German Neo-Nazis Fell for Art Project and Outed Themselves
A leftist art collective in Germany said they were launching a project to identify neo-Nazi rioters. In reality, it was a hoax to trick neo-Nazis into outing themselves.
This summer unleashed a wave of violence in Chemnitz, Germany, where far-right extremists chased down immigrants and threw fascist salutes during a multi-day rally. The Nazi-era salutes are illegal in Germany, but most demonstrators evaded arrest and identification. But the art group Center for Political Beauty (abbreviated as “ZPS” in German) wanted to unveil the extremist networks behind the riots. They built a website that claimed to have identified the Chemnitz rioters. Then they sat back and waited while extremists started searching the site for their own names until ZPS revealed the stunt on Wednesday.
“We thought about a new de-Nazification in Germany and how it could work,” Philipp Ruch, ZPS’s artistic director, told The Daily Beast.
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