Left-Extremist Endeavours

Enforcement actions
against distributors and
customers
- has stayed at the level of about 50 (1998: 50). Apart from mailorder
business, there are also significant sales by a number of
individual suppliers doing business at the time and place of skinhead
concerts.
The scene was rattled by numerous enforcement actions - during
which several thousands of sound recording media were seized -
against distributors of right-extremist skinhead music and their
customers and against members of right-extremist bands. As a
result, the scene has become even more cautious as regards
distribution of unlawful music media. Mail order sale of these
media, which are mostly produced in foreign countries, declined.
Now they are being distributed on a growing scale from hand to
hand by distributors personally known to their customers.
During searches of the premises of the operator of a distributing
firm for right-extremist music media on 31 March and 26 May in
[the Baden-Wurttemberg town of] Ulm, the police confiscated more
than 5,000 CDs with unlawful content. On 25 October, the Ulm
Amtsgericht [Local Court] gave a distributor an 18-months’ unsuspended
sentence for incitement to hatred and violence and
for distribution of insignia of anti-constitutional organizations.
On 28 September, the Lingen Amtsgericht [Local Court]
sentenced Jens HESSLER, one of the leading distributors of rightextremist
sound recording media, to two-years’ imprisonment
(suspended on probation) for incitement to hatred and violence
and for use of emblems of anti-constitutional organizations.
In the summer of 1999, the distributing firm "Vincente Directori"
in Glinde (Schleswig-Holstein) announced that it would close its
business. The reason given for this decision was that, inter alia,
the many judicial enquiries concerning the firm and its customers
made continuance of the business impossible.
Internet competition Producers and distributing firms face increasing competition by
MP3 1) files (sound data files) which are available on the Internet
in increasing numbers. They are provided by scene members on
their Internet homepages and can be downloaded, free of cost,
by users and be copied on their own self-made CDs (cf. Chapter
IX, sub-section 3.1, below). The provider runs a low risk of
criminal prosecution, especially if such offers are posted on the
Internet anonymously by foreign providers. This might develop
into a competition harmful to the market for skinhead-music CDs
and to mail-order business.
Fanzines for in-scene
communication
2.3 Fanzines
Right-extremist fan magazines (fanzines) continue to be very
important to in-scene communication. At the end of 1999, 50
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