Neo-Nazi attacks on the rise in Germany

Reuters ^ | 09/30/03 | David Crossland

[Pikamax]

Neo-Nazi attacks on the rise in Germany

Foreigners have become scapegoats for post-communist ills and social dislocation By David Crossland REUTERS Tuesday, Sep 30, 2003,Page 9

ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

Robert, a black asylum seeker from Cameroon, is so used to people calling him "Nigger" or making ape sounds at him that he no longer pays attention to it.

What still makes him angry, however, is being followed around shops or the local library by staff expecting him to steal something. Or seeing how guests in a cafe remove their coats from the hanger he has just put his jacket on.

"It's like hell here. Everywhere ... you are suspected all the time. They believe black men live through crime," said the 45-year-old auditor who has lived in an asylum-seekers' hostel in Potsdam, southwest of Berlin, for four years.

He did not want his full name to be published.

Such overt racism is widespread in former Communist eastern Germany, where unification brought mass unemployment, and where people lived for decades without meeting foreigners, apart from Soviet soldiers and eastern European tourists.

In the early 1990s, when many of the thousands of asylum seekers who fled to Germany from war zones in the Balkans and elsewhere were sent to cities in the east, foreigners became scapegoats for post-communist ills and social dislocation.

The xenophobia has bred neo-Nazi groups and far-right violence, said Judith Porath, director of Opferperspektive, a state-funded agency that helps victims of attacks.

"A large part of the population has a racist, xenophobic attitude," she said.

Attacks motivated by racism and anti-Jewish sentiment aren't confined to the east, but are three times more frequent than in the west measured per capita, according to an intelligence report last year.

Robert was beaten up by two muggers last year in what he is sure was a racist attack. A friend from Sierra Leone had his arm broken when youths assaulted him by a taxi rank, he said. "None of the drivers got out to help him," said Robert.

The attacks, often by young skinheads, are so frequent they rarely make the pages of the national press.

Growing threat

But news in mid-September that police in Munich had foiled a bomb attack on the foundation stone laying ceremony of a Jewish community center has concentrated attention on far-right violence in the country that carried out the Holocaust.

It has also caused concern that the authorities were so busy hunting Islamic militants after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US that they have failed to stop an escalating threat from neo-Nazi groups.

"In recent months there has obviously been an escalation. Things have moved to a totally new level," said Bavarian state Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein.

Police seized explosives and pistols and arrested several people in Munich and the east, including a leader of one of Germany's 160 neo-Nazi organizations or Kameradshaften. Many of the members of such groups belong to gun clubs, police say.

Hajo Funke, political analyst at Berlin's Free University, who specializes in the far-right scene, said waning public pressure had helped it become deadlier.

"Right-wing terrorism has been in the air," he said. "People in the far-right scene had been getting frustrated just putting up placards. They have not been achieving anything politically."

No one in Germany expects the far right to pose a serious challenge to the state. Democracy is so well rooted that far-right parties get a negligible share in national elections, much less than in France, Austria and the Netherlands.

The main danger is to foreigners, and to Germany's reputation after decades spent atoning for the Holocaust.

Liberal laws on free speech and assembly -- a response to Nazi-era abuse -- allow right-wing groups to demonstrate.

But such groups are forbidden to deny that the Holocaust occurred and to display Nazi symbols such as the swastika. The government is also trying to ban the National Democratic Party (NPD), which it has compared to Hitler's embryonic Nazi party of the 1920s.

More potential attackers

More than 100 people have been killed in racist violence in Germany since unification in 1990. Most of the attacks are opportunistic -- skinheads picking on foreigners in the street.

Attacks on property also occur -- swastikas daubed on Jewish gravestones, bricks thrown at Turkish kebab shops and firebombs at asylum hostels. Most synagogues have 24-hour police guards.

Last year alone, the Bundesverfassungsschutz domestic intelligence service recorded 772 cases of violent crime "with right-wing political motivation," up from 709 in 2001.

