany representatives to the Bundestag in 2017.
Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland is a German youth organization, that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has categorized as “right-wing extremist”. Most of its activities take place in the eastern parts of Germany. Its regional branch in Saxony organized the annual marches to commemorate the Bombing of Dresden in World War II until 2012. A Bloomberg report claims it has ties to the National Democratic Party of Germany.
The Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime/Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) is a German political confederation founded in 1947 and based in Berlin. The VVN-BdA, formerly the VVN, emerged from victims' associations in Germany founded by political opponents to Nazism after the Second World War and the end of the Nazi dictatorship.
Autonome Nationalisten are German, British, Dutch and to a lesser degree Flemish Nationalists, who have adopted some of the far-left and Antifa's organizational concepts, demonstration tactics, symbolism, and elements of clothing, including Che Guevara T-shirts and keffiyehs. Similar groups have also appeared in some central and eastern European countries, beginning with Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Romania and Greece and others.
During the early 21st century, Dresden was the site of some of the largest gatherings of neo-Nazis in post-war Germany. The annual right-wing marches peaked in 2007 and 2009, with about 6,500 participants. At the marches, a broad coalition of right-wing groups commemorated the Allied bombing of Dresden at the end of World War II on the weekend after the anniversary of the bombing on February 13, 1945.
The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far-right groups in the United Kingdom. It was wound down in 1981. It was relaunched in 1992, but merged into Unite Against Fascism in 2003.
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisation of the Occident, abbreviated Pegida, is a pan-European, anti-Islam, far-right political movement. German Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicised and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.
NOWKR was a radical-left, anticapitalist and antifascist alliance against a ball now organized by Austria's right-wing Freedom Party. The alliance was created in 2008 and ever since has caused uproar among politicians, the media and the police. The group dissolved itself in February 2015.
Blockupy is a movement protesting against austerity. The Blockupy alliance includes trade unions and Germany's Linkspartei.
Post–World War II anti-fascism, including antifa groups, anti-fascist movements and anti-fascist action networks, saw the development of political movements describing themselves as anti-fascist and in opposition to fascism. Those movements have been active in several countries in the aftermath of World War II during the second half of the 20th and early 21st century.
Caren Nicole Lay is a German politician. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009 and has been deputy chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 2017. From 2012 to 2018, she was one of the deputy chairpersons of her party. In November 2019, Lay unsuccessfully applied to succeed Sahra Wagenknecht as co-chairperson of the Die Linke parliamentary group in the Bundestag. She was defeated by Amira Mohamed Ali in a competitive vote.
Since April 2020, when Germany's Constitutional Court ruled that the governmental lockdown imposed in March to counter the COVID-19 pandemic did not allow blanket bans on rallies, numerous protests have been held in Germany against anti-pandemic regulations. The protests attracted a mix of people from varied backgrounds, including supporters of populist ideas who felt called to defend against what they saw as an arrogant central government; supporters of various conspiracy theories; and sometimes far right-wing groups. Anti-vaxxers generally also formed a major part of the protesters. Some protesters held strongly negative views towards public media, who they believed to report in an unfair manner; repeatedly, journalists covering the rallies were subjected to harassment and physical attacks. Such attacks were the main reason why Germany slipped from eleventh to 13th place in the Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, according to a report published on 20 April 2021.
Gruppe S, named after founder Werner S., was an alleged far-right terrorist group in Germany that emerged on the internet in September 2019 and was dismantled in February 2020 with the arrest of several militants. They are said to have armed themselves in a few months, conducted target practice and planned simultaneous assassinations of Muslims in mosques, prominent politicians and people close to anti-fascist movements.
