A leftist, government-funded NGO worked together with masked Antifa thugs who doxed and visited the homes of allegedly far-right “ethnic nationalists” citizens in Germany to threaten them.
According to an investigative report by NIUS, the civil society initiative “Beherzt” identified individuals they deemed to be “ethnic nationalist settlers” (“völkische Siedler”) and cooperated with Antifa, which sent buses full of masked thugs to visit the homes of the alleged far-rights extremists and threaten them.
The NGO Beherzt, founded in 2018 in Lower Saxony, designed yellow-violet crosses with the slogan “Cross without a catch — cross for diversity” so that non-right-wing people could mark their houses and show they are not “ethnic nationalist settlers.” A local resident told NIUS that the wooden crosses are “Jewish stars with a reversed meaning.”
NIUS showed photographs of houses with these “diversity crosses” in several villages in Lower Saxony. The signs can be seen as a way to virtue signal and to identify those who refuse to conform.
Between 2023 and 2024, masked Antifa thugs visited at least seven private houses in Lower Saxony, NIUS reported. One of those incidents was Reinhard Nietzel (name changed by NIUS to protect privacy), who captured the “visit” by a group of around 30 masked Antifa members in front of his house.
They unrolled a banner saying, “Exposing and combating ethnic Nazi structures” and screamed insults like “nazi pig” through a megaphone. The masked thugs handed out leaflets in the village with information about the family that allegedly proved they were right-wing extremists.
The left-wing extremists accused the family of the following:
Neitzel had once been active in the group “Sturmvogel,” a youth group that was also frequented by right-wingers. His family ran an antiquarian bookstore that sold Nazi literature. His wife, a prospective teacher, was committed to methods that were also adopted by the “Anastasia” movement, another nationalist group. Seventeen years ago, as a 16-year-old, she stood at a memorial demonstration for fallen soldiers in Dresden; neo-Nazis were also there that day.
Nietzel said the antiquarian bookstore belonged to his father but has long since been taken over by his brother. They did sell literature for students to use as primary sources, including Nazi literature, communist texts, and writings from the conservative revolution, without promoting any of the ideologies. Nietzel stressed that he is not a Nazi and that he reads Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt.
After he had repeatedly emphasized that he had been wronged, the left-wing extremist scene mobilized to denounce him to his employer and get him fired. Nietzel sued, and a court ruled that citing his name online and denouncing him as a Nazi was against the law, setting an important precedent.
The government, leftist NGOs, and Antifa thugs working closely together
In June 2024, the leftist NGO Beherzt was praised by Interior Minister of Lower Saxony Daniela Behrens for opposing people with “ethnic nationalist” ideas and promoting a “democratic, humane coexistence.” She awarded the organization the “Julius-Rumpf-Preis” along with a check worth 10,000 euros. Beherzt also receives funding from its partners, among them the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, a leftist organization that in turn is funded by the federal government.
The initiative Beherzt works closely with journalist and “expert for right-wing extremism” Andrea Röpke, who frequently lectured at Antifa events. Röpke is connected to Olaf Meyer, the spokesman for the Antifa group in Uelzen/Lüneburg. NIUS provided a picture of Röpke and Meyer taking photos at a private wedding of a potential “ethnic nationalist settler” to later denounce the guests who attended the ceremony.
In an article in the Allgemeine Zeitung, “Beherzt” admitted that it obtained “information from Antifa” about potential buyers of houses and farms in the countryside. The NGO said it was prepared to “share our knowledge,” i.e., publish sensitive personal information about potential property buyers if they deemed them to be “right-wing extremists.”
One person affected by the Antifa intimidations told NIUS: “The group ‘Beherzt’ marks us outwardly for a middle-class audience, while Antifa does the dirty work.”