Posted on 03/13/2005 11:38:43 PM PST by Righty_McRight
MÜCKA, Germany, March 12 - The neo-Nazis, as members of the National Democrats are commonly called in Germany, didn't exactly have an easy time of it here on Saturday, when they presided over a round-table discussion with 100 or so residents of this small, economically depressed town in Saxony. But they were there, stating their positions, listening to their detractors, looking more like political debaters than rabble-rousers, and that alone was probably a success.
Under normal circumstances, a meeting sponsored by the National Democrats, a fringe party with views that come close to illegality in Germany, would have been entirely ignored elsewhere in this country, but several German newspaper reporters were in attendance, along with one national television station - indicators that Germany's far right is making its presence felt, both in Saxony, where the party gained a handful of seats in the state parliament in an election six months ago, and nationally.
Certainly plenty of points of view were expressed at the round-table discussion itself, which was boycotted by Mücka's mayor and other town notables. The National Democrats' representatives had to listen in stony silence as one member of the audience, a supporter of the reformed Communist Party here in what used to be East Germany, told them that their party was indistinguishable from the Nazis of old, who made war on Germany's neighbors and put millions to death.
And a woman in a red jacket made an impassioned speech, saying that while she was no fan of Germany's current government, she would never vote for the National Democrats. "If you came into power, it would mean war for Germany," she said.
For many Germans indeed, it is embarrassing if not frightening that some people who appear to think German suffering in World War II was greater than the suffering Germany caused are members of a state parliament. Green Party legislators in Saxony make their feelings clear by turning their backs whenever one of the National Democrats takes the floor. And there was an almost palpable revulsion a few weeks ago when National Democrats walked out of the parliamentary chamber during a ceremony to honor the victims of Auschwitz, saying they would honor only German victims of World War II.
Shortly after that, they staged a march in Dresden, the state capital, on the 60th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the city, which they referred to as a "holocaust by bombs." The national government was prompted to enact new legislation effectively banning far-right demonstrations at sites memorializing the Nazis' victims after the National Democrats announced plans to march past Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe as their way of commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
And now here they were in Mücka, where the National Democrats won 18 percent of the vote in the election last fall - their statewide vote was 9.2 percent - trying to build a stronghold among a population that is disillusioned with the main centrist parties.
It might be alarmist to worry, as the woman in red clearly did, about the National Democrats' ever coming to power in Saxony, much less in Germany as a whole. Despite the country's continuing economic woes, there is little fear that history is going to repeat itself.
Most experts see the backing for the National Democrats in places like this as a gesture of protest and not a show of yearning for a restoration of the Third Reich.
And yet, even their opponents, who are a vast majority in Saxony, acknowledge that the group's leaders have skillfully used their new position in the state parliament to gain a platform for their views. Meanwhile, what the National Democrats have been doing in Mücka offers a good illustration of the tactics they have adopted to increase their local, small-town support.
A few months ago, the party held a large sort of fair in a field here that attracted close to 7,000 far-right supporters from across Germany, including crowds of skinheads, another far-right grouping linked to the National Democratic Party but separate from it.
"I went house to house to talk to people at the time of the festival," Mücka's mayor, Holger Theurich, said in an interview at his home shortly before the round table began. "At the time, most people were worried about it. People refused to work there even though they could have used the money.
"But then the N.P.D. succeeded in creating a good image as a party," Mr. Theurich continued, "and the same people who were afraid in the beginning were saying, 'These people are O.K.' "
There was no violence, no intimidation, not a cigarette butt was left behind, Mr. Theurich said almost admiringly of the party's care to create a good impression. "They presented themselves in a successful manner."
After the big fair, the National Democrats started holding regular concerts at the Wodan Disco called "singing and dancing for Germany," with live performances by one or another of Germany's several far-right bands. But the influx of skinheads eventually prompted Mr. Theurich and other notables to respond.
They decided to organize a public meeting where an academic expert on the far right presented information on the National Democrats. Some party members showed up and, as one participant put it, threatened to hijack the event to present their own point of view, so Mr. Theurich called a premature end to the gathering.
Then, at a concert a couple of weeks ago, a scuffle broke out between party supporters and television cameramen. About 200 police officers arrived and broke the concert up, an action later portrayed by the aggrieved National Democrats as a violation of democratic rights of peaceful assembly and free speech.
That set the stage for the round table on Saturday at the Wodan, aimed at convincing local people that the party was the victim of dictatorial oppression by the German government, which, anyway, represented the interests of international capital and globalization.
The party members sat at a table on one side of the disco; audience members listened mostly in silence, at tables or on high stools, drinking beer. Clearly, there was some agreement that the mainstream parties have no program to deal with Germany's unemployment; but on other subjects, including the comparison of the National Democrats to the Nazis, the verdict was unclear. Certainly the questions about their attitude toward the past produced some sentiments rarely heard in Germany.
"In the Third Reich there was fascism, but only at the Italian Embassy," said one of the National Democrats' parliamentary members, Klaus Jürgen Menzel, a white-haired, slightly stooped man, making one such statement. "It wasn't the Third Reich that declared war," Mr. Menzel continued. "It was the French and the British, and they did it because the strong German forces were in the East."
What those German forces in the East were doing conquering Poland and putting Jews and others to death, Mr. Menzel did not mention.
"The N.P.D. was founded in 1964," said Jürgen W. Gansel, another National Democratic member of the Saxon parliament. "Our average age is 36, so it's very strange that there is a connection being made to relate us to those people," those people being the Nazis.
That was not an argument that went unchallenged.
"Your closeness to National Socialism is obvious," said Bernard Sass, the former Communist. "You cannot deny this. The Nazi regime was a regime that committed crimes, and you have to expect that people like you who are close to them are going to be watched."
Nice to see the laughable characterization of leftist Nietshcian socialist utopians as "far right" by the Duranty Times. Still pulling the rug over those 8 million corpses in Uncle Joe's Proletarian Paradise. What a joke this paper is.
You got that right. WWII Germany and Russia = two left-wing totalitarian regimes beating the stuffing out of each other. One had a malignant race myth, the other had a malignant class myth.
Speechless.
What I'd like to hear for once is the actual "politics" of one of these so-called far right groups. Hate and historical revisionism do not create a political philosophy.
With five million officially unemployed...out of 80 million population...and at least 20 percent of the working population in absolute fear of downsizing or company failure...this is not a happy bunch of campers.
There have been 10 years of warning signs, and rather than fix the tax problem and try to build a healthy economy...the current German government goes the opposite direction. With national elections in less than 18 months, there is a fear that the neo-Nazi party will pick up at least five percent of the national vote and actually sit in the German parliament. Both major parties are trying desperately to downsize this threat and eliminate the possibility...but yet, not a single job has been created, and taxes have barely decreased. The public is still waiting...and their patience wears thin.
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