Niko Samsonidse, a Berlin-based professional mixed martial arts practitioner, has added a ritual to his tournament preparation in recent years: investigate the event to ensure it is not organized by far-right extremists. Urging other practitioners of the sport to do the same, he has raised his voice regarding his efforts to denounce attempts to exploit the growing martial arts scene to promote extremist ideologies.
Mixed martial arts, or MMA, “is becoming much more popular in Germany and mostly has nothing to do with extremism”said Samsonidse, a social worker who wrote his thesis on countering extremism in combat sports. “But most people are not aware of what is happening next to them,” he added.
The Neo-Nazi groups across Europe have worked to use martial arts as a training and recruiting tool — organizing high-profile festivals and offering opportunities to play the sport — to broaden the groups’ appeal, experts say.
It is part of a strategy to make the face of extremism more mainstream. Organizers promote their events in a way that makes them difficult to distinguish from normal combat sports tournaments. They then use the events as a gateway to soften potential recruits to their ideology.
The festivals — which are often declared political events, making them harder to ban — often feature a far-right speaker or seminar, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project. And while MMA tournaments in Europe typically feature fighters from different racial groups, these events only allow whites.
“They are trying to expand the capture area. You get people to buy the t-shirt and you can get them to attend one of the festivals. And little by little you start talking to them about how bad the political system is,” Schindler said.
In the promotional videos of the largest far-right combat tournament, called “Kampf der Nibelungen” or “Battle of the Nibelungs”, far-right symbols or slogans do not appear. The videos focus on the boxing ring, ring girls, and heavily tattooed fighters; The only indication that the event is unconventional is that all the participants’ faces are blurred.
But the underlying message, said Alexander Ritzmann, senior adviser at the Counter-Extremism Project, is clear: “that white people are threatened at all kinds of levels.”
The name of the tournament refers to the 13th century German heroic epic poem “The Song of the Nibelungs,” a text used in Nazi propaganda during World War II. The event was moved to Hungary after being banned in Ostritz, Germany, in 2019.
Samsonidse said programs that allow young adults to play combat sports could be one way to prevent far-right extremism.
“There is a lot of potential in martial arts itself to share good values – respect and control of emotions – that could be really useful in working with young people,” he said. “But it can also be misused.”
By: CATIE EDMONDSON
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6899569, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-20 17:50:06
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