BRUSSELS: It’s the premier martial arts group in Europe for right-wing extremists. German authorities have twice banned their signature tournament. But Kampf der Nibelungen, or Battle of the Nibelungs, still thrives on Facebook, where organizers maintain multiple pages, as well as on Instagram and YouTube, which they use to spread their ideology, draw in recruits and make money through ticket sales and branded merchandise.
The Battle of the Nibelungs — a reference to a classic heroic epic much loved by the Nazis — is one of dozens of far-right groups that continue to leverage mainstream social media for profit, despite Facebook’s and other platforms’ repeated pledges to purge themselves of extremism.
All told, there are at least 54 Facebook profiles belonging to 39 entities that the German government and civil society groups have flagged as extremist, according to research shared with The Associated Press by the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit policy and advocacy group formed to combat extremism. The groups have nearly 268,000 subscribers and friends on Facebook alone.
CEP also found 39 related Instagram profiles, 16 Twitter profiles and 34 YouTube channels, which have gotten over 9.5 million views. Nearly 60 percent of the profiles were explicitly aimed at making money, displaying prominent links to online shops or photos promoting merchandise.
Click on the big blue “view shop” button on the Erik & Sons Facebook page and you can buy a T-shirt that says, “My favorite color is white,” for 20 euros ($23). Deutsches Warenhaus offers “Refugees not welcome” stickers for just 2.50 euros ($3) and Aryan Brotherhood tube scarves with skull faces for 5.88 euros ($7). The Facebook feed of OPOS Records promotes new music and merchandise, including “True Aggression,” “Pride & Dignity,” and “One Family” T-shirts. The brand, which stands for “One People One Struggle,” also links to its online shop from Twitter and Instagram.
The people and organizations in CEP’s dataset are a who’s who of Germany’s far-right music and combat sports scenes. “They are the ones who build the infrastructure where people meet, make money, enjoy music and recruit,” said Alexander Ritzmann, the lead researcher on the project. “It’s most likely not the guys I’ve highlighted who will commit violent crimes. They’re too smart. They build the narratives and foster the activities of this milieu where violence then appears.”
CEP said it focused on groups that want to overthrow liberal democratic institutions and norms such as freedom of the press, protection of minorities and universal human dignity, and believe that the white race is under siege and needs to be preserved, with violence if necessary. None has been banned, but almost all have been described in German intelligence reports as extremist, CEP said.
On Facebook the groups seem harmless. They avoid blatant violations of platform rules, such as using hate speech or posting swastikas, which is generally illegal in Germany.
By carefully toeing the line of propriety, these key architects of Germany’s far-right use the power of mainstream social media to promote festivals, fashion brands, music labels and mixed martial arts tournaments that can generate millions in sales and connect like-minded thinkers from around the world.
But simply cutting off such groups could have unintended, damaging consequences.
“We don’t want to head down a path where we are telling sites they should remove people based on who they are but not what they do on the site,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Giving platforms wide latitude to sanction organizations deemed undesirable could give repressive governments leverage to eliminate their critics. “That can have really serious human rights concerns,” he said. “The history of content moderation has shown us that it’s almost always to the disadvantage of marginalized and powerless people.”
German authorities banned the Battle of the Nibelungs event in 2019, on the grounds that it was not actually about sports, but instead was grooming fighters with combat skills for political struggle.
In 2020, as the coronavirus raged, organizers planned to stream the event online — using Instagram, among other places, to promote the webcast. A few weeks before the planned event, however, over a hundred black-clad police in balaclavas broke up a gathering at a motorcycle club in Magdeburg, where fights were being filmed for the broadcast, and hauled off the boxing ring, according to local media reports.
The Battle of the Nibelungs is a “central point of contact” for right-wing extremists, according to German government intelligence reports. The organization has been explicit about its political goals — namely to fight against the “rotting” liberal democratic order — and has drawn adherents from across Europe as well as the United States.
Members of a California white supremacist street fighting club called the Rise Above Movement, and its founder, Robert Rundo, have attended the Nibelungs tournament. In 2018 at least four Rise Above members were arrested on rioting charges for taking their combat training to the streets at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A number of Battle of Nibelungs alums have landed in prison, including for manslaughter, assault and attacks on migrants.
National Socialism Today, which describes itself as a “magazine by nationalists for nationalists” has praised Battle of the Nibelungs and other groups for fostering a will to fight and motivating “activists to improve their readiness for combat.”
But there are no references to professionalized, anti-government violence on the group’s social media feeds. Instead, it’s positioned as a health-conscious lifestyle brand, which sells branded tea mugs and shoulder bags.
