Yesterday I posted that Trump was going to sue John Bolton to stop publication of his book. The book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,”  will make a mockery of this inept, incompetent charlatan and his soon to be former administration. 

The attempt to stop publication runs counter to First Amendment rights of free speech. Trump is using the specious argument of “Security” to keep the book from being read by the public.  The only “security” at issue is Trump’s total incompetence and the chaos he has brought upon the US and the world.

 Now, with the help of his servile and sycophant Attorney General, Trump is asking a Federal Judge to halt publication scheduled for June 23. It’s called Prior Restraint.

Try as Trump might the book will be published.

Deutsche Welle 6.16.2020

The Trump administration has sued  formerNational Security Adviser John Bolton over a book it says contains classified information. However, released excerpts reveal a portrait of “chaotic” decision making in the White House.

Bolton’s lawyer Chuck Cooper said that his client had painstakingly worked with classification specialists at the White House National Security Council to ensure classified material is not published.

“This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public importance,” according to Cooper.

The administration of US President Donald Trump sued the president’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, on Tuesday to delay the publication of a book that the White House claims contains classified information on US foreign policy. The book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is expected to paint a picture of discord and chaos in the Trump Administration during Bolton’s tenure.

Publisher Simon & Schuster, called the lawsuit “nothing more than the latest in a longrunning series of efforts by the administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president.”

In the lawsuit, the US Justice Department requests that a federal court order Bolton to “instruct or request” that the publisher delay publication of the book to allow for acompletion of the national security reviewprocess. The book was supposed to be released in March. Its release date was twice delayed and it is now set for release on June 23.

According to publishers, the book describes Trump as “a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government.”

The lawsuit follows threats by Trump on Monday that Bolton would face legal action. “I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out he’s broken the law,” Trump said. “That’s called criminal liability. That’s a big thing.”

Security concerns

Trump has accused Bolton of not completing the clearance process required for a book by former government officials who had access to sensitive information. The book contains “significant quantities of classified information that it asked defendant to remove,” the lawsuit said.

While Trump admitted he had not read the book, he said the problem of revealing conversations with the president “becomes even worse if he lies about the conversation, which I understand he might have in some cases.”

US Attorney General William Barr also raised concerns over the pre-publication review process, and added that the Trump administration was “trying to get them to go through the process and make the necessary deletions of classified information.”

https://www.dw.com/en/ex-trump-adviser-bolton-sued-to-delay-publication-of-tell-all-book/a-53837022

Trump is once again showing his total disdain and disregard for an open, free and independent  media.

The latest attack on the free press by  insidious con artist Trump will be to stop publication of the tell all memoir by ex National Security Adviser, the mustachioed John Bolton. In legal terms it’s called “prior restraint.”

The irony of all this is not lost on the political class. For years John Bolton was the darling of the hard core right wing political establishment.

Now he is being feted by everyone including many who previously scorned him. He may become a beacon of the right to free speech.

The Hill 6.15.2020

The Trump administration plans to file a lawsuit blocking next week’s release of a book authored by former national security adviser John Bolton, ABC News reported Monday.

Sources familiar with the matter told the network that the lawsuit seeking an injunction from publication in its current form is expected to be filed in federal court in the coming days. The book, published by Simon & Schuster, is slated for release on June 23.

The White House, National Security Council and Justice Department did not immediately return requests for comment.

Last week, the White House told Bolton his manuscript draft contained classified material. The White House said it would give Bolton a redacted copy of his book by June 19.

The NSC team and Bolton’s representatives have disputed throughout the year whether the information in the manuscript covers classified information.

The White House informed Bolton in January that the book had “significant amounts of classification.” White House deputy counsel John Eisenberg cautioned in a letter to Bolton’s attorney Charles Cooper this month that the book’s release could pose a national security threat.

Bolton’s book is expected to detail “Trump misconduct with other countries” beyond Ukraine, Axios first reported last week. The president’s previous interactions with Ukraine led to his impeachment last year.

The first interview with Bolton since he finished his memoir will air Sunday on ABC News.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/502773-trump-administration-to-file-lawsuit-blocking-john-boltons-book

San Francisco prides itself on being the showcase of progressive thought and tolerance.

