About Belltower.News

Belltower.News

Belltower.News is a German anti-fascist watchdog news website and the journalistic platform of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, one of Germany's leading civil-society organisations against right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism. Based in Berlin and published in German, it reports on the far right, conspiracy movements, hate crime and the state of democratic culture — combining daily news coverage with research, documentation and educational resources. Founded in 2007 by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit under the name Netz gegen Nazis, it was taken over by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation in 2009 and renamed Belltower.News in 2017.

Overview

Belltower.News describes its beat as the threats to an open society from the far right and related forms of what German sociology calls "group-focused enmity" — racism, antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, homophobia and other ideologies of inequality. Its reporting covers the organisational landscape of the German far right, from neo-Nazi networks and right-wing terrorist trials to the parliamentary politics of the AfD; the online ecosystems in which extremist narratives spread, including gaming communities, messaging apps and conspiracy milieus; and the responses of civil society, from victim-support initiatives to counter-speech projects. The editor-in-chief is Simone Rafael, a long-standing expert on right-wing extremism online.

The site functions as more than a news outlet. It maintains dossiers and backgrounders that serve as reference works for educators, journalists and policymakers; it publishes monitoring reports on trends such as antisemitic conspiracy narratives during the pandemic; and its journalists contribute expertise to public debates, parliamentary hearings and academic research. The Amadeu Antonio Foundation describes Belltower.News as its own journalistic platform and a core instrument for keeping these topics in public view, alongside its press work, social media and educational programmes.

History

The project began in late 2007 as Netz gegen Nazis (Net Against Nazis), an initiative of Giovanni di Lorenzo, then editor-in-chief of Die Zeit. It was launched with the support of a broad coalition of civic organisations — including the German Football Association, the German Olympic Sports Confederation, the football league association, the German Fire Brigade Association and the public broadcaster ZDF — and its stated aim was the combating of right-wing extremism, racism, antisemitism and other forms of group-based misanthropy.

In 2009 the website was transferred to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, the Berlin-based foundation founded in 1998 and named after Amadeu Antonio, one of the first victims of far-right violence after German reunification. The foundation, chaired by Anetta Kahane, had been set up by Karl Konrad Graf von der Groeben with the former Bundestag president Wolfgang Thierse as patron, and it took over the site as its flagship media project. On 3 April 2017 the site was renamed Belltower.News — subtitled "Netz für digitale Zivilgesellschaft" (Network for Digital Civil Society) — marking its evolution from a campaign-style project into a full journalistic outlet.

Since the renaming, Belltower.News has expanded its remit from monitoring neo-Nazi activity to covering the digital transformation of the far right: online radicalisation, disinformation campaigns, conspiracy movements such as QAnon, and the mainstreaming of far-right talking points. Its reporting on antisemitic conspiracy narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic — including the Europe-wide "State of Hate" report produced with the UK's HOPE not Hate and Sweden's Expo Foundation, analysing 30 countries — illustrates how the outlet's work now spans the continent.

The site has also attracted criticism, which Wikipedia documents from several directions. In 2008 Die Welt journalist Thomas Lindemann questioned whether the project might be counterproductive; parts of the German left have accused it of labelling criticism of Israeli politics as antisemitic, associating it with the so-called "Anti-German" current; and conservative outlets such as Die Achse des Guten have argued that it focuses on the political centre rather than on actual neo-Nazis. These controversies are themselves part of the outlet's history, reflecting the contested nature of its watchdog role.

Programming and Content

Belltower.News publishes daily news and analysis on its core beat. Typical coverage includes reports on far-right demonstrations and counter-protests, court proceedings against right-wing terrorists and extremist networks, investigations into online radicalisation milieus, and fact-based rebuttals of conspiracy narratives. The site pays particular attention to the digital dimension: how extremist actors use gaming platforms, social networks and alternative media to recruit and radicalise, and how democratic civil society can respond with counter-speech and media literacy.

A second pillar is documentation and research. The outlet produces background dossiers on far-right organisations, symbols and codes; monitoring reports that track trends over time; and educational materials aimed at teachers, youth workers and multipliers. The foundation's broader work — victim support through the CURA fund, funding for local projects, research through its Institute for Democracy and Civil Society — regularly generates stories for the site, and the site in turn gives those projects public visibility.

A third element is debate and commentary: interviews with researchers, activists and people affected by hate crime, as well as opinion pieces on the state of democratic culture. The tone is that of committed watchdog journalism — the outlet makes no pretence of neutrality toward the ideologies it covers, but it grounds its reporting in documented evidence.

Coverage and Audience

Belltower.News publishes in German for a German-speaking audience, with its core readership among educators, social workers, journalists, researchers, policymakers and activists working against right-wing extremism — the professional communities that use its dossiers as reference material. Its reporting is also followed by the broader politically engaged public and by the far-right actors it monitors, who frequently attack it.

The outlet does not publish audited traffic figures, so precise audience numbers are not publicly confirmed. Its reach is amplified through the Amadeu Antonio Foundation's networks: the foundation's press work, its social-media channels and its educational programmes all drive readers to the site, and its monitoring reports — such as the "State of Hate" series — are cited by national and international media, giving Belltower.News's research a circulation well beyond its own domain.

Ownership

Belltower.News is published by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation (Amadeu Antonio Stiftung), an independent non-profit foundation based in Berlin. The foundation was established in 1998, is named after a victim of far-right violence, and describes its mission as strengthening a democratic civil society that promotes pluralism and human rights while opposing right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism. It funds its work — including the news site — through donations, ministry grants and tech-sector partnerships, supporting more than 150 local projects a year alongside its own operational programmes. Editorial leadership of the site rests with editor-in-chief Simone Rafael.

Digital Presence

The website at belltower.news is the outlet's publishing platform and archive, carrying news, dossiers and monitoring reports. The site is promoted through the foundation's social-media channels and press work, and its articles circulate widely among the educators, journalists and activists who form its core audience. As a digital-native outlet covering digital extremism, Belltower.News treats its online presence as its primary arena: where far-right actors organise online, the watchdog watches online too.

Research network behind the newsroom

Belltower.News does not operate in isolation; it is the journalistic arm of a wider research and project ecosystem. The Amadeu Antonio Foundation runs the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, whose studies on right-wing extremism feed directly into the site's reporting, and it operates practical projects that regularly generate stories — from the Firewall workshops that train teenagers to rebut online hate, to the Online Civil Courage Initiative launched in 2016 with partners to develop counter-speech strategies for social platforms. The foundation's monitoring reports, which track toxic narratives and the shifting tactics of far-right actors, are published and contextualised on Belltower.News, giving the site a steady stream of primary research found nowhere else. This integration of research, fieldwork and journalism is unusual in the German media landscape and explains why the outlet's dossiers are treated as reference works: they are written by people who also fund the youth centres, train the teachers and support the victims described in them.