“Exploring nature. Enjoying home!” gushes one Facebook post above a photo of a musclebound guy on a mountaintop wearing Resistend-branded sportswear, one of the Nibelung tournament’s sponsors. All the men in the photos are pumped and white, and they are portrayed enjoying wholesome activities such as long runs and alpine treks.
Elsewhere on Facebook, Thorsten Heise – who has been convicted of incitement to hatred and called “one of the most prominent German neo-Nazis” by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the German state of Thuringia — also maintains multiple pages.
Frank Kraemer, who the German government has described as a “right-wing extremist musician,” uses his Facebook page to direct people to his blog and his Sonnenkreuz online store, which sells white nationalist and coronavirus conspiracy books as well as sports nutrition products and “vaccine rebel” T-shirts for girls.
Battle of the Nibelungs declined to comment. Resistend, Heise and Kraemer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Facebook told AP it employs 350 people whose primary job is to counter terrorism and organized hate, and that it is investigating the pages and accounts flagged in this reporting.
“We ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission, or are engaged in violence,” said a company spokesperson, who added that Facebook had banned more than 250 white supremacist organizations, including groups and individuals in Germany. The spokesperson said the company had removed over 6 million pieces of content tied to organized hate globally between April and June and is working to move even faster.
Google said it has no interest in giving visibility to hateful content on YouTube and was looking into the accounts identified in this reporting. The company said it worked with dozens of experts to update its policies on supremacist content in 2019, resulting in a five-fold spike in the number of channels and videos removed.
Twitter says it’s committed to ensuring that public conversation is “safe and healthy” on its platform and that it doesn’t tolerate violent extremist groups. “Threatening or promoting violent extremism is against our rules,” a spokesperson told AP, but did not comment on the specific accounts flagged in this reporting.
Robert Claus, who wrote a book on the extreme right martial arts scene, said that the sports brands in CEP’s data set are “all rooted in the militant far-right neo-Nazi scene in Germany and Europe.” One of the founders of the Battle of the Nibelungs, for example, is part of the violent Hammerskin network and another early supporter, the Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin, also known as Denis Nikitin, has been barred from entering the European Union for ten years, he said.
Banning such groups from Facebook and other major platforms would potentially limit their access to new audiences, but it could also drive them deeper underground, making it more difficult to monitor their activities, he said.
“It’s dangerous because they can recruit people,” he said. “Prohibiting those accounts would interrupt their contact with their audience, but the key figures and their ideology won’t be gone.”
Thorsten Hindrichs, an expert in Germany’s far-right music scene who teaches at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, said there’s a danger that the apparently harmless appearance of Germany’s right-wing music heavyweights on Facebook and Twitter, which they mostly use to promote their brands, could help normalize the image of extremists.
Extreme right concerts in Germany were drawing around 2 million euros ($2.3 million) a year in revenue before the coronavirus pandemic, he estimated, not counting sales of CDs and branded merchandise. He said kicking extremist music groups off Facebook is unlikely to hit sales too hard, as there are other platforms they can turn to, like Telegram and Gab, to reach their followers. “Right-wing extremists aren’t stupid. They will always find ways to promote their stuff,” he said.
None of these groups’ activity on mainstream platforms is obviously illegal, though it may violate Facebook guidelines that bar “dangerous individuals and organizations” that advocate or engage in violence online or offline. Facebook says it doesn’t allow praise or support of Nazism, white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism and bars people and groups that adhere to such “hate ideologies.”
Last week, Facebook removed almost 150 accounts and pages linked to the German anti-lockdown Querdenken movement, under a new “social harm” policy, which targets groups that spread misinformation or incite violence but didn’t fit into the platform’s existing categories of bad actors.
But how these evolving rules will be applied remains murky and contested.
“If you do something wrong on the platform, it’s easier for a platform to justify an account suspension than to just throw someone out because of their ideology. That would be more difficult with respect to human rights,” said Daniel Holznagel, a Berlin judge who used to work for the German federal government on hate speech issues and also contributed to CEP’s report. “It’s a foundation of our Western society and human rights that our legal regimes do not sanction an idea, an ideology, a thought.”
In the meantime, there’s news from the folks at the Battle of the Nibelungs. “Starting today you can also dress your smallest ones with us,” reads a June post on their Facebook feed. The new line of kids wear includes a shell-pink T-shirt for girls, priced at 13.90 euros ($16). A child pictured wearing the boy version, in black, already has boxing gloves on.
