A resurgent right (Germany's Extreme Right Gathers Strength)

Suddenly a resurgent far-right is taking centre political stage in Germany just as the nation marks the end of the war and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Leon Mangasarian reports.

Sixty years after the Third Reich's defeat, German leaders seem at a loss to counter a tightly organised rightist party which is exploiting the Holocaust in a brazen bid to expand its power.

Germany bickers over what to do with radical right Germany's establishment politicians have been locked in furious debate since January when the extremist National Democratic Party (NPD) marred sombre commemoration of Auschwitz death camp's liberation by comparing the Holocaust to the 1945 Allied firebombing of Dresden.

In a carefully planned affront, NPD members in eastern Saxony state's parliament walked out of a memorial service for victims of the Third Reich. For good measure, they also issued a statement equating Auschwitz with abortion.

"Since the end of Auschwitz, 18 million unborn people have been murdered in Germany ... is Auschwitz really over?" says the NPD on its website www.npd.de

Turning up the political heating in the debate about the extreme right and the NPD, Bavaria's conservative premier, Edmund Stoiber, accused Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrat-led government for causing the "economic failure" that was fuelling extremist parties.

In a weekend newspaper interview, Stoiber said that tackling high unemployment was the key to combating the far right.

Much of Germany is aghast over the NPD, which won 9.2 per ent, or 190,000 votes, last September in economically depressed Saxony. An Infratest Agency poll shows 63 percent want the NPD banned.

Neo-Nazis have managed to establish themselves in the mainstream. His ministry outlawed the party in 2000 only to see Germany's highest court overturn the ban in 2003. The reason given by judges was that too many NPD members had been recruited by Schily's ministry as informants.

The Constitutional Court justices alleged the informants were "steering" the NPD.

Schily, who remembers seeing the 1938 "Kristallnacht" or night of broken glass as a six-year-old boy when Nazis launched the Holocaust, angrily rejects this.

"A criminal does not become a state employee just because he gives the police information," says Schily.

Leaders in Berlin are arguing over a possible new bid to ban the NPD - but many are warning this might spark even more support for rightists.

Political extremism experts, such as Eckhard Jesse of the Technical University of Chemnitz, say banning has not worked in the past and that democratic parties must meet rightists head on with better arguments.

The news weekly Der Spiegel agrees, saying, "Neo-Nazis have managed to establish themselves in the mainstream."

Worrying as this may be, the rightists need to be kept in perspective: For years, polls have shown that the far-right has a maximum potential of 10 to 15 percent in Germany which is about on par with other European countries.

Meanwhile, the NPD and their German People's Union (DVU) ally have been cleaning up their act to escape the skinhead and streetfighter image they had in the 1980s and early 90s.

Suits, ties and courses in rhetoric are now the order of the day with private donors funding party thinktanks and rightist academics who serve as advisers. The NPD has temporarily frozen informal ties with Saxony's "SSS" skinhead group.

The NPD's chief strategist and spin doctor is a slick lawyer who, ironically, is named Peter Marx.

Under the ever-smiling Marx, the NPD has focused on east German anger over cuts to unemployment benefits as a way of broadening its appeal and seeks to be both a nationalist and a socialist party.

"The goal is supporting native families ... German money for Germans!" says the website of Holger Apfel, the NPD leader in Saxony's state parliament.

If a party ban is not on the cards, what is to be done? The established parties in Saxony appear clueless, according to Der Spiegel, and notes, "Up until now they have reacted helplessly."

NPD leader Holger Apfel: The radical right's new technocratic look Jesse says Germany's Christian Democrats have made "a terrible mistake" by failing to provide a political home for conservative patriots and thus helped drive them to the far-right.

Der Spiegel argues that the far-right has profited from a new willingness among Germans in books and films to examine their own suffering during the war including the firebombing of cities, mass rape by Soviet soldiers and the expulsion of 15 million ethnic Germans from eastern Europe in 1945.

A letter to the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper by Juergen Schulz expresses this increasingly held view.

Schulz begins by underlining his distaste over the NPD's refusal to honour Holocaust victims.

But he adds: "When we remember the firebombing victims, isn't it time that we can say their death was murder and a war crime? Are not the established parties also partly guilty for the rise of the NPD and anti-Semitism in Germany, if they continue to treat this problem as a taboo and leave it to the far-right?"

The confused and uncertain response of established parties seems even stranger given the militant stance of the NPD.

NPD objectives are brutally clear to anybody who bothers to view the party's website or the latest edition of the German domestic security agency's annual report.