Among them were 646 cases of physical assault resulting in injury, and eight attempted murders, but no actual murders.

The agency estimates Germany had 10,700 far-right extremists last year willing to use violence, up 30 percent from 1998.

Most of them are right-wing skinheads attracted by Nazi ideology, who listen to music with lyrics such as these from group Tonstoerung ("Sound Interruption"): "Sharpen your long knives on the pavements; drive them into Jewish bodies."

Some of them belong to neo-Nazi organizations, but authorities say there is no central force steering them.

Despite the Munich arrests, officials say the right wing lacks the level of organization to make it as deadly as the far-left "Red Army Faction" that terrorized Germany with assassinations, kidnappings and hostage takings in the 1970s.

The worst incidents of racist violence, including the 1992 firebombing of an asylum-seekers' hostel in the eastern port of Rostock, where onlookers clapped in delight as the inhabitants struggled to flee, or the 1993 arson attack on the home of a Turkish family, which killed five people in the western town of Solingen, were followed by public outrage.

Police clampdowns on far-right groups and publicity campaigns promoting tolerance ensued, and the pogrom-style attacks on foreigners have abated since the early 1990s.

The everyday violence has never stopped.

"This is a battleground," said Robert from Potsdam.

[Diogenesis]

Germany and France want to control everything in Iraq
but they cannot even start to control evil in their own countries

France cannot even prevent death from sunlight to tens of thousands in France.

CONCLUSION: Inept Germany and France support terror regimes as they
remain enemies of the American people.

[Cronos]

GErmany really is relapsing to it's evil

[maestro]

The Soviet Union is alive and well! (France/Germany)

:-(

[Prodigal Son]

Inept Germany and France support terror regimes as they remain enemies of the American people.

Germany and France are not enemies of the American people.

but they cannot even start to control evil in their own countries

Like we can in the US? 30,000 murders a year? Come on.

[carmelanne]

IMHO There are many area's in this country that I would not be safe, be threatened, called racial names, have my property stolen and my personal self put in harms way.

[Diogenesis]

Germany and France have given weapons to Americas enemies.

So some may disagree with your assessment.

[viko]

"It's like hell here. Everywhere ... you are suspected all the time. They believe black men live through crime," said the 45-year-old auditor who has lived in an asylum-seekers' hostel in Potsdam, southwest of Berlin, for four years."

Thats impossible in the US. Asylum seekers are, so far as i know, behind bars.

[ikka]

The Germans are getting antsy again. They haven't invaded anybody for 55 years now; they need to have a big battle and lose, again. Then they will quiet down.

[nathanbedford]

Here we go again with another, "The Nazis are comming, the Nazis are comming" artricle that could have been written by Morris Dees.

Here is the operative paragraph, all the rest is nonsense:

No one in Germany expects the far right to pose a serious challenge to the state. Democracy is so well rooted that far-right parties get a negligible share in national elections, much less than in France, Austria and the Netherlands.

[dfwgator]

Same as it ever was.

[Prodigal Son]

So some may disagree with your assessment.

Oh yeah. I'm sure the kind of people who go out just looking for enemies will find them where ever they turn. An enemy is someone you go to war with. Are you saying you think we should go to war with Germany and France? The President just go through saying Schroeder and himself have put their differences behind them. I guess Dubya is just stupid huh? There was a difference between the politicians and you want to label all the people in Germany and France your enemies? That's just silly and childish.

Many here aren't looking for allies in the world any longer. They'll call anybody that doesn't play the role of "yes-man" to the US an enemy and that's just absurd. There's much room for disagreeing between allies.

If France is our enemy, what the hell is Laura Bush doing here?

Germany and France have given weapons to Americas enemies.

Could you cite some examples here please? I'd like to know specifically what you're talking about.

[Tin-Legions]

I've lived, worked and played with Germans for the past 3 years: The average German "Hans on the Strasse" is quite sympathetic to the US, but may not agree with our govt. tactics. In my short visits to France, "Jacques in the cafe" is not a fan of Islamic facism, either.

