Posted on 09/13/2003 3:24:53 AM PDT by knighthawk
BERLIN (Reuters) - A foiled neo-Nazi attack on a Jewish community center has emphasized a growing threat of far-right violence in Germany, officials said on Friday.
Police seized explosives and arrested several people with links to the far-right scene this week, saying they had planned a bomb attack possibly timed for the 65th anniversary of one of Nazi Germany's most notorious pogroms.
Bavarian Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein said on Friday the alleged plot underlined the need to crush a burgeoning extremist scene.
"In recent months there has obviously been an escalation. Things have moved to a totally new level," he told a news conference in the Bavarian capital Munich.
"This isn't just about people wearing banned Nazi symbols or listening to far-right songs. This is about professional violence," said Beckstein.
Federal prosecutors coordinating the Munich case said they were investigating seven people on suspicion of belonging to a criminal organization. Two others were being examined on Friday.
A spokeswoman said there were indications that the group might have been planning a number of attacks.
Beckstein said security was being stepped up around Munich's Jewish institutions and at the Oktoberfest, the world's largest beer festival, due to start on September 20.
The Oktoberfest has been target by far-right extremists before. In 1980, a bomb planted by right-wing extremists exploded outside the main entrance, killing 13 people and injuring about 200.
POGROM ANNIVERSARY PLOT?
A Munich-based Jewish community group said the suspects were planning to detonate a bomb at the foundation-laying ceremony of a community center on November 9, the 65th anniversary of the 1938 "Reichskristallnacht" pogrom in which 91 Jews were murdered and thousands of their synagogues and shops destroyed.
Police said on Friday they were still conducting investigations. "It still needs to be established whether the attack was planned for the ceremony on November 9 or in the run-up to it," said Munich police president Wilhelm Schmidbauer.
The Munich arrests underline a growing trend where on average two crimes with far-right motivation are committed daily in Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrat party said.
Official figures showed the number of neo-Nazis prepared to use violence had risen by 30 percent in the last four years to 10,700 people, said SPD extreme-right expert Sebastian Edathy.
Although Interior Ministry figures show the actual number of far right crimes fell in 2002, in the last decade 100 people have been killed in far-right or racist violence, directed mostly at dark-skinned foreigners.
Among the worst incidents was the 1993 firebombing death of five Turks in the western German city of Solingen.
The investigation in Munich, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, move the spotlight away from the economically depressed east Germany, where attacks have been more frequent and surged in the early 1990s after unification.
Bavaria's Beckstein said uncovering further plots and protecting the Jewish community were now priorities in his wealthy state.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
I was there.
My friends and I walked through that main entrance no more than 10 minutes prior to the explosion.
We didn't hear about what happened until the following day.
I have often gone through everything I can remember about the people at the scene as we left, wondering whether I saw anything that might have prevented that tragedy.
The Nazi Party is socialist, wouldn't that make them part of the left?
Police seized explosives and arrested several people with links to the far-right scene this week, saying they had planned a bomb attack possibly timed for the 65th anniversary of one of Nazi Germany's most notorious pogroms.
They continue to include the Nazis as a far right group. In that case the Al-Quida, Al-Aqsa, and Islamic Jihad would be what(?) Far Far Far Right????
But they were also nationalists, even moreso than socialists. So according to European conventions they are considered to be on the "far-right".
And this is one of the reasons I don't like this right-wing left-wing: it's too one-dimensional.
Aye, and actually the reason the lefties like to perpetuate it is because the underlying implication is "there is only socialism". In other words, if as far right as you can go is national socialism and as far left as you can go is communism- that means everything in between is one form of socialism or another and it is only left to us to define under which form of socialism we shall live.
This is, of course, bollocks. The nazis in Germany differently from their brethren in Russia principly on the assumption of whether socialism is best carried out on a national or an international scale. The Nazis had come to the conclusion that the International version of socialism was actually a hinderance to the furtherance of the masses and in order to get true socialism, it must be set up by a worthy nation and people on a national scale- as a model to the rest of the world- and then that form would eventually take over the world as the dominant model.
It's still socialism either way you slice it. All that nonsense, whether national socialist or communist is on the left. In my view, if you want to use the two direction metaphor, it would be better to look on the far right as those libertarians who want absolutely no gov't control of the individual at all. It makes the most sense. Conservatives want less gov't control and more freedom to the individual- and hence the individual is responsible for his actions/fate. Conservatives seek a form of gov't that best protects the freedom a man has but one that is limited to that. Further in that direction- Libertarians are for the most part (the drug arguments aside) simply more radical in this outlook in that they believe any gov't at all detracts from freedom.
This argument that the nazis are on the far right- it is as if people are saying- too much freedom makes you a nationalist or going too far in the direction of freedom makes you a nationalist. It's madness.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.