Neo-Nazis are still on Facebook. And they’re making money
https://arab.news/yagnq
Neo-Nazis are still on Facebook. And they’re making money

- By carefully toeing the line of propriety, these key architects of Germany’s far-right use the power of mainstream social media to promote festivals, fashion brands, music labels and mixed martial arts tournaments that can generate millions in sales
- Dozens of far-right groups that continue to leverage mainstream social media for profit, despite Facebook’s and other platforms’ repeated pledges to purge themselves of extremism
Apple heads into annual showcase reeling from AI missteps, tech upheaval and Trump’s trade war

- The pre-summer rite is expected be more subdued than the feverish anticipation that surrounded the event in 2023 when Apple unveiled a mixed-reality headset
- Now Apple is facing nagging questions about its ability to innovate and ability to navigate a gauntlet of other challenges as it heads into this year’s World Wide Developers Conference
CUP: After stumbling out of the starting gate in Big Tech’s pivotal race to capitalize on artificial intelligence, Apple will try to regain its footing Monday at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
The pre-summer rite, which attracts thousands of developers to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters, is expected to be more subdued than the feverish anticipation that surrounded the event during the previous two years.
In 2023, Apple unveiled a mixed-reality headset that has been little more than a niche product, and last year WWDC trumpeted its first major foray into the AI craze with an array of new features highlighted by the promise of a smarter and more versatile version of its virtual assistant, Siri.
But heading into this year’s showcase, Apple faces nagging questions about whether the nearly 50-year-old company has lost some of the mystique and innovative drive that turned it into a tech trendsetter. Instead of making a big splash as it did with the Vision Pro headset, Apple this year is expected to focus on an overhaul of its software that may include a new, more tactile look for the iPhone’s native apps and a new nomenclature for identifying its operating system updates.
Even though it might look like Apple is becoming a technological laggard, Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson contends the company still has ample time to catch up in an AI race that’s “more of a marathon, than a sprint. It will force Apple to evolve its operating systems.”
If reports about its iOS naming scheme pan out, Apple will switch to a method that automakers have used to telegraph their latest car models by linking them to the year after they first arrive at dealerships. That would mean the next version of the iPhone operating system due out this autumn will be known as iOS 26 instead of iOS 19 — as it would be under the current sequential naming approach.
Whatever it’s named, the next iOS will likely be released as a free update in September, around the same time as the next iPhone models if Apple follows its usual road map.
Meanwhile, Apple’s references to AI may be less frequent than last year when the technology was the main attraction.
While some of the new AI tricks compatible with the latest iPhones began rolling out late last year as part of free software updates, Apple still hasn’t been able to soup up Siri in the ways that it touted at last year’s conference. The delays became so glaring that a chastened Apple retreated from promoting Siri in its AI marketing campaigns earlier this year.
“It’s just taking a bit longer than we thought,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts last month when asked about the company’s headaches with Siri. “But we are making progress, and we’re extremely excited to get the more personal Siri features out there.”
While Apple has been struggling to make AI that meets its standards, the gap separating it from other tech powerhouses is widening. Google keeps packing more AI into its Pixel smartphone lineup while introducing more of the technology into its search engine to dramatically change the way it works. Samsung, Apple’s biggest smartphone rival, is also leaning heavily into AI. Meanwhile, ChatGPT recently struck a deal that will bring former Apple design guru Jony Ive into the fold to work on a new device expected to compete against the iPhone.
“While much of WWDC will be about what the next great thing is for the iPhone, the unspoken question is: What’s the next great thing after the iPhone?” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, another analyst for Forrester Research.
Besides facing innovation challenges, Apple also faces regulatory threats that could siphon away billions of dollars in revenue that help finance its research and development. A federal judge is currently weighing whether proposed countermeasures to Google’s illegal monopoly in search should include a ban on long-running deals worth $20 billion annually to Apple while another federal judge recently banned the company from collecting commission on in-app transactions processed outside its once-exclusive payment system.
On top of all that, Apple has been caught in the cross-hairs of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, a key manufacturing hub for the Cupertino, California, company. Cook successfully persuaded Trump to exempt the iPhone from tariffs during the president’s first administration, but he has had less success during Trump’s second term, which seems more determined to prod Apple to make its products in the US.
“The trade war and uncertainty linked to the tariff policy is of much more concern today for Apple’s business than the perception that Apple is lagging behind on AI innovation,” Husson said.
The multi-dimensional gauntlet facing Apple is spooking investors, causing the company’s stock price to plunge by nearly 20 percent so far this year — a decline that has erased $750 billion in shareholder wealth. After beginning the year as the most valuable company in the world, Apple now ranks third behind long-time rival Microsoft, another AI leader, and AI chipmaker Nvidia.
