"I was fascinated by fighting"

A report from the European police agency Europol notes that the right-wing extremist scene in numerous European countries has internationalized.

And the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations Security Council has determined that between 2015 and 2020, there has been a steep rise in the number of right-wing terrorist attacks around the world – a spike of fully 320 percent.

Journalists from DIE ZEIT conducted reporting in six different countries for this story, examining files, conducting interviews and attending court hearings. Some of the characters in this account are key figures of international importance, while others are solitary misfits sitting in front of their computers. One operates a paramilitary training camp, another – a young German man – was almost ready to go to war. All of them, though, have one thing in common: They are part of something new, something that could perhaps be called the Brown Internationale.

The Allure of War

Felix Oberhuber walks fast and talks fast. It is the first time he is telling his story to someone who isn’t a family member or part of the neo-Nazi scene. His boots crunch on the icy lane, the Alps spread out on the horizon in front of him. Oberhuber is wearing a wool cap and a camouflage jacket, a stout 22-year-old who could be James Mason’s grandson. Until two years ago, he focused his efforts on connecting right-wing extremists from Germany and Ukraine, and the authorities still consider him a potential threat today. But he says he no longer wants to have anything to do with the scene. Because he lives in fear of his former comrades, we are not using his real name for this story.

When asked for evidence to prove his story, Oberhuber rolls up the sleeve of his military jacket to show a tattoo on his arm. "Misanthropic Division" it reads.

The MD is a paramilitary right-wing extremist group from Ukraine that follows the motto "Kill for Wotan." Oberhuber was the leader of the group’s Germany chapter until 2019. He has more tattoos on his legs, including runes and a swastika. DIE ZEIT also spoke with his father, examined documents and asked around in his surroundings to verify his story.

Oberhuber points to a copse of trees. "Me and my brother used to run around back there with plastic guns even as kids," he says. As a teenager, he drank a lot and got high – and he developed an interest in TV documentaries about the Nazi era. By the time he turned 18, he was active in more than 35 right-wing extremist WhatsApp groups, where he would receive recommendations for things to read, like pamphlets about people who attacked foreigners. But also a book: "Siege" by James Mason. He radicalized, beat up foreigners and planned an attack on leftists with his comrades. "That was my first attempt to become active as a terrorist," Oberhuber recalls. "I was fascinated by fighting."

The attack didn’t pan out, largely because they were unable to obtain weapons. But Oberhuber continued to be fascinated by violence and stumbled across the Azov Battalion on the internet. Founded in 2014 in Ukraine, shortly after the war started on the country’s eastern border, the battalion was well known for accepting foreign mercenaries who want to join the fight against the pro-Russian separatists. Using WhatsApp, Oberhuber contacted a German neo-Nazi who he hoped could bring him to the front. The German turned out to be a functionary with the Misanthropic Division, which recruited fighters for the Azov Battalion in Ukraine from almost 20 countries. Oberhuber was electrified. It was precisely where he wanted to go.

How can a young German neo-Nazi develop a desire to join a complicated war between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian-controlled separatists located almost 2,000 kilometers from his home? In the past, says extremism expert Alexander Ritzmann, right-wing extremists were focused on the fight for their own country. Today, though, the focus has shifted – to the defense of the "white race." It is a delusional concept, but one which neo-Nazis across the Western world find attractive.

There are foreigners now living in Europe who refuse to hide their Muslim faith – a threat to the "white race."

In the U.S., the non-white share of the population is growing – a threat to the "white race."

In Australia, men kiss men in public and women kiss women – a threat to the "white race."

Defending the "white race" is the goal for which right-wing extremists in all countries are uniting.

In the 1970s, some militant leftists essentially became professional revolutionaries, moving from one Third World guerilla war to the next. Similarly, around 10 years ago, Islamists from across the Western world traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. And in 2018, Oberhuber moved to the town of Weissenfels, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, into the apartment of a Misanthropic Division functionary. Another man from Belarus was already living there, a man wanted by the police. The three established a cell and started selling T-shirts and flags they got from Ukraine. Envoys from the Misanthropic Division would frequently visit Weissenfels and Oberhuber would join them on outings, one of them to a castle where Nazis lived until 1945. He had the feeling they were sizing him up. Was his dream about to come true?

When the MD functionary had to go to prison for armed robbery, the leadership in Kiev decided that Oberhuber should take over, according to his account. He developed a channel on Telegram and sprayed MD graffiti, hoping to prove "that I’m a hard worker, and hopefully then end up in a training camp and then on the front." The Ukrainians sent a tattoo artist who gave Oberhuber the MD logo on his arm, a distinction not unlike a military decoration – and one given to only very few activists. He now belonged to the inner circle. But he still hadn’t made it to the front.

Experts believe that a total of around 150 German volunteers have headed for Ukraine to fight in the war. The German parliamentarian Martina Renner of the Left Party filed an official query with the German government and received her response last week: It noted that German officials can only identify by name "a number of people in the low two-figures." Investigations have only been launched into four volunteers. Oberhuber says he himself knows three neo-Nazis who have returned from the front. Other former right-wing extremists told DIE ZEIT of neo-Nazis who joined the Azov Battalion primarily to receive weapons training. Just in case. For later.

In February 2020, U.S. Congressman Max Rose published an op-ed in the New York Times together with terrorism expert Ali Soufan. The war in Ukraine, the two wrote, had become for right-wing extremists what the Afghanistan war had been for jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, religious warriors from many countries traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the country’s secular rulers and their Soviet backers. One of them was Osama bin Laden, who created al-Qaida out of a group of hardcore fanatics. That war turned out to be a kind of Big Bang for 21st century Islamist terrorism.

In their op-ed, Rose and Soufan presented a few estimates. Almost twice as many foreign volunteers had joined the Ukraine war, they wrote, as had traveled to Afghanistan back in the 1980s. According to one study, the total is around 17,000, with more than 1,000 of them coming from Western countries. Not all of them are right-wing extremists, but many are. Which adds up to hundreds of potential returnees with battlefield experience. Hundreds of potential warriors for the international fight in defense of the "white race."

And there are people doing their best to increase that number.

Olena Semenyaka is a young woman from Kiev who studied philosophy. She has dark brown hair, a petite figure and is frequently the only woman in pictures full of bearded, muscle-bound brutes. For Ukrainian right-wing extremists, Semenyaka essentially plays the role of poster girl. At first, she agreed to an interview with us, but then broke off all contact. In some photos, she is shown giving the Hitler salute, in others, she poses with a swastika.

An entire movement has developed around the Azov Battalion. The goal is to establish a global coalition of right-wing extremist groups, Semenyaka said in a 2019 interview with Time magazine. The movement doesn’t rely solely on the Misanthropic Division, as its paramilitary arm, for recruiting foreign neo-Nazis like Oberhuber.

Semenyaka has also been visiting right-wing extremist groups across Europe for years as a kind of marketing representative. According to DIE ZEIT’s reporting, she has visited Germany eight times – at the invitation of the right-wing extremist party Die Rechte, for example, or as a speaker to a group from the Identitarian Movement. At a festival organized by the neo-Nazi party "Der III. Weg" near Erfurt in 2018, she promoted a right-wing rock festival in Ukraine called Asgardsrei. "All of you are explicitly invited to Kiev!"

Asgardsrei is one of the largest events of its kind, and it is sometimes even possible to see Atomwaffen Division flags waving in the audience. Semenyaka has leveraged the black-metal festival to form a kind of congress, enabling right-wing extremists from Norway, Italy, Germany, the U.S. and elsewhere to get to know each other and exchange ideas. The new networks, experts warn, have long since become established.