The far-right scene in Germany is a persistent and unpleasant problem. It is sizeable in number and vicious in its attitude: 25,000 recognised followers and 5,600 neo-Nazis with a proven record of extreme violence. Tackling it is daunting and with closed ranks, intimidation and entrenched attitudes, the prospects of success are very slim. EXIT-Deutschland is a tiny organization with limited budgets that offers neo-Nazis safe and confidential advice about how to leave the far-right scene. With some funding coming from the federal government, the organisation needs to be transparent in the success rate and costs of re-radicalising neo-Nazis.

Our strategy was to reach the neo-Nazis en masse, but talk to them alone. Having recognized that they embraced fashions and culture that reflected their far-right attitude, we chose to hand out free merchandise at a far-right rock festival. The merchandise in question: black T-shirts emblazoned with a generic nationalist message all of which were gratefully accepted by concert-goers. The only catch was that, once washed in the privacy of the far-rightist's own home, the T-shirts, primed with disappearing ink, revealed a message encouraging them to contact EXIT-Deutschland if they were interested in leaving the scene.

Once the trick of the Trojan T-shirts had been discovered, the active neo-Nazis unwittingly got the communications rolling by issuing warnings about the T-shirts via SMS and their own social media channels. Word of the stunt spread fast throughout social media, and soon, the T-shirts were the second-most talked-about subject on social media during the month of August 2011 in Germany. People from all over the world wanted to know more about EXIT-Deutschland - it created over €200,000 in earned media coverage in Germany alone, and had an effect on the website visits – in the week before the activity took place, there were 643 visitors, and in the week of the activity, there were 107,351 – a completely unprecedented number. Most importantly, it trebled the recruitment rate among neo-Nazis looking to exit the scene, and led to a month where donations were almost five times higher than normal. All of this was achieved off a budget of €4,000, which amounted to a saving of 60% on the usual per-head cost of attracting new candidates for leaving the scene.