Germany has banned the small group Artgemeinschaft, a neo-Nazi group whose members are the target of a nationwide crackdown, the interior minister said on Wednesday.
Early in the morning, searches were initiated in 26 apartments of 39 members of this “racist and anti-Semitic” organization in twelve regions of Germany, according to a press release from the Interior Ministry.
According to the German authorities, this association is trying to “indoctrinate young people in a repugnant manner.”
By banning the species community, “we are banning a deeply racist and anti-Semitic cult association,” Interior Secretary Nancy Faeser said in this press release.
This ban comes a week after that of another small group of neo-Nazi skinheads, “Hammerskins Deutschland”.
This new operation, which has been prepared for a year, is a “hard blow against right-wing extremism and the arsonists who continue to propagate the ideals of National Socialism,” the minister continued.
The small group of around 150 members is trying to “create new enemies of the constitution through a disgusting indoctrination of children and young people” and is using barely changed literature from the Nazi era, says Ms. Faeser.
The ban is also directed against offshoots of the species community, whose members are particularly called upon to “select their spouse” within the “human species” of Northern and Central Europe with the aim of passing on the “correct genetic material,” according to the press release.
There has been a rise in anti-Semitic acts across the country in recent years, marking a resurgence of Germany’s Nazi past.
A week ago, unknown people desecrated more than 40 Jewish graves in the cemetery of a city in the east of the country.