The upsurge of support for the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Sunday’s state election in Saxony has caused alarm in Germany. The NPD may protest otherwise but everything about it from the Hitler-era coloring of its emblems to its association with violent racist street gangs points to the fact that this is a fascist party.
The Nazi party grew strong because no Weimar German government could stabilize the German economy. Hardly had the massive inflation ended when the country shared in the global recession. Unemployed workers and the ruined middle class despaired of mainstream political parties and turned either to the Communists or the Nazis with their promises of radical solutions. The Nazis refined their electoral appeal by blaming Germany’s woes on its Jewish population.
Now the NDP has traded on the economic depression and 20 percent unemployment rate in Saxony to blame foreign workers who they say have “stolen” the jobs of native Germans by being prepared to work for less money. The endless message of the NDP newspaper, “Heimat” (Homeland) is that immigration should not only be stopped but that foreigners already in the country should be repatriated. The party’s most vicious bile is reserved for the large ethnic Turkish population and the Muslim faith.
Another far-right party the German People’s Union (DVU) also did well in the other state election held this weekend in Brandenburg. Significantly perhaps, the former Communists, now known as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) had a good showing in Brandenburg.
Alarmed though Germans should be, the fact is that the NPD founded in the 1960s by Adolf von Thadden has a fraction of its 30,000 members at that time. It and its fellow travelers, the DVU and the Republican Party are still just a small and unpleasant feature of the German political scene. The mainstream political parties dominated at the weekend even though Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SD) lost seats because of the unpopularity of his economic reform program. The irony is that the changes necessary to stop Germany living beyond its means, which fueled the extremist vote are still not yet fully implemented. There remain further important cuts to be made in welfare, pensions and state health care that have been delayed because they go so much against the political grain of Schroeder’s socialists.
Last year the German constitutional court threw out a government attempt to ban the NPD. Distasteful though the decision was, it was almost certainly correct. A political ban will not change voters’ sympathies and indeed would only make matters worse. Germany’s budget deficit remains above the three percent permitted by Eurozone regulations. Schroeder has been trying to change these rules and by extension cravenly blaming Brussels for his country’s economic woes. The Nazis came to power in 1933 because the Weimar governments were weak and indecisive. The chancellor must act decisively on economic reform.
