The Mannheim public prosecutor’s office has brought charges of incitement against musician Xavier Naidoo. A 52-year-old musician from Mannheim is accused of publishing anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying content via a Telegram channel in March 2021 by linking to a video and an image file with text, the authority announced on Thursday without mentioning the name. There has been another, similar charge against Naidoo since last year.
According to the allegations now made, the musician is said to have published anti-Semitic content more than three years ago by linking to a video and an image file with text. The public prosecutor’s office is therefore accusing him of incitement to hatred in two cases.
As early as July 2023, charges were brought against Naidoo at the Mannheim Regional Court for incitement to hatred in four cases, in one case in conjunction with insult. Between December 2020 and April 2021, he is said to have published anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying content in the form of texts, his own audio message and by linking to other videos via a Telegram channel.
He is also said to have insulted a person working for the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and published anti-Semitic texts. The foundation has been campaigning against right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism since 1998. The investigations were reportedly based on various criminal charges. The musician denies the allegations, and the public prosecutor’s office also referred to the presumption of innocence.
In the case of the charges brought last July, no decision has yet been made on whether to open the main proceedings. The public prosecutor’s office has now applied for all charges to be combined and to be heard before the Grand Criminal Division of the Mannheim Regional Court “due to the particular importance of the matter”. The court must now decide on this.
The singer, who was born in Mannheim, became known as the founder of the music group Söhne Mannheims, among other things. He later also became a solo singer, music producer and juror in formats such as “Deutschland sucht den Superstar”. However, he was excluded from the RTL show in 2020 because of comments he made about migrants. He later attracted attention with further conspiracy-theoretical and partly anti-Semitic statements.
A legal dispute over whether Naidoo can be called an anti-Semite went all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court. The highest German court ruled in December 2021 that the singer can be called an anti-Semite in a dispute over his song lyrics.
In April 2022, Naidoo distanced himself from earlier statements. In a video at the time, he said that he had “ultimately lost his way” in his search for truth and had “made many mistakes in recent years”. He had become aware that he had irritated and provoked many people “with disturbing statements, for which I would like to apologize”.