Chinese hackers and user lapses turn smartphones into a ‘mobile security crisis’

- Groups linked to China’s intel service have targeted the smartphones of smartphones belonging to people who worked in government, politics, tech and journalisms, according to national security and tech experts
WASHINGTON: Cybersecurity investigators noticed a highly unusual software crash — it was affecting a small number of smartphones belonging to people who worked in government, politics, tech and journalism.
The crashes, which began late last year and carried into 2025, were the tipoff to a sophisticated cyberattack that may have allowed hackers to infiltrate a phone without a single click from the user.
The attackers left no clues about their identities, but investigators at the cybersecurity firm iVerify noticed that the victims all had something in common: They worked in fields of interest to China’s government and had been targeted by Chinese hackers in the past.
Foreign hackers have increasingly identified smartphones, other mobile devices and the apps they use as a weak link in US cyberdefenses. Groups linked to China’s military and intelligence service have targeted the smartphones of prominent Americans and burrowed deep into telecommunication networks, according to national security and tech experts.
It shows how vulnerable mobile devices and apps are and the risk that security failures could expose sensitive information or leave American interests open to cyberattack, those experts say.
“The world is in a mobile security crisis right now,” said Rocky Cole, a former cybersecurity expert at the National Security Agency and Google and now chief operations officer at iVerify. “No one is watching the phones.”
US zeroes in on China as a threat, and Beijing levels its own accusations
US authorities warned in December of a sprawling Chinese hacking campaign designed to gain access to the texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.
“They were able to listen in on phone calls in real time and able to read text messages,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois. He is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the senior Democrat on the Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, created to study the geopolitical threat from China.
Chinese hackers also sought access to phones used by Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance during the 2024 campaign.
The Chinese government has denied allegations of cyberespionage, and accused the US of mounting its own cyberoperations. It says America cites national security as an excuse to issue sanctions against Chinese organizations and keep Chinese technology companies from the global market.
“The US has long been using all kinds of despicable methods to steal other countries’ secrets,” Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a recent press conference in response to questions about a CIA push to recruit Chinese informants.
US intelligence officials have said China poses a significant, persistent threat to US economic and political interests, and it has harnessed the tools of digital conflict: online propaganda and disinformation, artificial intelligence and cyber surveillance and espionage designed to deliver a significant advantage in any military conflict.
Mobile networks are a top concern. The US and many of its closest allies have banned Chinese telecom companies from their networks. Other countries, including Germany, are phasing out Chinese involvement because of security concerns. But Chinese tech firms remain a big part of the systems in many nations, giving state-controlled companies a global footprint they could exploit for cyberattacks, experts say.
Chinese telecom firms still maintain some routing and cloud storage systems in the US — a growing concern to lawmakers.
“The American people deserve to know if Beijing is quietly using state-owned firms to infiltrate our critical infrastructure,” US Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Michigan and chairman of the China committee, which in April issued subpoenas to Chinese telecom companies seeking information about their US operations.
Mobile devices have become an intel treasure trove
Mobile devices can buy stocks, launch drones and run power plants. Their proliferation has often outpaced their security.
The phones of top government officials are especially valuable, containing sensitive government information, passwords and an insider’s glimpse into policy discussions and decision-making.
The White House said last week that someone impersonating Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, reached out to governors, senators and business leaders with texts and phone calls.
It’s unclear how the person obtained Wiles’ connections, but they apparently gained access to the contacts in her personal cellphone, The Wall Street Journal reported. The messages and calls were not coming from Wiles’ number, the newspaper reported.
While most smartphones and tablets come with robust security, apps and connected devices often lack these protections or the regular software updates needed to stay ahead of new threats. That makes every fitness tracker, baby monitor or smart appliance another potential foothold for hackers looking to penetrate networks, retrieve information or infect systems with malware.
Federal officials launched a program this year creating a “cyber trust mark” for connected devices that meet federal security standards. But consumers and officials shouldn’t lower their guard, said Snehal Antani, former chief technology officer for the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command.
“They’re finding backdoors in Barbie dolls,” said Antani, now CEO of Horizon3.ai, a cybersecurity firm, referring to concerns from researchers who successfully hacked the microphone of a digitally connected version of the toy.
Risks emerge when smartphone users don’t take precautions
It doesn’t matter how secure a mobile device is if the user doesn’t follow basic security precautions, especially if their device contains classified or sensitive information, experts say.
Mike Waltz, who departed as Trump’s national security adviser, inadvertently added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief to a Signal chat used to discuss military plans with other top officials.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had an Internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols set up in his office so he could use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, the AP has reported.