No way. Trust me there is a segment, albiet small, of the population which fits in quite nicely with the Trumpian Make America Great Again know nothings.

This incident, gone world wide, happened on Clay Street in the toney Pacific Heights Swells neighborhood. It is illustrative of the San Francisco intolerant underbelly.

San Francisco Chronicle 6.15.2020

James Juanillo hoped to inspire others when he started stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on the retaining wall of his Pacific Heights home in San Francisco.

But as the 50-year-old finished adding the chalk letters on Tuesday afternoon, June 9, a man and woman approached him to ask if the property belonged to him before accusing him of defacing private property. Juanillo recorded the incident and shared it with his 33 Twitter followers.

By Monday morning, the video had collected 16.1 million views, added more than 17,000 followers to Juanillo’s account and resulted in a financial services company reportedly firing one of the two people who wrongly accused Juanillo of breaking the law.

The incident also spurred the latest conversation about racism and a presumption of guilt being unfairly applied to people of color in a nation still reeling from the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and numerous other instances in which law enforcement have killed or beaten people under questionable or illegal circumstances.

Juanillo told The Chronicle in an interview Monday morning that he felt ambivalent about everything that happened over the past week.

“On one hand, I want them to learn a lesson from this,” he said. “On the other hand, I am the first person to say that this was not as egregious as what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd. It was never my intent, or my intention for them to lose their livelihoods.

“I think it is sad. But they could have just kept on walking.”

The nearly two-minute video starts with a woman in a white shirt and short shorts asking Juanillo if he was stenciling on his own property. He asks the woman and man why they were asking.

Subsequent reports have identified the woman as Lisa Alexander, CEO of skin care line LaFace.

“If I did live here and it was my property, this would be absolutely fine,” Juanillo asks her in the video.

“Totally,” says a man with Alexander, who was later identified as Robert Larkin.

James Juanillo waves to the public

“We actually do know, that’s why we are asking,” Alexander responds.

Juanillo tells them they can call the police or the owners because they were accusing him of defacing private property. He refuses to answer their questions and encourages them to call the police.

“I’ll be right here,” he says.

The pair then walks away, but they did apparently call the police.

Officers arrived within two minutes and recognized him, Juanillo told The Chronicle, adding that he’s lived in the same home since 2002. Without blaring their sirens or exiting their vehicles, the officers complimented him on the stencil work and soon left, he said.

Juanillo said he waited by a window overlooking his chalk work and the couple returned. He waved at them, he said, but again they walked away.

“They can come up to the front of the house, apologize, tell me it was a misunderstanding or what not, and this would have never happened,” Juanillo said. “I would have never posted the video. But instead they walked away.”

The Chronicle’s attempts to reach Alexander and Larkin for comment, as well as obtain an apology she reportedly issued Sunday, were unsuccessful.

Juanillo said most of the people who saw him stenciling expressed some kind of solidarity — from telling him, “Good job, bro,” to smiling and gesturing.

“I thought it was a shame that these two people couldn’t just ignore what I was doing,” he said.

Raymond James, the company where Larkin reportedly worked, issued a statement early Monday saying an unnamed employee no longer worked with the company following a probe into a “video alleging racism by one of our associates.”

“We have concluded that the actions of he and his partner were inconsistent with our values, and the associate is no longer employed with Raymond James,” the statement said.

He hopes the two who confronted him can realize they are part of a problem, even if they thought they had good intentions.

“Our country is being torn apart right now,” Juanillo said. “I think a lot of people need to examine how this is going to be resolved. And I think we all need to work forward and toward forgiveness and empathy.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-man-who-stenciled-Black-Lives-Matter-on-15341503.php#photo-19553666

I just watched the devastating documentary on Trump’s financial and entertainment history. In 80 minutes the makers of this sharply honed take down have created a primer on the complete con artist who foisted himself on a gullible American public.

The program, originally aired over two years ago, is part of Netflix two season Dirty Money documentary series.

The writer James Poniewozik is author of the 2019 book “Audience of One.  Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America.” I am currently reading this absorbing account of how Trump and television came of age simultaneously. The result has been disastrous.

