00:20His lyrics are openly xenophobic, his pagan tattoos popular among Europe's far right.
00:33His T-shirt has a logo saying white boy summer, that's a slogan imported from white supremacists in the United States.
00:40Cavalier is a star among the ultranationalist right in Germany, neo-Nazis among them.
00:46He loves rapping and he loves the Alternative for Germany party, or AFD.
00:51That is the far right party which got nearly 21% of the vote in Germany's elections in February, an all-time high.
00:59Here is Cavalier at an AFD event before the vote.
01:03The AFD is known to have members who have emerged from the neo-Nazi movement.
01:08And during the campaign, known neo-Nazis were frequently seen at their rallies, especially in the eastern part of the country.
01:15A website called Pixel Archive regularly publishes photographs of events staged by far-right groups and neo-Nazis.
01:22Anonymous activists post hundreds of photographs in an attempt to document their activity.
01:27At the final rally for the AFD in the eastern state of Thuringia, a young man was photographed with a T-shirt reading Battle of the Nibelungs.
01:35That is a neo-Nazi martial arts competition that has been held off and on since 2013.
01:41Ricardo Pereira is an expert on extreme right movements in Europe.
01:45The word Nibelungen, it is a German legend.
01:50But you have to understand that Nibelungs was a SS division division.
01:56And so for them, it is this approach that makes sense.
02:00The neo-Nazis in the identity movement is expressed like this, through little references that only speak to people who know these little references.
02:14Another symbol cited at the rally was this lanyard, an accessory sold by a brand called Thor Steinar that caters to the neo-Nazi market.
02:23The AFD's branch in Thuringia is considered to be the most radical in Germany.
02:28Here, an AFD candidate called Alexander Klaus in the city of Erfurt was photographed with an apparent supporter.
02:35On the man's Instagram page, he can be seen making an inverted OK sign.
02:40Historian Valérie Dubslav told us what it means.
02:43We observe, since the end of 2010, the use of this sign of OK sign, which doesn't mean OK in the extremist definition.
02:53The circle, represented by the index and the thumb, is supposed to represent a P.
02:58And the three fingers crossed by the majeure and the small fingers must represent a W.
03:05And so, W and P, it's called White Power.
03:07And it comes from the supremacists American.
03:10The neo-Nazi presence has been high in Thuringia and other eastern states after they emerged from communist rule in 1990.
03:17With that fall, there was a kind of vacuum in the whole space of the XRDA.
03:24And it is true that since 1990, groups and organizations of the West, neo-Nazi, but not only nationalists,
03:31were forced to go to the East to build structures.
03:35It's a region that historically is very conservative.
03:39It was a political laboratory for the nationalists in the 1930s,
03:44because they were already in power in Thuringia before they arrived in Germany in 1933.
04:00This video was filmed by one of our observers in Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa, also known as Ivory Coast.
04:06The bags are full of cocoa. They are being smuggled into neighboring Guinea.
04:10The scene was filmed in Sipilou, on Côte d'Ivoire's western border.
04:14It's part of a thriving illicit trade up and down the border,
04:17with Ivorian cocoa being smuggled mostly into Guinea, but also Liberia.
04:22Our observer explains how it works.
04:25When you go there, you see that traffic is real.
04:29And it's the only way people do the displacement.
04:31When you see 30-40 camions that go to the border to go to the other side with the cacao,
04:36it's wanteux.
04:37The border is porous.
04:38And so there are a lot of areas where the traffic can easily go to Guinea or Liberia.
04:45The one who is here, in a specific way,
04:47he leaves his cacao, he travels the river, the flood,
04:50and it's on the other side.
04:52With his pierre, it kills the Ivorian economy.
04:54Ivory Coast is the world's biggest producer of cocoa,
04:57producing about 2 million tons every year.
05:00But fluctuating prices mean it's also a hot commodity for smuggling.
05:04An estimated 50 to 75 thousand tons of cocoa were illegally sent to Guinea and Liberia
05:10in the last quarter of 2024.
05:13In Ivory Coast, the price of cocoa is set by the government.
05:17The idea is to protect the country's producers from fluctuating world prices.
05:21But when global prices are high, like now, smugglers can step in to take advantage
05:26of the price difference between Ivory Coast and its neighbors.
05:30In Côte d'Ivoire, you have the price of cocoa,
05:321,800 francs per kilogram.
05:35On the other hand, you have the price at 3,000 francs.
05:39So the traffickers are ready to take all the risks
05:42to have more money.
05:44And very often, it's the complicity of certain people
05:47who don't have an error in Côte d'Ivoire.
05:50Cocoa can sell for as much as 5,000 francs a kilo in Guinea and Liberia.
05:54That is more than 7 euros.
05:56Ivorian authorities do what they can to stop the smuggling,
05:59staging regular inspections and raids.
06:01In January, the Ivorian army announced that five regional officials
06:05in Sipilu, civilian and military, were being suspended
06:09on suspicion of involvement in cocoa smuggling.
06:11That's it for this week.
06:12As always, you can find more reports from our observers
06:14on our website, observers.france24.com.
06:16I'll see you next time.
06:17You can find more reports from our observers on our website,
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