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Thread: Racism & MMA

  1. #91
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    Quote Originally Posted by MasterKiller View Post
    I have a Classic Caballero deck with Independent trucks and Slimeball wheels. I still ride it from time to time. I can still olie curbs, which is about as fancy as I get these days.

    that board is so legit it makes me tear up. steve caballero is true old school. i was totally amazed at the **** he could do even as he got older.
    For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.

  2. #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lucas View Post
    Would this even be an issue if it was "native pride" or "black power" ?
    Why is it only a problem for white people to be proud of their heritage and to want to keep it the way it is?
    There is no problem with it. White people do this all the time, without looking or sounding like racists. Look at Marcus Davis, when he walks into the ring with a kilt. Or Allesio Sacarro with his red, white, and green trunks. I'm irish-german-mexican-american. I have as much pride in my irish heritage as my mexican heritage. (nothing against being german, just not as familiar with that culture or part of my heritage. My german grandmother lived in a predominately irish neighborhood and adopted many irish traditions prior to meeting my irish grandfather so a lot of that culture was never presented to me)

  3. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by TenTigers View Post
    it's all very confusing. I'm not sure who to hate....
    It's easy. Spend about 10-15 minutes with each person you meet. In that time you can find something WAY more valid to dislike them for than just their skin color or nationality. LOL
    "God gave you a brain, and it annoys Him greatly when you choose not to use it."

  4. #94
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    The problem with the "iron cross" is that it has been adopted by racists groups. Just like the American Indians and certain Chinese groups used the Swastika. It's meaning has been transformed.

    St. John's cross (aka the iron cross) is one of those symbols that were used by the Nazis (even though others used it before dating back to the crusades. Hitler was awarded an iron cross during WWI when he served) and it has been adopted to represent racist ideals. Ever notice that Harley Davidson does NOT use the Iron Cross on their apparrel? They know that it is meant to represent outlaw biker gangs (Hells Angels first used it back in the 60's) and that is is used along with white supremacy ever since.

    The problem is that now the symbol has become so popular with the mainstream many people don't know what it was meant to represent in this country. It is illegal to wear the symbol in Germany still, so to claim "family history" is kind of a sidestep of the issue.

    On the other side of the coin, why is this an issue? Sports are filled with racist people and it only is a story if the person doing or saying it is white. I was watching either Shane Mosley or Mayweather the other day during a recent white. The black fighter was fighting a hispanic fighter, and in between rounds the black fighter's trainer tells him to hit him so hard that you knock the grease off him. Huh? If a white fighter's trainer said that, there would have been a big deal made of it. What about Mayweather's comments about MMA being made by white people because they couldn't box? Where is the big outcry of Cain Valsquez coming in with his "Brown Power" tattoo across his chest in the UFC?

    I just wish that things would be equal across the board, if someone makes a racist comment they should be held accountable for it, or anyone should be able to express their opinion in that venue.
    "God gave you a brain, and it annoys Him greatly when you choose not to use it."

  5. #95
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    more nazis

    This one is a little more dramatic than the Iron Cross. Dude looks like a villain in a bad kung fu flick.
    ‘Neo-Nazi‘ fighter pulled from martial arts show as media, sponsors protest
    16-05-2013 15:35 | Rob Cameron

    The organisers of a martial arts show in Prague have bowed to pressure from the media and sponsors and cancelled an appearance by a Hungarian fighter who’s covered from head to toe in Nazi tattoos. Attila Petrovszki, a Mixed Martial Arts fighter from Hungary, had been due to appear at the event - his tattoos covered in a T-shirt - on Friday; now organisers are looking for a replacement.


    Attila Petrovszki, source: RomeaAttila Petrovszki, source: Romea

    Friday’s Heroes Gate martial arts tournament offers an evening of pumped up aggression for those looking to blow off a little steam. A combination of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), kickboxing and boxing, Heroes Gate is the tenth such event, heavily advertised and held under the auspices of the Prague 9 district council.

