People usually react with shock when they come across Apple Front for the first time, says Tom Rodig, a 22-year-old student who helps organize the group's demonstrations.  But once they realize it's an apple -- rather than a symbol of hate -- that's at the center of the group's iconography, then they understand the parody, he said.  "They see it very fast. This is an effect we want to have -- the shocking moment and then [the realization] that it's just a joke," he told CNN.  He says Apple Front, short for the Front of German Apples, is all about emphasizing the absurd -- it's against "infiltration of the German fruit crop" by alien species and wants to expel tropical fruits to make sure German children remember the value of a "good German apple."  The group, which Rodig says resembles a political theater group more than anything else, demonstrates alongside radicals and neo-Nazis at marches and rallies across Germany -- to make fun of the radicals.  (There are two stories behind the group's name. Apple is a play on the last name of a prominent far-right German leader. At the same time, the apple, which is used in several traditional recipes, is "the most German fruit," Rodig said.)  The group was started in Leipzig by performance artist Alf Thum -- who Apple Front members mockingly call the "Fuhrer" -- in 2004 in response to an increase in neo-Nazi marches in the city.  Radical groups like the National Democratic Party (NPD), which the German federal government has unsuccessfully tried to ban, have gained a platform, especially in eastern regions, in recent years, Rodig said.  The NPD, which Germany's domestic intelligence agency describes as being based on "strongly pronounced racism" and standing "in opposition to the free and democratic order," entered regional government in 2004.  Although he doesn't have a background in performance, Rodig, a politics and philosophy student, saw Apple Front as a fresh way to object to what he views to be rising extremism.
Clad all in black and wearing red armbands and banners emblazoned with an apple, members chant, "What gives power to the youth? Apple juice! Apple juice!"That's a scene you're likely to encounter if