Citizens’ Initiative to Stop Foreigners (BIA)

A slowdown in economic growth and the increase in unemployment rates in the 1970s led to a rise in xenophobic sentiment among the West German population, which played into the hands of the extreme right. At the end of the 1970s, the NPD-controlledStop Foreigners Initiative was launched, which also agitated against migrant workers and asylum seekers in the Federal Republic of Germany with flyer campaigns in Munich. Former NPD officials founded the Citizens' Initiative to Stop Foreigners (BIA) in Bochum-Wattenscheid in 1980. This far-right extremist coalition movement with close ties to the NPD established voters' associations at municipal and regional level to act as fronts for the NPD.

The Bavarian List for Halting Immigration emerged from Munich NPD circles in 1982, followed in 1984 by the Munich Initiative to Halt Immigration (MIA) of the then NPD candidate for Mayor of Munich. Former NPD State Parliament member Karl Feitenhansl was also a member. These initiatives failed to achieve a municipal authority mandate. It was not until 1996 that BIA won a seat in the Bavarian local elections and entered the municipal council in the district of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz. BIA-Nuremberg has held a seat on the municipal council since 2002. BIA-Munich, which was founded around NPD official Karl Richter in 2007, won a seat on Munich's municipal council in 2008. Richter, who became Bavaria's State Chairperson and Deputy National Chairperson of the NPD in 2012, represented anti-foreigner, anti-Islam, historical revisionist, anti-semitic and anti-gay positions on the municipal council between 2008 and 2020. In addition to NPD officials and supporters, BIA-Munich encompassed exponents of Munich's neo-Nazi scene, such as the convicted right-wing extremist Philipp Hasselbach. The group achieved only 0.2 % of the vote in 2020 and left the municipal council.