    This year however organisers found themselves with a little too much publicity; the Roma news agency Romea.cz reported that one of the MMA fighters on the bill, Attila Petrovszki, was a Hungarian neo-Nazi. Photos of the semi-naked fighter seemed to confirm this; his chest features large tattoos of Hitler and a swastika, and the words ‘Death of the Jews’ is scrawled across his abdomen. The photo quickly made the transition from Romea to Facebook and then the mainstream media, and Attila’s fate was sealed.

    The event’s promoter, Ladislav Kutil, told Radio Prague the fighter’s appearance had been cancelled due to ‘media pressure’ on Heroes Gate and its sponsors, which include gyms, car dealerships and even Pepsi. The poster also carries the logos of the City of Prague and Czech Television; both categorically denied supporting the event, and some sponsors who did threatened to withdraw their support. Former journalist Josef Bouška is an expert on the Czech neo-Nazi scene.

    “Let me tell you one thing. The main problem isn’t whether the guy has a tattoo or not. The main problem is that they knowingly invited a Nazi guy to compete. They would have provided him with money, that basically equals support of neo-Nazism. On the other hand, there are a number of Nazis in Mixed Martial Arts circles, at least here in the Czech Republic. They’re promoted on the websites of the gyms, they do training. So I think there’s a deeper connection between these two worlds, and it’s not going away too soon I think.”


    Josef Bouška, photo: archive of Josef BouškaJosef Bouška, photo: archive of Josef Bouška

    We should stress that you can be a fan or even a fighter of Mixed Martial Arts or kickboxing and not have any Nazi sympathies at all. I think the organisers said previous Czech tournaments had featured Romany and Vietnamese fighters. So I guess it’s not the exclusive preserve of the neo-Nazi underground is it?

    “No, no, no, it’s absolutely not. I believe the vast majority of fighters and gyms are OK and they have no inclination towards neo-Nazism. The problem is that they know there are a number of Nazis among them, some of them very prominent, and they don’t consider it to be a problem. They just don’t care, and I believe that sets a very bad example.”

    Heroes Gate has since released a statement claiming that Attila Petrovszki’s Hungarian agent had assured them the fighter was no longer an active neo-Nazi, that the tattoos were the result of a troubled youth and he was now – through kickboxing – taking his life in a new direction, which, said the promoters, was what martial arts was all about.

    A cursory glance at Mr Petrovszki’s Facebook page, however, would suggest otherwise. There he’s pictured in a T-shirt of the British skinhead band Skrewdriver, whose leader Ian Stuart co-founded the violent neo-Nazi movement Blood and Honour.
    Gene Ching
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  6. #96
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    that alt-right

    Fascist fight clubs: how white nationalists use MMA as a recruiting tool
    Far-right groups across Europe and North America are using mixed martial arts to swell their numbers, spread their ideology and fight their enemies
    Karim Zidan
    Tue 11 Sep 2018 05.00 EDT Last modified on Tue 11 Sep 2018 08.21 EDT


    Many groups, including RAM, view their MMA gyms as training grounds for upcoming race wars. Photograph: Antonio_Diaz/Getty Images/iStockphoto

    “You will not replace us.”

    This was one of the slogans chanted during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on the night of 11 August 2017. Approximately 100 young white men – most of whom brandished tiki torches to intimidate watchers and light up their path – marched through the streets in scenes reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan rallies that once blighted the southern Unites States. By 10pm that evening, the group of white supremacists — now chanting “Jews will not replace us” along with the Nazi phrase “blood and soil” – had reached the University of Virginia campus, where counter-protesters awaited them with banners and slogans of their own. By the end of the weekend one of the counter-protestors would be killed, struck by a car.

    While some may have been under the impression that the rally was a random gathering of racists, it was actually the conjoining of several distinctive and dangerous groups of white supremacists, including Vanguard America, Identity Evropa, League of the South, and The Daily Stormer. One of the most prominent groups present that night were the Rise Above Movement (RAM) — a white supremacist group that refers to itself as the “premier MMA (mixed martial arts) club of the Alt-Right.”

    Based in southern California, RAM boasts over 50 members and fashions itself as a fight club. Its members train in various combat sports such as MMA and boxing, which they later apply during street fights and protests. The group has been spotted in Santa Monica, where RAM members tried to disrupt a Committee for Racial Justice meeting, and in San Bernardino, where they took part in an “anti-Sharia law” protest with signs such as “RAPEFUGEES stay away NOT WELCOME.” They engaged in physical violence during protests in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and Charlottesville.

