Right Wing Extremist Chats Flourishing on Telegram

 At Der Spiegel, "Good Hunting":

He goes by "Hunter” on the messaging app Telegram. And the young German makes no secret of his political orientation. He’s from a "NatSoc Family,” he claims, writing in English – a family with national-socialist sympathies. Where they live in the German state of Saxony, he writes, there are fewer "non-whites” than in western Germany, and the far right is gaining ground, "especially the militant scene.”

In a chat with a Telegram user claiming to share his views, "Hunter” goes into detail. He writes that he is training a group of teenagers and young men between 13 and 25 and posts photos of them marching in camouflage. Sometimes, they drive to Poland or the Czech Republic, apparently for target practice. He is planning to conduct detonation tests in the woods with a mixture of diesel and manure, he claims. His role model: Timothy McVeigh, the man who blew up a federal building in the U.S. state of Oklahoma in 1995.

The actual name of this Neo-Nazi from Eastern Germany is Jörg S. What he doesn’t know while chatting: His alleged sympathizer is an undercover agent for the FBI, the U.S. domestic intelligence agency. Through their liaison officer in Berlin, the FBI tips off the German intelligence service and the public prosecutor.

After months of investigation, the police arrested Jörg S. in November 2024 together with seven other men. They are purported to have founded the terrorist group called the "Sächsische Separatisten” (Saxon Separatists). Jörg S.’s lawyer declined to comment. In previous statements he disputed any accusations of terrorism, claiming the defendants were a "relatively harmless hiking group.”

The authorities are convinced that Jörg S., 24, and his associates belong to a militant far-right subculture that in recent years has been attracting young men from around the world. Their groups have names like "Atomwaffen Division” (Atomic Weapon Division), "National Socialist Brotherhood,” or "The Base.” They long for the day when the state order will collapse, and they propagate violence against Jews, Blacks and migrants.

The "saints” that they venerate are right-wing terrorists like Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, and Stephan Balliet, who attacked a synagogue in Halle in 2019 and subsequently killed two people in the neighborhood. They occasionally post photos of themselves wearing skull masks. Their digital pamphlets are teeming with swastikas and violent fantasies. Germany must "fully descend into chaos” before "something normal” can reemerge, the Neo-Nazi Jörg S. wrote in a chat. At one point he fantasized about a "white jihad.”

The Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), a non-profit organization in Berlin, recently ascertained just how large this subculture is. Their findings are alarming: According to the study , which was made available to DER SPIEGEL prior to publication, there are at least 164 active chat groups that can be attributed to the "Terrorgram” network.

CeMAS counted 651 German users in these groups who have sent over 317,000 messages since 2022. According to the experts, 83 of them are "heavy users,” which points to an "increased potential for violence.”

One group in which German users were particularly active was named "Terror Wave.” Their members hid behind pseudonyms like "Gestapo Officer” or "Proud Nationalist.” The mass murderer Breivik "dindu nuttin wrong,” one of them wrote. Middle Easterners should be "killed like pigs,” wrote another. In the chat, the users shared info on how to make explosives. It has since been taken offline...