No room for nazis

An online information campaign in which one can visit and explore the room of a neo-Nazi. By clicking on tagged spots, users get explanatory text and videos, can ask questions or have to carry out tasks to release additional content (in the weapon box). However, this playful approach in no way downplays it. On the contrary. Vulnerable young persons (and all other users) get a journalistically well-founded, real insight into a neo-Nazi room.

Especially noticeable is the users' extremely long average duration of stay that is down to the many interactive options, the content that is to be learned, the large number of interviews and expert opinions and the „Nazi souvenirs“ to be sought which allow the secret hideaway to be opened. Additionally, this project had a particularly high rate of sharing, dissemination and discussion on web and social media.

At first sight, it looks like a room of an ordinary adolescent. Only on second glance do visitors realise where they have ended up: in the middle of the room of a neo-Nazi. The interactive and freely accessible online project „Kein Raum für Rechts!" makes it possible to virtually enter the world of right-wing extremists and to notice, identify and interpret their symbolism. This provides a basis in order to distance oneself and intervene against right-wing extremism and being able to take a stand for democracy.

"Right-wing minded people have the misanthropic opinion that people who look different, hold other beliefs or think differently are entitled to fewer rights. Inhuman even is the fact that, for them, to belong to an ethnicity, nation or religion determines the value of a person. Therefore in a democratic state the control and prevention of right-wing extremism is one of the core tasks", says Lower Saxony's social affairs minister, Cornelia Rundt. In order to be able to develop analyses and guidance with regard to right-wing extremists there first had to be awareness of the phenomenon and which had to be considered as problematical so that people don’t slip unaware into the right-wing extremist scene, according to Rundt. "At least as important as programmes to help extremists leave the right-wing scene are prevention and awareness programmes, in which the understanding of democracy is reinforced. This also includes the interactive room," the Minister emphasizes.

The target group of Kein-Raum-für-Rechts.de is the same as that of the neo-Nazis: young people. The website, with its video game-like appearance is tailored to adolescents: interactive, multimedia and optimised for smartphone. Users can ask their own questions on the subject, view lots of photos and films, learn to recognise right-wing music and read further text. "We reach youngsters right where they get in contact with right-wing agitation: online and mostly directly via smartphone", Minister Rundt stresses.

The room, of 20 square metres, comprises genuine Nazi memorabilia: a swastika flag, CDs with right-wing rock music, clothes, badges and books. "Everything in this room is genuine. Except the weapons, of course," says project director Reinhard Koch of Zentrum Demokratische Bildung (ARUG/ZDB) (Centre for Democratic Education). “Users can click their way through the interactive room and learn directly how neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists live within their own four walls."
The well-known author and journalist Andrea Röpke is responsible for the content of the neo-Nazi room. "In order to equip the neo-Nazi room as realistically as possible, we gathered information on police house searchs," Röpke says. For over a decade and with the help of a small team she has been documenting neo-Nazi demonstrations, observing secret meetings and talking to people who opted out of the neo-Nazi scene. "The most important questions in this project were: what do the rooms of Nazis look like? How do Nazis live in the privacy of their own home?" They took as a model also the teenage bedrooms of members of the so-called NSU (National Socialist Underground, a far-right German terrorist group). The interactive room came into being within the scope of the project "Women in right-wing extremism" promoted by Lower Saxony's Ministry of Social Affairs and its additional target groups beside juveniles are influencers of juvenile work, in sports and in schools, equal opportunities officers as well as family counselling advisers.