A poll shows 63 percent of Germans want the NPD banned. The NPD's geopolitics are shown on a map of Germany from 1938 - including parts of the country lost after World War II to Poland and Russia - which is available as a silver coin to raise funds for the movement. The map has a sword across it with the words, "The Reich, our Mission".

The weekly Stern magazine says the NPD sells T-shirts, sweatshirts and posters emblazoned with the number "88". The letter "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet and "HH" stands for "Heil Hitler" an expression which has been banned since the Federal Republic of Germany was created in 1949.

The NPD treats Nazi leaders such as Rudolf Hess as heroes and takes aggressive, anti-foreign and anti-Semitic positions, says Germany's home security agency, the Verfassungsschutz.

A commentary in the party newspaper, "Deutsche Stimme" (German Voice), provides just one example: "The Torah is the original document of Jewish hatred of (other) nations."

Another NPD commentary warns that immigrants are threatening what it terms "the continent of the white nations with disintegration and decomposition".

Following their propaganda success with the Holocaust in Saxony, NPD activists plan at least two more big demonstrations aimed at upstaging Germany's established parties.

The NPD has called for a march through Dresden on 13 February to mark the 60th anniversary of the World War II firebombing of the city by British and US aircraft which left at least 25,000 dead.

An even worse public relations disaster for Germany could be in store on 8 May - the 60th anniversary of the Third Reich's defeat - when NPD leaders plan to march past the new Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

"Sixty years of Liberation Lies - End the Cult of Guilt," is the NPD's motto for the demonstration.

The party is also gearing up for state elections and functionaries have high hopes of winning seats in Schleswig-Holstein on 20 February and in North Rhine-Westphalia on 22 May.

Nazi is short for Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialism which equals the agenda of the DNC

Oh for goodness sake, whatever you think about the Dims they have no program for setting up extermination camps for Jews, gays, communists and gypsies (think about who at least three of these groups vote for).

You are as ridiculous as the Bush=Hitler crowd.

"Socialism is flawed, I think, because it refuses to recognize the true nature of humanity. I'm with Hobbes and Locke on this one. The beauty of liberal democracy (combined with a free market economy) is that it allows people to pursue their own interests AND contribute to the polity."

I'm with you on that one. F.A.Hayek's Road to Serfdom is another good book on the inherent flaws of Socialism.

I'm well aware of that and I am using it in the European sense - my assertion remains and history proves liberal democracy always leads to socialism.

Human nature is such it can do nothing else, for the poor will always outnumber the rich. Take a look at Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed . An excerpt on point:

In particular, democracy is seen as promoting an increase in the social rate of time preference (present-orientation) or the "infantilization" of society. It results in continually increased taxes, paper money and paper money inflation, an unending flood of legislation, and a steadily growing "public" debt. By the same token, democracy leads to lower savings, increased legal uncertainty, moral relativism, lawlessness, and crime. Further, democracy is a tool for wealth and income confiscation and redistribution. It involves the legislative "taking" of the property of some – the haves of something – and the "giving" of it to others – the have-nots of things. And since it is presumably something valuable that is being redistributed – of which the haves have too much and the have-nots too little – any such redistribution implies that the incentive to be of value or produce something valuable is systematically reduced. In other words, the proportion of not-so-good people and not-so-good personal traits, habits, and forms of conduct and appearance will increase, and life in society will become increasingly unpleasant.

Democracy of any type only assures the most opportunistic, ruthless and skilled demogogues will ever be elected to high office as Hoppe illustrates in Why Bad Men Rule . The West will never throw off the yoke of socialism until the give up the idol of democracy.

To paraphrase Churchill (since I can't remember the exact quote): 'Democracy may be a terrible form of government but it is also the best we have...' or something like that. I also have some passing familiarity with the Hoppe quote you offer. I am always leery of 'must' and 'always' statements in a political discussion. Whenever these absolute terms are used, a single counter-example renders them a fallacy.

George Washington, for example, refutes the "Democracy of any type only assures the most opportunistic, ruthless and skilled demogogues..." statement. The ascendance of this American Cincinnatus belies the truth of Hoppe's argument (and yours).

"The West will never throw off the yoke of socialism until the give up the idol of democracy."

You forget the influence of technology. Todays most productive individuals and corporations are increasingly international and with the use of technology are less tied to any one location or government than in the past. While this is taking place already on a limited scale, in the future governments will increasingly have to compete for these individuals and corporations if they want the benefits they can bring.

Even though the man on the street may want to vote himself a condo on the beach from the government, practical considerations will mean that only those governments who provide a liberal and relatively unregulated working and trading environment for the most productive will have the means to ensure that it's citizens stay employed and happy.

