A group of nearly 5,000 football hooligans from across Germany gathered in the western city of Cologne on October 26 to protest the spread of Islamic extremism in the country.

The watershed march was organized by a new initiative called “Hooligans against Salafists,” better known by its German abbreviation, HoGeSa, short for Hooligans gegen Salafisten.

HoGeSa is a burgeoning alliance between hooligans from rival football clubs who have temporarily set aside their mutual hatred for each other in order to unite against a common enemy: radical Salafists who want to replace Germany’s democratic order with Islamic Sharia law.

The alliance has its roots in a hidden Internet forum called GnuHoonters (homophone of “New Hunters”) formed in 2012 between 17 different hooligan groups from across Germany. GnuHoonters was established primarily to fight anarchists, Marxist-Leninists and other left-wing extremists in the country.

In 2013, some 300 members of GnuHoonters set up another hidden Internet forum called “Because Germans Still Dare” (Weil Deutsche sich’s noch trauen), aimed at developing an action plan to fight the leaders of Germany’s Salafist scene.

After the forum was hacked in early 2014 and its secrets were spilled to the public, the group adopted the name “Hooligans against Salafists” and began operating openly. Initially, HoGeSa’s activities were limited to the Internet and social media, through which it developed a considerable following. Its Facebook page, for example, had more than 40,000 followers before it was recently shut down by Facebook censors.

More here.