Feature photo: A slimmed down Trump with his parents

James Poniewozik New York Times 1.25.2018

Donald J. Trump’s boardroom in “The Apprentice” was like something out of a movie. Specifically, “Network.”

In the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” two “Apprentice” producers say they found the actual Trump Organization offices too dated and dowdy for TV. So they built a set in Trump Tower, modeled on the darkened lair where the mogul, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), dresses down the rebellious newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), howling, “The world is a business!”

That’s what reality TV does: It set-designs locations (a “Survivor” island, a “Bachelor” love nest) to look more convincing, more in line with our mental cartoons than the real thing.

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

June 13, 2020

In San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Park nearly three weeks after the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd people are still marching to protest racism and police brutality.

Meanwhile, three months after Shelter in Place was ordered, San Francisco’s premier shopping area Union Square remains a desolate place.

Photos:  Liz Heidhues and Lee Heidhues

Even Superior Court in Civic Center is an empty place as the midweek photo below of the usually busy filing room shows.

Perhaps the worst purveyor of this fair and balanced coverage is the PBS News Hour with its anodyne talking head Judy Woodruff. I nearly fall asleep listening to her dull monotone deliver each night.

Now that these talking heads are working from home I always look on the books which are affixed as a prop. On Judy’s shelves are books about  US Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and George HW Bush, two of the most inconsequential, conservative and do nothing Presidents in American history.

Since PBS receives government funding it has to placate the Republican reactionaries currently running Washington. Still, PBS could do better than Judy who has definitely outlived her shelf life.

The Nation – Eric Alterman 6.11.2020

Elite media still hasn’t figured out how to cover the Trump presidency.

More than three years into the Trump presidency, given the threats we face, it is long past time for editors to stop playing both sides with fascism and democracy.

The Trump administration and its Republican enablers are fighting a series of wars directed at targets inside the United States. A partial list would include immigrants, African Americans, Jews, poor people, middle-class people, people with student loan debts, the environment, voting rights, fair elections, blue-state taxpayers, the rule of law, honest elections, and all forms of accountability for Donald Trump, his family, and the criminals who helped him get elected.

Those running the country’s elite media institutions have no experience with a situation like this and still cannot figure out how to handle it. Historically, media machers have seen themselves as collaborators with government officials to ensure that things run smoothly for whoever is in power. They do this, in part, because they believe in the cause and, in part, to obtain access, quotes, and the public pretense of respect.

US government officials, especially but not exclusively Republicans, have been lying to the American people about matters of life and death for a long time. The mainstream media eventually righted itself under President Richard Nixon’s assault on our democratic institutions, but its ability to do so today under Trump, an even greater threat to American democracy, is considerably diminished.

The mainstream media cannot make up their minds about the fundamental question of the Trump presidency: “Which side are you on?”

The top editors of almost all of America’s mainstream media institutions have explicitly rejected the notion of a journalism of opposition. While The New York Times and The Washington Post, for instance, have tallied Trump’s untruths—separate from the articles in which they are repeated verbatim—neither has proved willing to reconsider its commitment to the mindless both-sides style of reporting in which Republican lies and incitements to fascist violence are given equal weight to Democratic attempts to tell the truth and defend democracy.

Thanks to Trump’s response to the protests against police brutality, however, the jig is up. Military leaders past and present and even a few Republicans have had enough. It is not OK for Trump to demand a military attack on our own citizens and then lie about having done so. And yet at this moment, New York Times opinion editors offered American journalism’s most prestigious real estate to Senator Tom Cotton to make the case for Trump’s proposed assault.

Stories like this defy logic and boggle the mind. There are a lot of sick and twisted people out there.

In the time of the Pandemic and  world wide outrage over the police murder of George Floyd in America there are still stories which can shock the conscience.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 6.10.2020

The Birmingham Crown Court sentenced Alice Cutter, 24, to three years in prison and her ex-boyfriend, Mark Jones, 25, to five-and-a-half years.

The 24-year-old entered the beauty contest under the name ‘Miss Buchenwald’ in reference to the Nazi death camp. She was sentenced along with three men for being part of the banned far-right group, National Action.