    Under the leadership of boxer Robert Rundo and Benjamin Daley, whom ProPublica identified as the owner of a southern California tree-trimming business, RAM members infiltrate protests and disrupt proceedings by fighting with those opposing their ultra-nationalist ideology. They conceal their identities using skull masks and goggles, while wrapping their hands with tape in preparation for physical altercations. They then glorify their antics in propaganda videos posted on social media. RAM also appear to have their own gym, though the location remains a secret.

    So why are white supremacist groups forming fight clubs and MMA promotions? The answer lies in the violent nature of the sport and their ability to thrive within it. Over the years, fighters with links to the far-right have been involved in some of the world’s most recognizable promotions, including the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Strikeforce. UFC fighter Donald Cerrone and former fighter Joe Brammer were sponsored by Hoelzer Reich, a far-right brand known for propagating extremist symbols. The brand was banned by the UFC in 2009. Four years later, welterweight Benjamin Brinsa was accused by German media of maintaining ties to extremist groups in his native country, while his gym was accused of sheltering neo-Nazi fighters. He was later released by the UFC before making his official debut but did not struggle to find professional fights in Russia.

    RAM’s violent ideology coupled with its penchant for MMA and underground fight clubs distinguishes it from various other white supremacist groups in the United States. It has also helped RAM expand beyond the borders of the US, recruit new members, and network with a host of other neo-Nazi groups dabbling in MMA around the world. This is evident in the group’s recent ‘Europe Tour,’ which saw RAM visit several countries across the Atlantic to “bridge the gap between the two nationalist scenes”.

    What ensued on the tour was a large-scale networking event that emphasized the growing trend of fascism in mixed martial arts.

    Shield and sword

    On 23 April 2018, approximately 1,000 neo-Nazis and white supremacists descended on Ostritz, a small German town near the Polish border, to attend the Shield and Sword far-right festival. Held in honor of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, the two-day event featured far-right merchandise, heavy metal concerts, political speeches and an MMA tournament with competitors from some of of the most notorious white supremacist groups involved in the fight scene. Among those present were members of the Rise Above Movement.

    The MMA promotion responsible for the tournament goes by the name Kampf der Nibelungen. “To live is to fight,” Kampf der Nibelungen stated on its official website. “At all times it was fighters who defended their clan, their tribe, their homeland.”

    Over the past few years, Kampf der Nibelungen has held its events in secret, attracting small groups of neo-Nazis and soccer hooligans to their shows. However, the number of attendees at their events are reportedly swelling. While their inaugural show in 2013 brought in 150 guests, that figure had quadrupled by 2017. The Shield and Sword festival in April was the promotion’s first public appearance. Reports suggest that Rundo, one of the pivotal figures of RAM’s leadership, actually competed in the show.

    Members of the far-right hope to use MMA to pull in young people. “It’s a question of fashion,” Sword and Shield’s organiser Thorsten Heise told Vice News. “We’re seeing lots of young people in Europe not interested in drugs, they’re interested in fighting – in the ring, with rules. Especially in the nationalist scene, it’s the style – to be fit, to have a nice body. We love that, and the MMA fighters all love this also.”

    Ostritz was just one of many European cities that RAM members visited over the past few months. The group also met members of CasaPound, a fascist party in Italy. However, the highlight of their trip took place in Ukraine, where they met one of the leading figures of the far-right movement in sports.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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  7. #97
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    Continued from previous post

    White Rex


    Anastasia Yankova fought at a White Rex event and promoted their clothing but denies sharing their ideology. Photograph: Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

    A week after the Sword and Shield festival, Rundo and Daley’s European tour arrived in Kiev, where they met with Denis Nikitin, the founder of a Russian neo-Nazi MMA, White Rex. The company sells clothing emblazoned with neo-Nazi symbols and racist slogans, including “Zero Tolerance”, “Angry Europeans”, and “White Rex Against Tolerance”.