It will be survival of the fittest in terms of governments. A sort of social political Darwinism.

Democracies don't HAVE to end in failure.

There are more fascists in the US than you can think of.

Just look on the reverse of a each Mecury head dime
http://www.coinfacts.com/dimes/mercury_head_dimes.html
you got one so called "fasces" (Latin).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces
"fascio" (Ital.) or "fascis" (pl.) were the symbols of Mussolini's party but not only.

Churchill's comment has always been quoted by democratists absent the context and background. I found this article by J. K. Baltzersen interesting, Churchill on democracy revisited

Todays most productive individuals and corporations are increasingly international and with the use of technology are less tied to any one location or government than in the past

And government is busy keeping trying to keep up with them with ever expanding centralizing bureaucracies and nascent world government. A world democracy can only result in a Chinese/Indian coalition government that would immeadiately begin redistributing the wealth of the West. This Jacobin worship of democracy is going to come back and bite us hard.

Democracies don't HAVE to end in failure.

There are no success stories in the history of mass democracy. The only democracies that were even moderately successfully were small, isolated communities. This is why every political mind prior to Locke (Even Hobbes was a royalist) despised democracy as I do.

That's nonsense too, the political spectrum is not a circle.

Just sayin'...
There are different paths.. different viewpoints..

The Exact center of this revised "Nolan chart" is total Anarchy...

I can easily envision a "chart", circular in nature, that places anarchy at point 0 degrees.. in which different degrees of freedom and control result in a merging at the 180 degree mark.. which is a Totalitarian government..
Whether one reaches that point through democratic liberalism to socialism to Communism, or from conservatism to authoritarianism to fascism, is irrelevent..

The end result is the same..
Total control, Zero Freedom...

This is getting silly. Left wing and right wing are shorthand originally derived from the seating arrangements of the French revolutionary National Assembly.

I tend towards the view that such shorthand is practically useless in a world where Tony Blair is supposedly a man of the left while Jacques Chirac is supposedly a man of the right.

However, I do tend to think that the words "National" and "German" are more important than "socialist" in Nazi - the socialist bit was very much an afterthought by the "old" Nazis and you really wouldn't have wanted to be a leftist of even the most moderate stripe with the Gestapo on the loose.

I'll keep on saying it. Decent US conservatives should not imagine for a moment that they have anything in common with any of these Euro neo-Nazis. They are Hitler worshipers who, given half a chance, would have the gas ovens back up and running as quick as you could say "Juden raus".

The fundamental problem with this type of chart is it democracy biased. Democracy does not equal freedom, it never has and it never will. History teaches us quite the opposite actually as is well illustrated in the classic Liberty or Equality

The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Demokratie. Der Gott, Der Keiner Ist’

As entertaining as it can be to banter will the average democratist I have work to do and I know its pointless in any case. Democracy is in the blood of Americans I think, we are programmed with it from birth along with the automatic assumption that all other forms of government = tyranny. Buchanan was half-right, the West is dying - he just fails to identify the root cause - demon-cracy.

"And government is busy keeping trying to keep up with them with ever expanding centralizing bureaucracies and nascent world government."

and given the extreme efficiency with which government operates </sarcasm, you are confident that they are capable of keeping up? I'm not.

"There are no success stories in the history of mass democracy."

There are no success stories of any form of government over the long term. All have evolved and/or fallen to revolution.

I am curious. Keeping in mind that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, what form of government would you prefer to a Democratic Republic?

I am curious. Keeping in mind that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, what form of government would you prefer to a Democratic Republic?

Another oft-mischaracterized and badly used quote from the interpid Lord Acton (not my favorite philsopher to start with, although he did have the virtue of being Catholic at least) From my "about" page:

I'm a monarchist and therefore I despise democracy and republicanism, but it is what we have so I support the major party closest to my views and that would be the Constitution Party.

I support the restoration of Christendom including all illegally deposed monarchs of Europe (Hapsburgs and Bourbons in particular) and the social Kingship of Jesus Christ as authoritatively adminstered by the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Meet some of my friends

Ping for the "Crown Crew"

FReepmail me to get on of off this list

and given the extreme efficiency with which government operates </sarcasm, you are confident that they are capable of keeping up? I'm not.

Sorry missed this part.

Modern democractic government is extremely efficent at one thing and one thing only - amassing power. I have no doubt we are headed for a world state. It is the only direction it can go unless the entire democratic structure disintigrates prior to it's attainment.

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