A former “Miss Hitler” contestant and three other neo-Nazis were jailed in Britain on Tuesday, after being convicted of membership of the banned far-right group National Action (NA) in March.

Two other men — Gary Jack, 24, and Connor Scothern, 19, — were handed four years and six months, and 18 months respectively, for the same crime. A fifth defendant was sentenced to three years in prison last year.

Cutter, a waitress, had entered the Miss Hitler beauty contest under the nickname “Miss Buchenwald,” referencing the World War II Nazi concentration camp.

Jurors were shown messages in which Cutter had joked about gassing synagogues, using a Jewish person’s head as a football, and saying “Rot in hell, bitch” after hearing about the 2016 killing of MP Jo Cox in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

The group was banned the same year, following the comments, with the government describing it as a “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic organizaton that stirs up hatred and glorifies violence.”

Read more: Italy busts neo-Nazi ring, ‘Miss Hitler’ pageant winner

Prosecutors said a search of the home that Cutter and Jones shared revealed Nazi paraphernalia and images, as well as weapons including knives, brass knuckles, catapults, a longbow and ball bearings.

Jack was described as an active member of National Action even after its ban and had a previous conviction for putting up racially charged stickers at a university campus.

Scothern was also an active member and had distributed almost 1,500 stickers calling for a “final solution” in reference to the Nazis’ genocide of the Jews.

Anti-fascist campaigners Hope Not Hate estimated that despite the ban placed on the group in December 2016, NA still had several “hardcore members” and used different names to hide its activities.

At  any other time Nancy Tung, an Assistant District Attorney in neighboring Alameda County, would have passed muster and been voted to sit on San Francisco’s Police Commission.

She is definitely qualified to sit on the Commission based on her long time legal experience.

These are not normal times. Tung, who ran a spirited campaign for District Attorney in 2019, was arguably the most conservative of the four candidates regarding her views of criminal prosecution.

That said, Tung is very honest and forthright in expressing her views. True, she would have been an advocate for strong law enforcement.  She also would have brought her integrity, background and knowledge to the Commission.

Tung would not have been swayed by rhetoric and posturing. She would have taken up each matter on its merit.  Tung is yet another casualty in the ongoing political trench warfare in San Francisco.

San Francisco Chronicle 6.10.2020

Both of Mayor London Breed’s nominees for Police Commission are officially out.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected the nomination of Nancy Tung by a 10-1 vote, with many saying the prosecutor did not possess a desired track record of advocacy or action around police reform. Attorney Geoffrey Gordon-Creed withdrew his candidacy for the police watchdog group earlier in the day, correctly predicting that he too wouldn’t win a majority of the votes.

The denials came amid a national uprising over police use of force and accountabilty, as communities around the globe reel over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd on May 25. Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

George Floyd and his accused killer ex-cop Derek Chauvin

Tung, who is supportive of police using Tasers and accepted a donation from the San Francisco Police Officers Association during her run for district attorney, was the wrong person to lead this charge, supervisors said Tuesday.

Supervisor Shamann Walton said it would be disrespectful to the black community to support Tung’s appointment.

“That comes from my heart as a black man,” he said.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani cast the lone vote supporting Tung. She said the board ought to give careful consideration to a candidate put forward by a black mayor with a personal family history studded with incidents of violence and involvement with the criminal justice system. Breed’s bother is serving a 44-year sentence for a manslaughter conviction and, as Breed has recently revealed, her cousin was killed by San Francisco police in 2006.

In a statement, Tung said she was “disappointed” that some of the supervisors mischaracterized or failed to familiarize themselves with her record.

“I am proud to have been nominated by Mayor London Breed for the Police Commission,” she said. “While the outcome of the Board of Supervisors’ vote is not surprising to me, I stand firmly behind my professional record as someone who is independent, fair, and willing to challenge authority to do what is right.”

The board also tacitly rejected Gordon-Creed, another Breed nominee. Gordon-Creed, a former deputy city attorney, withdrew his nomination in a letter to Breed Tuesday, saying he lacked “sufficient support” from the board to confirm him.

Breed will now be tasked with recommending two more nominees.

