Demonstrators take part in a neo-Nazi NPD party rally, in Dresden, Germany. Photo: Reuters / Matthias Rietsche.

The German government’s crackdown on the far right continued this week with a ban on a group whose followers worship Adolf Hitler and admire the ISIS terrorist group in the Middle East.

Police carried out raids in four different states on Tuesday against supporters of the neo-Nazi Nordadler (Northern Eagle) group.

In a statement following the operation, the Federal Ministry of the Interior disclosed that computers and cellphones had been seized along with troves of Nazi literature and memorabilia.

“I will prohibit associations and groups that spread hatred and agitate for the re-establishment of a National Socialist state,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said. “Right-wing extremism and antisemitism have no place among us, neither in the real nor in the virtual world.”

The Nordadler is the third far-right group to have been banned by Germany during 2020.

In January, the authorities took action against Combat 18 Deutschland, a notoriously violent group.

This was followed with a ban in March on an organization named the United German Peoples and Tribes, which disdains the post-war federal republic as a foreign imposition on  Germany.

Supporters of the Nordadler were understood to have purchased a property in rural Thuringia in 2017 with the aim of settling a neo-Nazi “community” there. The group has recruited members using social media platforms such as Telegram, Instagram and Discord.

According to broadcaster DW, at least one Nordadler leader is tied to ISIS. The individual in question assisted an ISIS operative in Germany — described as a neo-Nazi who converted to Islam — with preparations for a bomb attack on a military target before being apprehended.

DW noted that experts on terrorism in Germany had identified antisemitism as “the common denominator between Islamist and right-wing extremists.”

In posts on social media, Nordadler supporters openly celebrated the attack on a synagogue in the central German city of Halle on Yom Kippur last year, in which two people were murdered by a neo-Nazi gunman.