    Nikitin, a former soccer hooligan turned entrepreneur, uses his business to spread his far-right agenda. In interviews, Nikitin speaks openly about his ideology as a white supremacist. “If we kill one immigrant every day, that’s 365 immigrants in a year,” he told the Guardian this year. “But tens of thousands more will come anyway. I realised we were fighting the consequence, but not the underlying reason. So now we fight for minds, not on the street, but on social media.”

    After spending several years in Germany, Nikitin returned to Russia, where he founded White Rex in 2008. He was one of the first people who combined the MMA subculture with far-right political ideologies, and has since established affiliates in countries such as Germany, England, France, and the United States, making him a pivotal figure on the far-right.

    Through violent sports such as MMA, Nikitin is able to target disenfranchised youth and promote an alternative lifestyle through nationalist fervour. White Rex uses models with blonde hair and blue eyes to promote their clothes – another strategy to help sell the brand to the young men inclined to join their cause.

    While White Rex operates under the guise of a clothing brand, Nikitin also uses his brand to organize MMA events. From 2011 to 2015, White Rex hosted multiple MMA shows, some of which featured several notable Russian fighters, including Bellator star Anastasia Yankova (Yankova has denied she shares White Rex’s ideology). White Rex also hired former Bellator middleweight champion Alexander Shlemenko to train its fighters ahead of one of their shows in 2013. Though White Rex held its final event in 2015, the clothing brand continues to gain popularity.

    RAM’s meeting with Nikitin was several months in the making. They regularly posted links to White Rex’s shows and clothing on their social media accounts. More recently, however, RAM has begun selling White Rex clothing on their apparel website, Right Brand Clothing, which suggests a growing relationship between the two entities. It also means that White Rex – a clothing brand that promotes hate, Islamophobia, and nazi ideology – is now available in the United States.

    “RAM saw all these well organized groups in Europe and beyond that were outspoken,” Bryan Schatz, an investigative journalist for MotherJones who penned The Terrifying Rise of Alt-Right Fight Clubs, told the Guardian. “They had gyms. They had events that drew a lot of people. I think [RAM] found a lot of inspiration in how successful these groups were able to be so they wanted to import that model to the United States.”

    A quick search on the Right Brand Clothing website highlights several White Rex items of clothing, including a t-shirt that features Nazi symbols, such as the SS bolts. The description reads: “From the infamous European clothing brand White Rex this shirt is 100% cotton. Made in Europe. Wear this shirt with pride. Features sleeve patch. This is a European cut, we suggest buying a size up.”

    Naturally, White Rex is not the only far-right MMA brand that has caught RAM’s attention. Another group mentioned on RAM’s social media pages is Agogé, a white nationalist boxing gym founded by Generation Identity. According to the extreme right-wing group, the gym is a place for “patriots and identity in Lyon.”

    Generation Identity has hosted training camps in France for over six years. Promotional videos show dozens of young men and women working out wearing t-shirts bearing slogans such as “Defend Europe”. Following their success in France, the group has attempted to expand into Canada, particularly the francophone region of Quebec. It has also spurred similar movements from groups like Atalante Quebec, who opened up a secret fight club in Quebec for its members to train in. Despite the fact that a potentially violent “identity boxing club” had been established in Quebec, the local police department had no plans to intervene or monitor the secret club.


    Members of RAM were present at the far-right marches in Charlottesville in 2017. Photograph: Mykal McEldowney/AP

    On 24 May 2018, six members of Atalante Quebec – some wearing masks – barged into the Montreal offices of Vice Media, where they proceeded to insult reporters, throw leaflets and clown noses around, and intimidate those present in the office. They left before police arrived on scene. However, the group’s leader was arrested the following month and was charged with criminal harassment and intimidation. Their MMA fight club continues to operate despite their well-documented intimidation tactics.

    “The alt-right and the analogous identitarian movement are encouraging their members to get off the computer and network in real life,” Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, told the Guardian. “They want their members to take real world actions. Ultimately, they want to establish a white ethnostate by any means necessary. In the case of Atalante [Quebec], they probably view opening a martial arts school as a way to prepare for street clashes with anti-fascist activists or actions they believe are necessary to bring about a white ethnostate.”

