Phalanx 18 actively promoted violent, anti-constitutional ideologies through its events and concerts. Following the ban, calls remain for German authorities to take action against other far-right groups.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Pförtner
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The German city-state of Bremen banned and dissolved the right-wing group Phalanx 18 on Wednesday, saying it aggressively promoted anti-constitutional ideology.
Phalanx 18 followed a national socialist ideology, Bremen Interior Minister Ulrich Mäurer said announcing the ban.
The ban and dissolution followed shortly after several apartments were searched — three in Bremen and one in Lower Saxony.
Bremen authorities stated that it had taken the decision to ban the group due to its involvement in provocative and aggressive activities as well as promoting music with right-wing ideas.
All activities of the group are now banned, including internet and social media activity.
Vigilante groups cause alarm
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Phalanx 18 organized right-wing gatherings
Phalanx 18 had planned an event for November 9 in Bremen in which bands "Hermunduren" and "Zeitnah" — which have right-wing extremists as band members — were due to perform.
The event was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 1938 "Night of Broken Glass," when Nazis violently attacked Jewish homes and businesses.
"In light of the right-wing extremist ideology of this event it is clear to see that the event was not intended to commemorate but rather to insult the Jewish victims of National Socialism," said Mäurer, on banning the group's event.
Members of the group were also implicated or involved in violence on a well-known street filled with bars and restaurants in the city-state, according to German newspaper taz.
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
