After Michael Koth was kicked out of the
Communist Party he advocated openly national revolutionary positions. He became a member of the Workers
Party of Germany (Partei der Arbeit Deutschlands/PdAD) and later took
over its chairmanship. The politically insignificant PdAD was closely
linked to the Society for Study and Propagation of the Juche Idea in Germany –
the German-Korean Friendship Society. Both organizations, PdAD and the Korean-German
Friendship Society, came to be dominated by Koth and guided by the policy
positions of the Chosun Workers Party.
PdAD slowly
converged with neo-Nazis. Party members frequently joined demonstrations
organized by the neo-Fascist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). In
Summer 1998, Koth and a NPD delegation were all invited to an event hosted by
DPRK Ambassador Ri San Yu.
However, a
few weeks later PdAD was dissolved, having failed, in the view of German
intelligence, to bring together right and left wing elements. Undeterred, in
1999 Koth and several other notorious activists formed another group – the Struggle League of German Socialists (Kampfbund Deutscher
Sozialisten/KDS).
In the
beginning, KDS was very active. Especially in the
Ruhr region in the west but also in the former East Germany they were able to
recruit a number of new members. Koth became a member of the group‘s central leadership and the regional leader of Berlin and
Brandenburg (the federal state bordering Berlin). While members in western
Germany were often shaped by neo-Nazism, many of those in the east were ex-members of the
former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, which had been the ruling party of the
German Democratic Republic until 1989.
KDS followed
a strategy known as “Querfront,”
which advocates bringing together activists from left and right to fight for
national socialism (see footnote). According to statements from Michael Koth, the GDR had
failed not because of the social cause but the national one. And so, he surmised,
failed internationalist socialism must be replaced by nationalist socialism.
KDS represented a radical Anti-Americanism and Anti-Zionism, and sought
solidarity with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran… and North Korea.
 KDS propaganda image in support of North Korea. This image replaces another one used in an earlier |
However, only three
years later the group was dissolved by its own leadership. According to the
former “Altermedia Info”, this was a result of “KDS’ deficient political record of
success in the past 10 years, resp. its failure to promote the ‘Querfront’
concept”. At the time, Altermedia Info was one of the more prominent websites for German neo-Nazis. In 2011 its operators were sentenced to
imprisonment for hate crimes and other right-wing extremist criminal acts.
But while KDS’ central organizational
structure was dissolved, one local offshoot in Berlin/Brandenburg survived. Led
by Michael Koth, the group became a project to promote Juche, Songun, and
“Kimilsung-Kimjongilism”…
To be continued…
* Views expressed in Guest Columns are
independent and not necessarily those of Daily NK.
