Last August, approximately 7,000 Neo-Nazis attended rallies in Chemnitz, Germany, most of them successfully avoiding not only arrest but even identification. To rectify that situation, the German art group the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) spearheaded an effort to get the participants to identify themselves.
By collecting footage and cross-referencing faces with social media profiles, ZPS was able to identify around 1,500 participants. They then used the information collected to up a website displaying the pictures and names they had collected. ZPS set up the site to display only 20 pictures per page. Because of this, Neo-Nazis who wanted to know if they’d been exposed searched the site with their own names and those of their associates.
“What we got was quite a network of who knows who, and who else was in Chemnitz,” said Philipp Ruch, artistic director of ZPS.
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