The German police are some of the best law enforcers in the world, and are quite adept at controlling their civil affairs. (they are less hampered than US law enforcers, though)

We supplied weapons, cash and logistic support to both Saddam and assorted Islamic terrorist groups (when we found them useful fighting Russians) in the not too distant past. Using your logic....

Bottom line: the Germans and French, while not loving our foreign policy, still offer flowers at US military post gates on 9/11 anniverseries and the Bundeswehr still guard our posts to free up troops for duty in war zones.

[Diogenesis]

The US has many many allies helping in Iraq, even though ignored by the "media".
Germany and France are NOT there. Why? Both helped Iraq.
The role of France, etc. in Iraqi and other WMD have been posted here previously.

Strategy.

Not all the people. They could remove their leaders if they choose.

[Prodigal Son]

They could remove their leaders if they choose.

They do choose- at their elections just like we do. Again, not helping doesn't equate to being an enemy- at least not in my mind. Not wanting to go to war doesn't make the French and German people our enemies. Germany and France are in Afghanistan though. How do you square that with this enemy thing? Come on, how do you square that? I'd really like to know.

[Wilhelm Tell]

To put things in historical perspective, I don't think eastern Germany was de-Nazified like was done in western Germany. The communists did not exactly encourage people to be introspective about the past -- the war was all the fault of "Western Imperialists" and the Holocaust was not mentioned much. In the east, Germans were taught that they were basically helpless victims of Western Imperialism until the Soviet Union rescued them. Add to that the economic problems in the east and you have a certain number of thugs looking for scapegoats. I am in no way excusing the neo-Nazi thugs. Too bad Germany does not have the death penalty to take care of these thugs when they murder someone. I think the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists are working together at least to some extent. Also, I think it is easier for a Communist to become a neo-Nazi than it is for a Communist to reform himself into a Western liberal.

[Prodigal Son]

Here's a good example of our enemies hard at work

---

Germany proposes expanding Afghan force

http://www.expatica.com/germanymain.asp?pad=190,205,&item_id=34600

NEW YORK - Germany has proposed expanding the international security force beyond Kabul to eight other cities in Afghanistan to provide security as well as prepare for general elections next year, German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said.

Pleuger said the idea has received a favourable reception from the Bush administration, which has given its encouragement to pursue it in further discussion in the UN Security Council.

He said the idea, which he called "an island concept," would be to post 250 to 400 foreign troops in each of eight major Afghan cities, allowing them to interact with each other to bring security to the country.

The idea is in response to persistent demands that the international security force known as ISAF in Kabul, now under NATO command, be expanded to other parts of Afghanistan. The 5,000-strong force is limited to providing security only to Kabul, and Germany is taking part in it.

He said German troops would take over Kunduz, a northern Afghan city, if the 15-nation council approved the idea. Other cities where troops would be posted include Mazar-i-Shariff in the north, and Herat in the south.

Pleuger said the council would have to adopt a new resolution to expand ISAF. Germany would like to see that happen in December when the body will have to renew ISAF's mandate, he added.

Another reason Germany would like the action to happen in December is to fit into Germany's legislative calendar. German legislators must approve sending military troops to the "island concept", and they would have to do it before year's end.

The United States in the past has balked at any expansion of ISAF, saying it would interfere with its military operations to capture Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda fighters in the wake of 11 September terrorist attacks.

[Redcoat LI]

All of these continental euro-peon socialist wonderlands are unable to replace their own population,and seem to be relying more and more on importing third world types to fill the rungs on the bottom of the economic ladder. They,on the other hand,breed like rabbits.As the demographics shift,the numbers cited in this article are sure to rise,and not only in Germany.

[Diogenesis]

Many good points. Thank you.

[Michael81Dus]

Except of the death penalty thing (some differences between both sides of the ocean never change, lol) your description fits the situation quite well!