<
https://newrepublic.com/article/171675/surviving-germanys-neo-nazi-resurgence>
"Ferat Koçak barely made it out alive. At 3 a.m. one February night in 2018,
while at his parents’ house in Berlin with his family, he woke up by chance. It
was too bright for that time of night, he noticed. When he looked out the
window, he saw that his car was engulfed in flames. He called the fire
department and rushed his family out as the blaze from the car spread toward
the building. Even before he received information from the police, Koçak, a
German of Kurdish descent with a long beard dyed in the anti-fascist colors of
black and red, was certain what had happened: He was being targeted by the far
right for his anti-racist, anti-fascist activism.
“If we got out five minutes later, we would have died,” Koçak told me,
stone-faced and wearing all black. A Google Images search of him later revealed
that this ensemble—paired with Adidas Sambas and occasionally a cap and
scarf—is his typical look. He had told the story of that night to German media
countless times, but, understandably, he wasn’t over it. In German fashion, he
spoke calmly and deliberately. We were sitting in the office common room of Die
Linke, or the Left Party, just off a leafy cobblestone street in Neukölln, the
neighborhood where Koçak lives and where, five years ago, he was attacked. It’s
a neighborhood that’s important to him. His Twitter handle is
“der_neukoellner”; until recently, he also went by this name on the encrypted
messaging app Signal.
A year after the attack, in March, Berlin’s Criminal Investigation Department
received an anonymous email that seemed to confirm Koçak’s suspicions. The
emailer, who took credit for the arson, claimed to be a member of NSU 2.0—a
revived version of the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi group
responsible for at least 10 murders between 2000 and 2007. Koçak was the
perfect choice for a neo-Nazi: He is an ethnic minority who is also a vocal
anti-racist activist; he is a left-wing politician, and, thanks to his red and
black beard, he is a solo, walking anti-fascist demonstration. He took the fire
as a warning to get him to stop his political work and activism, and, after his
mother had a heart attack in the days following the fire, he almost did. “My
mom told me, ‘No, you can’t,’” Koçak recalled. “‘They want this, so you should
do the opposite.’”"
Via Birne Helene and Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