    ***

    Mixed martial arts provides a unique platform for white supremacists to promote their ideology and recruit new members. It allows far-right extremists to draw parallels between their training regimens and the appropriation of faux-medieval culture and history to suit their racist aims. Many such groups, including White Rex and RAM, view their MMA gyms as training grounds for upcoming race wars. They use Roman and Germanic mythology to romanticize their nationalist fervour, while brainwashing youth into “defending” their homeland against a common threat.

    “As far as I can tell, it is basically this idea that they need to come together – essentially like an army – to protect their race, which they see as being attacked.” Schatz explained.

    RAM is not the only group in the United States engaging in MMA and street fighting. A group of young, pro-Trump white men recently formed the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights (FOAK) and announced that it would serve as the “tactical defensive arm” of the Proud Boys, a far-right men’s organization started by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes. Kyle Chapman, the founder of FOAK, revealed that his group plans to “protect and defend our right-wing brethren when the police and government fail to do so.” Other similar groups have since sprouted in Italy, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

    It is likely that white-nationalist fight gyms will continue to sprout across North America and Europe for the foreseeable future. Their ability to not only operate in the open, but to also establish a worldwide network of violent, well-trained white supremacists, emphasizes the extent of the problems facing Western society.
    I hear that there are also a white supremicistcells within European Martial Arts (Armored combat: HEMA, HMB, IMCF, SCA, et.al).
    Gene Ching
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  8. #98
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    Ram

    RAM’s revival and the ongoing struggle against MMA's far-right fight clubs
    The Guardian
    Karim Zidan
    ,The Guardian•November 27, 2019


    Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

    In October 2018, the FBI arrested four members of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), a US white supremacist group that trains in mixed martial arts, on rioting charges related to their participation at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The four men, including RAM co-founder Ben Daley and UCLA doctoral student Michael Miselis, pled guilty and were sentenced for their crimes.

    The prosecution was a contrast to another case the previous month against RAM members accused of rioting at a rally in Huntington Beach, California, in 2017. A district judge dismissed the charges against RAM co-founder Robert Rundo, Aaron Eason, and Robert Bowman, claiming that the federal statute used to prosecute the members infringed upon their First Amendment rights to free speech. Tyler Laube, who had pled guilty in a separate hearing, withdrew his guilty plea and had his case dismissed. The US government is in the process of appealing the case, though it appears that the damage has already been done.

    “RAM has definitely gotten a second life thanks to the court rulings that have cleared their members on federal criminal charges,” AC Thompson, an investigative reporter for ProPublica, tells the Guardian. “The group was absolutely on the verge of collapse, with its leaders and key members locked up – and new recruits scared off by fears of going to federal prison. When you look at the history of the white supremacist movement in the US you can see many instances in which white power groups survived prosecution and came out the other side stronger and even more hardcore.”

    Prior to the string of arrests, RAM boasted more than 50 members and marketed itself as the “premier MMA club of the alt-right.” Founded in 2017 by Daley and Rundo, RAM members trained in various combat sports such as MMA and boxing, which they later used during street fights and protests, including Charlottesville. Dressed in skull masks, RAM members specialized in attacking protestors who opposed their ideology. They would then glorify their antics in propaganda videos posted on social media.

    With the dismissal of the Huntington Beach charges, RAM has been handed a lifeline. Armed with a new lease on life, one of the most dangerous white supremacist groups in the United States is set to retake its place among a growing international network of far-right fight clubs.

    RAM’s revival
    In the days and weeks following the California judge’s decision to dismiss the charges against Rundo and his associates, the group took to social media to drum up support for its cause and to reestablish its base.

    Using an account on far-right social media platform Gab, RAM posted pictures celebrating the charges being dismissed against its “wrongfully imprisoned” members. One of the posts boasted a new hype video under the title Keep the Flame Alive, while another showed Miselis flexing beneath the caption, “They can lock us up, they can lie about us but they can’t stop a idea whos [sic] time has come.”

