In Germany, football reputations carry political weight. BFC Dynamo is located specifically in East Berlin and like several East German clubs, Dynamo’s fan base has long been associated with right-leaning ideology. A stigma that has sharpened as the far-right AfD party (Alternative für Deutschland) has gained traction in recent years.

The AfD is known for anti-immigrant rhetoric; during last year’s European Championships, it criticized the German team for being “too woke, too diverse, not German enough.” Some clubs have publicly condemned the AfD, Dynamo however is not one of them.

“I see a change in the fan scenes,” Stenny said. “They are getting more conservative, more right-wing. There is a real influence of the AfD policy on the football fans.”

When I first mentioned to a German journalist that I planned to attend a BFC Dynamo match, he warned me not to go as a person of color, as it might not be safe.

Stenny Bamer, wearing a blue beanie and black tracksuit, tells me he wants to see this stigma change at a kickoff party for Gesellschaftsspiele, an NGO that promotes inclusion through sport. The organization is hosting young athletes from São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the western coast of Central Africa, for a two-week exchange.

“When I was a normal fan, I loved this reputation because everyone was like, ‘Oh, Dynamo is coming.’ But now, he pauses, “I would say that the reputation is far away from reality,” he said.

The event takes place at the Haus der Fußballkulturen, or House of Football Cultures, in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district where Stenny works as a social worker for the fan scene of BFC Dynamo through the Fanprojekt der Sportjugend Berlin.

Fanprojekt is an independent initiative created by the Berlin Sports Organization to engage football fans aged 14 to 27 whose home teams are either BFC Dynamo or Hertha BSC, another club based in Berlin. It hopes to foster inclusion, anti-discrimination, and a sense of community through football culture.

Prior to joining Fanprojekt, Stenny obtained a degree in Philosophy and Economics from the University of Potsdam and worked as a social worker at a refugee camp in Hamburg. He spoke critically on the camp’s conditions, citing cockroach infestations and how his supervisors would treat refugees.

“I said, bro, you cannot let people [live] in conditions like this, and what they said is, yeah, it’s our own fault. We were not clean.”

However, Stenny’s supervisors didn’t make any changes, and when he spoke out again on numerous instances, they would often ignore his comments. This experience impacted how Stenny sees his job as a social worker.

“Even if some ministry is paying for me, I’m not there for the ministry. I’m there for the people and I always had the feeling that, like the ministry in that area who was in response of the refugees, always saw it the other way around, “he said in semi-broken English.

“So as a social worker it’s my aim to be there for my clients, in this case the refugees,” he added.

This commitment to the people he’s assisting rather than the institution that employs him has led him to FanProjekt. However, the world of sports is not something new to him, as he shared, he’s been a devoted football fan since his late teens.

“I was interested in football violence,” he said with a smirk, fully aware of how crazy it sounds. “This is what Dynamo is famous for. For football violence and hooliganism, and when I was young, I was fascinated by this part of football.”

Stenny’s role is to guide the fan community toward inclusion and away from the racism, xenophobia, and right extremism that often plays a role in the stands.

In one match, spectators in the stands were heard shouting Juden-Schweine, meaning “Jewish pigs.” At another game, fans chanted Arbeit macht frei – Babelsberg 03, which translates to “work makes you free – Babelsberg 03.” Babelsberg 03 is a German football club located on the outskirts of Berlin, and the phrase is infamously associated with the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.

Although Stenny works with Dynamo, he points out key differences in how other Berlin-based football clubs, particularly Hertha BSC approach social issues.

“Hertha really has a straight line with racism, with anti-Semitism, with homophobia,” he said. “The management has a clear opinion, and this changes the fan culture. If the club is open-minded, the fans get more open-minded.”

At Dynamo, the shift has been slower. Anti-immigrant sentiment and nostalgia for old identities sometimes coexist with loyalty. He recalls how a Nigerian player was renamed by fans with a German nickname because they could not pronounce his last name. “Everybody loved him,” he said, “but I always had the feeling it was also a little bit of making a joke out of his name.”

“I would never say to an immigrant person, go to a BFC Dynamo game because there are a lot of far-right extremists,” he said. Germany has 84 million people, 25 million with immigrant backgrounds, yet many including AfD supporters resist diversity.

On the field, diversity is normal. “For players, migration is quite normal. If you want to play in a high-level club, you move from like Germany to England. Migration is part of the system,” he said.

In the stands, it’s different. “Nearly 100% of the fan blocs don’t reflect society. They are mainly heterosexual, white, male guys,” he said.

Berlin is composed of approximately 30% of immigrants but according to Stenny, that is not reflected at any of the clubs. “You will not find them [immigrants].  The stands don’t reflect the society and the migration part of society,” he said.

That disconnect between multicultural teams and homogenous fans is discouraging, yet Stenny hasn’t given up on the possibility of change.

He noticed a change in attendance following the pandemic, which excited him. “A lot of young people came to our stadium. With more people, for sure, more normal people also come to a game.” By “normal,” he means less aggressive than the traditional Dynamo supporters. Still, he admits hesitantly, “we are a club with a higher potential for making trouble.”

For Stenny, the problem isn’t always the fans, the club’s reputation follows them. “If we go for an away game, the police are always thinking, ‘Oh, Dynamo is coming. We must bring a lot of police.’ That makes away games more trouble than necessary. The image is also part of the problem,” he said.

That image, he adds, is difficult to change, though some clubs have shown it’s possible. “In some clubs, it comes from the top down. In others, like St. Pauli, it came from the fans themselves,” he said.  While Stenny is optimistic, he is also realistic about how deep tradition runs in the sport. “Football is a real heavy tradition in Germany. It’s hard to change something here in the football system.”

After the Syrian War in 2015, he claims that many clubs helped refugees, but momentum faded.

“If I watch the last five years,” he said, “not one of the big clubs is really taking care of this topic.”

Still, Stenny believes football still has the power to build acceptance, especially for immigrants. Once a fan of Dynamo’s chaotic culture, he now hopes that energy can fuel something more inclusive, a fandom that mirrors modern Germany rather than resists it. Whether that change begins from above or within the stands remains uncertain.

Regardless of what lies ahead, Stenny said he’s not going anywhere, determined to make diversity in the stands as visible as it already is on the field.

“Immigration will always be part of humanity. To accept this and show that it’s normal should also be one big value of the clubs.”