Krav Maga as a Necessity, a Legacy, and a Tool
In September 2023, The New York Times reported on a troubling trend: neo-Nazi and far-right groups in Germany and across Europe using martial arts and combat sports as a recruitment and training tool. The report stayed with me, because it touches three things I care about deeply: the safety of the people I teach, the responsibility of martial arts instructors, and the history that gave birth to Krav Maga. This article connects those three threads.
How Extremists Use Combat Sports
According to the Times report, far-right groups have organized combat sports events presented as mainstream tournaments. One of the best known, “Kampf der Nibelungen,” or “Battle of the Nibelungs,” kept overt extremist symbols out of its promotional material and focused on the fighting itself. That presentation made the events harder to challenge and easier for newcomers to attend. Experts quoted in the report described the underlying message as a perceived threat to white European identity, and some participants openly spoke about training to defend that identity.
The appeal is easy to understand. Combat sports offer belonging, discipline, physical confidence, and a sense of purpose, especially for young men who feel lost. Those are good things. In the wrong hands, they become a pipeline: a gym becomes a community, the community becomes an ideology, and the training becomes preparation for violence against others.
The Times also described people inside the martial arts world pushing back. A Berlin-based professional MMA fighter and social worker named Samsonidse told the paper that he checks who organizes the events he fights in and urges other fighters and coaches to do the same. Intervention programs within the martial arts community aim to recognize signs of radicalization early and to use training as a positive influence that promotes respect and emotional control.
The Responsibility of Martial Arts Instructors
This is where the issue becomes personal for anyone who teaches people to fight. Every instructor decides what values surround the skills they pass on. Teaching someone to hit harder, choke faster, and endure more pain is a serious act. It carries responsibility for who you teach and how you teach them.
In my own school, that responsibility shows up in several ways. We watch how students treat their partners, because the training floor reveals character quickly. We talk openly about the ethics and legal limits of force, as I describe in The Ethics of Self-Defense. We teach restraint as a skill alongside power, and we make clear that aggression toward people because of who they are has no place on our mats. I wrote about how to build fighting ability without building cruelty in How to Teach Someone to Fight Without Making Them Violent.
Instructors cannot control everything a student does outside the gym. They can control the culture inside it, the conversations they have, and whom they are willing to keep training. Silence is also a message.
Krav Maga Was Born From This Exact Threat
Krav Maga’s history makes this issue hard to ignore. In the 1930s, Imi Lichtenfeld, a boxer and wrestler in Bratislava, organized groups of Jewish men to defend their neighborhoods against fascist and antisemitic gangs. He learned quickly that sport techniques were not enough against street violence, and the lessons he took from those fights became the foundation of Krav Maga. You can read more about that development in The Israeli Fighting Style and How It Developed.
After the Holocaust and the founding of Israel, the Jewish people built institutions determined never to be defenseless again. The IDF adopted Imi’s system for its soldiers. Israel’s intelligence services, founded under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, went on to capture Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and bring him to trial in Jerusalem. “Never again” was never meant to be a slogan. It was a commitment backed by preparation and action.
That is why I call Krav Maga a necessity, a legacy, and a tool. It is a necessity because violence motivated by hatred has not disappeared. It is a legacy because it carries the experience of people who refused to be victims. It is a tool because, like any skill, its value depends on the hands that hold it and the values that guide them.
What This Means for Everyone
When openly racist and neo-Nazi groups train seriously to fight, the people they target cannot rely only on hope. Protecting yourself takes awareness, preparation, and skill. For many New Yorkers, that starts with learning Krav Maga in NYC and building the confidence to protect themselves and the people around them. It also means carrying yourself in a way that shows you are not an easy target. I have written about my own experience with antisemitic violence in this city in The Day I Got Attacked in New York for Being Jewish.
This is not only a Jewish issue. People are targeted for their religion, their race, their background, and their beliefs. Whoever you are, someone may decide you are the enemy. The old line still holds: the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. Preparation is how good people refuse to do nothing.
Do something,
Tsahi Shemesh
Founder & CEO
Krav Maga Experts
Relevant Articles:
Self-Defense in Jewish Tradition
What Jewish tradition teaches about the duty to protect life.
Combating Antisemitism Is a Fight for Democracy
Why hatred toward one group threatens everyone.
Fighter vs Warrior
Why the values behind skill matter more than the skill itself.
