Alexander Prescott-Couch: Why German neo-Nazis don't pose a threat
n Germany, the proliferation of neo-Nazi culture has created the perception of a growing national threat. Neo-Nazi rock concerts, soccer tournaments, clothing stores, and even Internet cafés have become increasingly common, particularly in the former East, where the struggling economy and high unemployment has bred discontent. The political consequences seemed to materialize in 2004, when the National Party of Germany (NPD), the political wing of the neo-Nazi movement, won 9.2 percent of the vote in the East German state of Sachsen, the first instance in nearly 40 years where the party stepped over the 5 percent mark required for representation in a state parliament. Then, in September, the NPD received 7.3 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a northeastern state on the Baltic Sea, a result showing that support for the NPD there had increased twofold since last year's national election and almost tenfold since the previous state election five years ago.
Germans were duly horrified. Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke of the "extraordinarily regrettable result of this Landtag election." The President of the Central Advisory Council for Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, described the outcome as "a declaration of political bankruptcy." And Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Parliament President Sylvia Bretschneider called it "the most difficult moment of my political life." The NPD leader, Udo Voigt, has said he wants to "sweep into the West," hopefully penetrating the Bavarian state government in 2008 and pushing through into the Bundestag in 2009. And the party's decision to hold its November convention in Berlin for the first time was seen as a symbol of amplified self-confidence, which led alarmed politicians to consider a renewed attempt to legally ban the party. Yet, for all the NPD's bluster and the panic it has engendered among Germans, these fascists don't pose much of a threat at all.
[Alexander Prescott-Couch is a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship recipient in Berlin.]
The uproar over the NPD's recent electoral gains has obscured the fact that the party is actually incredibly fragile, as a quick look at its history reveals. Despite periodic popularity, it has never managed to maintain a significant presence at the state level, let alone enter the Bundestag. After its founding in 1964, the party enjoyed some initial success, especially in the conservative South. A sharp economic downturn following the boom of 1966-1967 drove workers and the lower middle-class away from the mainstream parties and toward the NPD, which had acquired a veneer of legitimacy from high profile members like Olympic gold medal rower Frank Schepke. The violent student protests of 1968 also played a role in making mainstream conservatives more receptive to the party's slogan of "security and order." As a result, the NPD won seats in seven state parliaments within four years; its strongest performance then (and since) was in Baden-Würrtemberg in 1968, where it won 9.8 percent of the vote. With its fortunes on the rise, it almost entered the Bundestag in 1969 with 4.3 percent of the national vote.
But the NPD's success was short-lived. As the economy began to turn upward in 1968, and as violent disputes with anti-NPD demonstrators undermined its law-and-order image, its popularity sank. ...
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Germans were duly horrified. Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke of the "extraordinarily regrettable result of this Landtag election." The President of the Central Advisory Council for Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, described the outcome as "a declaration of political bankruptcy." And Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Parliament President Sylvia Bretschneider called it "the most difficult moment of my political life." The NPD leader, Udo Voigt, has said he wants to "sweep into the West," hopefully penetrating the Bavarian state government in 2008 and pushing through into the Bundestag in 2009. And the party's decision to hold its November convention in Berlin for the first time was seen as a symbol of amplified self-confidence, which led alarmed politicians to consider a renewed attempt to legally ban the party. Yet, for all the NPD's bluster and the panic it has engendered among Germans, these fascists don't pose much of a threat at all.
[Alexander Prescott-Couch is a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship recipient in Berlin.]
The uproar over the NPD's recent electoral gains has obscured the fact that the party is actually incredibly fragile, as a quick look at its history reveals. Despite periodic popularity, it has never managed to maintain a significant presence at the state level, let alone enter the Bundestag. After its founding in 1964, the party enjoyed some initial success, especially in the conservative South. A sharp economic downturn following the boom of 1966-1967 drove workers and the lower middle-class away from the mainstream parties and toward the NPD, which had acquired a veneer of legitimacy from high profile members like Olympic gold medal rower Frank Schepke. The violent student protests of 1968 also played a role in making mainstream conservatives more receptive to the party's slogan of "security and order." As a result, the NPD won seats in seven state parliaments within four years; its strongest performance then (and since) was in Baden-Würrtemberg in 1968, where it won 9.8 percent of the vote. With its fortunes on the rise, it almost entered the Bundestag in 1969 with 4.3 percent of the national vote.
But the NPD's success was short-lived. As the economy began to turn upward in 1968, and as violent disputes with anti-NPD demonstrators undermined its law-and-order image, its popularity sank. ...