“The mayor has spent her career leading on the issue of police reform and she just announced that she will be leading the effort to redirect funding from the San Francisco Police Department to support the black community,” Lynch said. “This is the type of action this moment calls for, and the board needs to stop holding critical commission seats vacant when we have real, important work to do.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/SF-supervisors-reject-London-Breed-s-nominees-15328824.php

I sincerely wish Mr. Gugino a speedy recovery.

Trump’s vile and obscene comment is to be expected. The only way to mitigate the behavior of this dangerous clown is to toss him from office 147 days from now.

Excerpted from New York Times 6.9.2020

The president attacked Martin Gugino even as the activist was in the hospital recovering from a head wound sustained when the police shoved him to the ground.

The tweet on Tuesday, which appeared to accuse Mr. Gugino of having instigated or even faked the encounter, was not the first time Mr. Trump has sought to blame Antifa — a word that describes a loose collective of anti-fascist activists — for encouraging what has now been nearly two weeks of nationwide demonstrations.

Hours after the tweet was posted, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo lashed out at Mr. Trump, saying that he should “apologize” and “show some humanity.” Mr. Cuomo said the tweet was “all made up,” adding that he was shocked the president would accuse Mr. Gugino of being an anti-fascist plant without any evidence.

It is true, his friends admitted, Martin Gugino was an activist, a seasoned peacenik who in a lifetime of protest had taken part in demonstrations against military drones, climate change, nuclear weapons and police brutality.

But Mr. Gugino was also a football fan, they said, a mild-mannered bachelor and a Buffalo native who returned to his hometown some years ago to care for his ailing mother.

The one thing he was not, however, those who knew him said, was what President Trump claimed he was on Twitter Tuesday morning: a wily Antifa provocateur.

Mr. Trump’s viral tweet — none of it backed by fact — raced across the internet all day even as Mr. Gugino, 75, still lay in the hospital, recovering from the head wound he sustained on Thursday night when two Buffalo police officers shoved him to the ground at a demonstration marking the police killing of George Floyd.

A cellphone video of the encounter has now been seen by millions of people and led to charges being filed against the officers on Saturday.

But even by his own standards, Mr. Trump appeared to test the boundaries of credulity by trying to brand a retired septuagenarian computer programmer as a follower of Antifa, whose adherents are, for one thing, generally much younger.

Nate Buckley, a co-owner of the Burning Books bookstore on Connecticut Street in Buffalo, said that Mr. Gugino was a regular customer who often came to hear the speakers that he brought into his shop — everyone from figures in the Catholic Worker Movement to Princeton professors lecturing on race.

“Martin is interested in everything — he’s a very inquisitive person,” Mr. Buckley said. “He’s also a very social person with an active mind who’s always asking questions.”

Mr. Buckley said he was disturbed that Mr. Gugino — “a 75-year-old elder,” as he put it — had effectively been tarred as a thug by Mr. Trump and his supporters.

“He’s one of the most gentle people I know,” Mr. Buckley said. “He’s not aggressive at all. But people make up the most insane stories so they don’t have to deal with reality.”

Mr. Trump’s tweet seems to have been based on a report by One America News Network, a right-wing cable television channel, which claimed that Mr. Gugino had been trying to knock out the police officers’ radios with his cellphone — an idea that several of Mr. Gugino’s friends dismissed as ludicrous.

The world’s attention is riveted to the demonstrations and protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, back in the USSR Neo-Nazis have found a home to further hone their abhorrent skills.

Deutsche Welle 6.6.2020

German right-wing extremists are receiving paramilitary training in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to a new report by news magazine Focus. Who is running the training, and what do we know about the participants?

What kind of camp did right-wing extremists reportedly visit in Russia?

Participating in paramilitary training is legal in Russia. Such training takes place under the protective umbrella of DOSAAF (Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation, and Navy), an organization whose founding dates back to the days of the Soviet Union. The actual training, in which Germans reportedly participated, is provided by a club appearing under two different names: “Rezerv” or “Partizan.” It takes place at a military facility on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Until 2018, “Partizan” and its members were listed on the website of St. Petersburg’s municipal office as a vigilante group in the Vyborg district. “That was prior to my taking office,” a district representative told DW when asked about the matter.