Hegseth has rejected assertions that he shared classified information on Signal, a popular encrypted messaging app not approved for the use of communicating classified information.
China and other nations will try to take advantage of such lapses, and national security officials must take steps to prevent them from recurring, said Michael Williams, a national security expert at Syracuse University.
“They all have access to a variety of secure communications platforms,” Williams said. “We just can’t share things willy-nilly.”
Top TikToker Khaby Lame detained by US immigration

- Lame holds top spot on the wildly popular TikTok social media app, with 162.2 million followers and has risen to fame for his short silent videos mocking the convoluted tutorials and tips that abound on the Internet
- Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive — aspects of which have been challenged in US courts
LOS ANGELES, United States: US immigration agents detained and later allowed the “voluntary departure” of the world’s most-followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, after he “overstayed” his visa, authorities said Saturday.
“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Seringe Khabane Lame, 25, a citizen of Italy, June 6, at the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada for immigration violations,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.
Lame entered the United States on April 30 and “overstayed the terms of his visa,” the statement said of the Friday detention, adding that he was released the same day.
The Italian national, who is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and has a following of more than 162 million on TikTok, “has since departed the US.”
Lame had not immediately posted publicly about the incident as of Saturday afternoon.
Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive — aspects of which have been challenged in US courts.
Lame holds top spot on the wildly popular TikTok social media app, with 162.2 million followers and has risen to fame for his short silent videos mocking the convoluted tutorials and tips that abound on the Internet.
He punctuates his videos with a trademark gesture — palms turned toward the sky, accompanied by a knowing smile and wide eyes — as he offers his own simple remedies.
The idea for his content came to him while wandering around the housing project where his family lived in Chivasso, near Turin, after losing his factory mechanic’s job in March 2020.
His posts took off — helping him gross an estimated $16.5 million through marketing deals with companies in the period between June 2022 and September 2023, according to Forbes.
Israeli army admits to Gaza strike

- Admission comes following investigation by BBC Verify
DUBAI: The Israeli military has admitted to the BBC that it conducted a strike on the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, which reportedly killed at least one Palestinian and injured 30 others.
The attack took place on Sunday, soon after an incident near a new aid distribution center in Rafah.
BBC’s fact-checking unit, Verify, was analyzing footage of the Rafah incident when it identified a separate strike in nearby Khan Younis.
Initially thought to be linked to the Rafah incident, BBC Verify geolocated the footage to Khan Younis, 4.5 km from the aid distribution site.
The Khan Younis blast had not been announced by the IDF, which regularly publishes operational updates online.
When BBC Verify approached the Israeli military, it admitted it had carried out an artillery strike and said the incident was the result of “technical and operational errors.”
Troops had fired toward a specific target but the artillery deviated and “wrongfully hit the Mawasi area” in Khan Younis, the military said, without providing any evidence to support its claims.
The blast took place in an area where displaced Palestinians had been sheltering. The footage showed bloodied bodies surrounded by dust clouds, BBC said. Women and children could be seen running and screaming as they watched injured people being carried away.
The broadcaster emphasized the rarity of the Israeli military acknowledging errors. BBC Verify’s analysis of its official Telegram account identified four previous instances where it admitted to mistakes or technical and operational errors related to the war in Gaza.
Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills three journalists

- Committee to Protect Journalists denounces attack on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital courtyard
LONDON: Three journalists were killed and four others injured in an Israeli strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital’s courtyard in central Gaza, drawing condemnations from media rights groups.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said the attack struck a media tent and identified the victims as Ismail Badah, a cameraman for Palestine Today TV channel, which is affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group; Soliman Hajaj, a Palestine Today editor; and Samir A-Refai of the Shams News network.
The strike injured 30 others, including four journalists. Among them were Imad Daloul, a correspondent for Palestine Today, and Ahmed Qalja, a cameraman for Qatar-based Al-Araby TV, both are reported to be in critical condition.
The syndicate accused Israel of “a full-fledged war crime” that “reflects a deliberate and systematic policy aimed at silencing the Palestinian narrative.” It said that targeting journalists “within the grounds of a hospital constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that the strike targeted “an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was operating in a command-and-control center” in the hospital’s yard, without providing details or evidence.
In a statement on Thursday, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack, calling for international action to stop Israel from targeting journalists “based on unsubstantiated terrorism claims.”
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said: “These are not isolated incidents, but systematic attacks by Israel on the media. This disturbing and deliberate pattern must end.
“The killing of journalists in a hospital courtyard on the holy day of Yawm Al-Arafah — preceding Eid Al-Adha — underscores the relentless dangers facing the media in Gaza.”