    To monetize its cause, RAM reached an agreement with far-right clothing store Our Fight Clothing Co to feature several of its branded t-shirts, the proceeds of which it claims will “go directly to our legal defence.” RAM also used the far-right clothing store as a personal blog to promote its violent ideology. Shortly after his charges were dismissed, Rundo posted a lengthy essay, titled Combat Sports for the Future of Nationalist, to the store’s website in which he espoused the importance of MMA as a “weapon” for white supremacists, as well as a way of building a community of like-minded individuals. “The nationalist movement was never built on idle talk but on those with iron will who didn’t back down,” he wrote. “In a time of weak men it only takes some effort to rise above all. Combat sports is that way up.”

    Instead of simply releasing training montages and hype videos as it did in the past, RAM is now carefully articulating its message in an attempt to create unity amongst members. These posts also verify that right-wing fashion, propaganda, and MMA are the basis of white supremacist recruitment and mobilization tactics – a topic that has been reported on extensively by the Guardian.

    “RAM hold a unique place in the white supremacist scene in the US. They are really emulating the European groups who blend together racist politics and combat sports like MMA and boxing,” Thompson says. “They have a pretty mainstream aesthetic –they aren’t LARPers or cosplaying as Nazi soldiers. And they aren’t as nerdy as a lot of the alt-right guys. The RAM approach has the potential to grow in the US.”

    Beyond RAM’s homegrown efforts to recapture its peak in 2017, there is a growing concern that the group will attempt to strengthen ties with white nationalist groups in Europe, including old allies such as Russia’s White Rex and Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.
    I hear white supremacy groups are also impacting Armored Combat leagues.
    Gene Ching
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    Fiya burn that! One Love to one and all!
    "色即是空 , 空即是色 " ~ Buddha via Avalokitesvara
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    Battle of the Nibelungs

    How Germany’s Extreme Right Seized on the Martial Arts Scene
    To increase their ranks, neo-Nazi groups in Germany and across Europe are using the sport as a training and recruiting tool.


    An image from an undated video from the YouTube page of “Kampf der Nibelungen” or “Battle of the Nibelungs,” a far-right combat sports tournament that was moved to Hungary after it was banned in Germany.Credit...via YouTube

    By Catie Edmondson
    Reporting from Berlin

    Sept. 17, 2023

    Sign up for The Interpreter newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Original analysis on the week’s biggest global stories, from columnist Amanda Taub. Get it with a Times subscription.
    A professional mixed martial arts fighter based in Berlin, Niko Samsonidse, has added a ritual to his tournament prep in recent years: vetting the event to ensure it is not organized by far-right extremists.

    Urging other fighters and trainers to do the same, Mr. Samsonidse has become outspoken in his efforts to call out attempts to exploit the growing martial arts scene to advance extremist ideologies.

    Mixed martial arts, or MMA, “is getting way more popular in Germany, and mostly they’ve got nothing to do with extremism,” said Mr. Samsonidse, a social worker who wrote his thesis on fighting extremism in combat sports.

    “But most of the people, they are not aware what’s happening beside of them,” he added.

    Neo-Nazi groups in Germany and across Europe have worked to co-opt martial arts as a training and recruiting tool — hosting high-profile combat sports festivals and offering local opportunities to practice the sport — to try to broaden the groups’ appeal, experts say.

    It is part of a larger strategy to make the face of extremism more mainstream. Festivals or tournament organizers market their events in a way that makes them hard to distinguish from normal combat sports tournaments. They then use the events as a gateway to soften up potential recruits to their ideology.

    The festivals — which are often declared political events, making them harder to ban and ensuring that any profit will be tax-exempt — typically feature a right-wing extremist speaker or seminar, according to Hans-Jakob Schindler, the Berlin-based senior director of the Counter Extremism Project. And while mixed martial arts tournaments in Europe typically feature fighters from different racial groups, these events allow only white fighters to take part.

    “They’re trying to broaden the capture area,” Mr. Schindler said. “You get people to buy the T-shirt, you can get them to come to one of the festivals. And you slowly begin speaking them to them about how the political system is bad. And so you draw them in a bit more subtly than you did in the past.”

    But the message underpinning the events, said Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser at the Counter-Extremism Project, is clear: “that whites are under threat on all kinds of levels.”

    Some of the participants have openly cast their efforts to learn martial arts as preparation to fight back against those they see as threatening white European identity, the Frankfurt Roundup newspaper reported, quoting a martial arts fighter who took part in the Battle of the Nibelungs, Germany’s most notorious far-right combat sports tournament.