Talking to local journalists in 2017, one of the organizers of the paramilitary camp confirmed that the center also provided paramilitary training for foreigners, “including Germans.” Today, the center advertises both offline and online courses, including classes on handling weapons and on “military topography” — in June 2020 alone, it offers six different classes, bookable via the Russian social network Vkontakte.

Read more: Right-wing terror in Germany: A timeline

Right-wing populists in Russia

Russia in the past has served as a meeting point for right-wing populists and radicals from around Europe. In 2015, St. Petersburg hosted the “International Russian Conservative Forum.” Participants included the former chairman of the German extreme-right National Democratic Party (NPD), Udo Voigt, as well as representatives from Italy’s extreme-right Forza Nuova party, Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn party and Italy’s far-right League (Lega) party.

In 2017, just prior to presidential elections in France, Marine Le Pen — then the leader of French far-right party National Front, which was renamed Rassemblement National in 2018 — visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Le Pen advocated closer ties with Russia and criticized European Union sanctions against the country. The National Front also received a €9 million ($10.2 million) loan from a Russian bank.

Representatives of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) paty, led by then-chairperson Frauke Petry, also visited Moscow in 2017. The delegation met both lawmakers from the ruling United Russia party and representatives from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, led by right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Read more: Germany and right-wing extremism: The new dimension of terrorism

Who conducts the paramilitary training?

The training center and club organizers have very close ties to Russia’s Christian Orthodox extremists. The chairman of the club and founder of the training center is reportedly Denis Gariev, who is also one of the key figures behind the Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM, which was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States government in April 2020.

By its own account, the Russian Imperial Movement is a monarchist, “orthodox-patriotic,” “right-wing conservative” organization fighting for “white supremacy.” RIM is not considered a terrorist group in Russia. However, the country’s Ministry of Justice categorized the organization’s website, as well as a number of its online articles, as extremist.

While the RIM website is now temporarily inaccessible, their social media channels on Telegram and Vkontakte are still in operation. Statements posted there make plain that the movement explicitly shares racist views. Worldwide protests in the wake of the killing of black American George Floyd under the Black Lives Matter slogan are referred to as “hell,” with protesters “worshipping a black idol.” The spreading of the coronavirus is labeled “the so-called pandemic” and portrayed as an international conspiracy. The group also claims Russia’s salvation will be the “rebirth” of the Christian Orthodox monarchy, which, if necessary, has to be reinstated by force, “because an Orthodox Christian is always a fighter, too.”

Read more: Coronavirus: How do I recognize a conspiracy theory?

What is known about the right-wing extremist participants?

According to Focus magazine, some of the men are members of the Young Nationalists, the youth wing of the NPD, Germany’s oldest right-wing extremist party. As the youth wing only counts 280 members, it remains politically insignificant, although its participants are rather active when it comes to public action. The group has run would-be environmental protection campaigns, for example, in an attempt to win over young supporters.

Other participants in the paramilitary training in Russia are reportedly members of The Third Way, one of the most radical political parties in Germany. 

According to the Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, the party promotes a nationalist and racist ideology influenced by Nazism, and it rejects democracy. The Third Way was founded by members of a right-wing extremist association from southern Germany just as it was about to be banned by lawmakers — in Germany, the hurdles for banning a political party are much higher than those for banning a club or association.

Read more: Combat 18: The neo-Nazi network facing a ban in Germany

How have German officials responded?

The German Government has remained tight-lipped thus far. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that it was familiar with the issue but that there was no specific information about individuals suspected of receiving training at the paramilitary camp. Right-wing extremists conducting target practice and paramilitary sports exercises abroad continue to be a concern for German government officials.

In 2019, the German government stated in response to an inquiry by the Left Party that, for many years, German neo-Nazis had been seeking close cooperation with right-wing extremists abroad. Time and again, target practice sessions were publicized on social media. Due to the extremists’ penchant for weaponry, authorities say they have remained in contact with the intelligence services of the countries involved.

https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-german-neo-nazis-training-in-russia/a-53702613