Notionally a leftwing movement, the Anti-Germans were born after the collapse of the Berlin wall. While most Germans rejoiced at the end of the cold war, the Anti-Germans feared that a united Germany might lead to a fourth Reich - and a return of antisemitism. Most of Germany's far left has been robustly pro-Palestinian. But the Anti-Germans have consistently championed the state of Israel - a position that has led them into bed with some very strange people. The movement is in the unusual position of liking both Karl Marx, and that other great Karl, George Bush's neo-conservative guru, Karl Rove.

"Er, they are a bit hard to explain," says Rüdiger Göbel, deputy editor of the leftwing daily Junge Welt in Berlin. "They are a typically German phenomenon. They feel that Germany has a special historical responsibility for Israel, and that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic."

I first came across them last year. I was covering a demonstration of neo-Nazis protesting against the wartime destruction of Dresden by British bombers and the deaths of thousands of German civilians. As well as shouting, "Nie wieder Deutschland" (Never again Germany), the anti-Germans held up banners with the slogan: "Bomber Harris, do it again." They even pelted the skinheads with homemade paper aeroplanes with RAF insignia. Another chant went: "You lost the war, you did, you lost the war, you did." (I left the march feeling that Germany still had, well, some issues left over from the second world war.)

Manfred Dahlmann, a leading Anti-German and contributor to the movement's house journal, Bahamas, admits that, these days, the group has more in common with the right than the left. There is a direct link between "Islamic" fascism and the fascism invented by the Nazis, he claims. During the World Cup, the Anti-Germans had a hard time as millions of ordinary Germans decorated their balconies in red, gold and black flags; even German dogs wore patriotic colours. At this month's pro-Israeli demo, the Anti-Germans did get to wave a flag, however. The American one. Do they ever have any fun? "We don't have much fun," Dahlmann concedes. "But we are not ascetics. We drink beer and wine".