    “In this day and age, it’s so obvious that our people have their backs against the wall, and we all have concerns about our survival,” the unidentified fighter said on a far-right podcast in 2015, adding that the day would come when “we have to put ourselves in a ring with all these multicultural people.”

    In Thuringia, an area in the former East Germany, four men between 21 and 25 are facing charges of assaulting law enforcement officers during protests against coronavirus lockdowns.

    Federal prosecutors say the men led a far-right martial arts group called Knockout 51 and “attracted young, nationalist-minded men, deliberately indoctrinated them with right-wing extremist ideas and trained them for physical confrontations with police officers, members of the left-wing political scene and other people considered worth fighting.”

    The group, prosecutors said, led regular martial arts training sessions at the local office of the National Democratic Party — Germany’s neo-Nazi political party — as well as “ideological training” that included patrolling the neighborhood to scout for political opponents. They sought to kill individuals associated with “the left-wing extremist scene,” according to prosecutors.
    In one episode in 2020, according to prosecutors, members of the group kicked a police officer in the stomach at an anti-lockdown protest in Berlin, and months later at a protest in Leipzig, a member threw a bottle at officers, injuring a bystander.

    The lead defendant’s lawyer, Steffen Hammer, has sought to have the trial dismissed, asserting that prosecutors forced his client to give information in a separate case that bolstered the current charges against him.

    Mr. Hammer, formerly a singer in a far-right rock band, has denied that his client led a neo-Nazi group, arguing that the martial arts group was apolitical and the victim of overzealous prosecution, Der Spiegel reported.

    Large-scale martial arts organizations and events have proliferated for years in Germany, chief among them the Battle of the Nibelungs, which attracts hundreds of right-wing extremists from around Europe and the United States. The name is a reference to the 13th-century German heroic epic poem called, “Song of the Nibelungs,” a text that was often venerated and referenced in Nazi propaganda during World War II.

    The Battle of the Nibelungs, which moved to Hungary after it was banned from the German city of Ostritz in 2019, is organized “by young Germans who are united by the dedication and enthusiasm for ‘their’ sport and who do not want to be subject to the yoke of the prevailing mainstream,” according to the group’s YouTube page.
    In an effort to crack down on such groups, German law enforcement has conducted extensive raids on members of the martial arts clubs and, in some cases, has banned the clubs or events themselves. The four men associated with the group Knockout 51 currently facing charges in Thuringia were arrested after 800 police officers raided the homes of 50 suspected right-wing extremists in April.

    MMA groups with a far-right bent are spreading across Europe and the United States. Mr. Ritzmann said 23 active far-right martial arts clubs already operated in France alone.

    “This does not mean that they’ll all turn into neo-Nazis,” he said. “Many, I guess, might drop off at some point. But really mainstreaming this combat sports approach could be a game changer.”

    In Germany, leaders in the martial arts community have sought to push back on their own.

    Daniel Koehler, the director of the German Institute of Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies, a nonprofit group, founded a network of martial arts schools against violent extremism that seeks to monitor for signs of radicalization in their studios and keep their students away from extremist environments.

    Several years ago, Mr. Koehler said, he remembered that studios in his network “regularly” had discussions about members of their gyms whom they later learned had far-right tattoos or clothing.
    “They would have to decide, is this someone who’s been with us for a long time; we need to initiate an intervention,” he said. “Or, is this someone who just recently showed up, so we can move the person out?”

    His network tries to ensure that participating gyms would “not by coincidence take part in a tournament that, for example, the far right would benefit from,” Mr. Koehler said.

    Mr. Samsonidse, the professional mixed martial arts fighter, said that programs giving young adults the opportunity to practice combat sports and impart positive values could be an important way to prevent the rise of far-right extremism in his sport.

    “There’s a big potential in martial arts itself, to share good values — respect, controlling your emotions — which could be really useful in work with juveniles,” he said. “But it can also be misused.”


    Catie Edmondson is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering Congress.
    I love Wagner but detest how myths that he spotlighted like the Nibelungs has been appropriated.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

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