Fighting the Nazi Threat Today

Europe’s new Nazis

BY the late 1980s it was clear that racism and neo-Nazism were on the rise again throughout Europe, and in other parts of the world, as social conditions, particularly unemployment, worsened. In the US there has been a rise in Ku Klux Klan activity, and a wave of violence and harassment. New right wing militia groups have been active and were responsible for the Oklahoma bombing in 1996. Across the South a series of black churches have been burned. One black man, James Byrd, was dragged along the road from a car until he was dead in Jasper in the Southern states of the US. This has met a wave of protests.

In Europe neo-Nazis, often with close links with each other, have begun to build, with varying degrees of success. The new Nazis--Le Pen and the National Front in France, the Republikaner Party in Germany, Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale in Italy, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium--blame ‘immigrants’ and foreigners for their problems. Refugees and asylum seekers are easy scapegoats for these parties, but attacks and harassment are also directed against resident non-Whites, even if they were born in Europe. Many of these new parties have stressed their respectability, and tried to disassociate themselves from their Nazi past. While maintaining thugs and a street presence that allows them to intimidate black and immigrant communities they have also sought to build a respectable parliamentary presence through electoral politics. As a result they have often had a strong influence on mainstream politics, particularly in terms of the labelling of refugees and immigrants as problems. In Russia, traditional anti-Semitism has revived and fuelled attacks on Jews, with the Russian Duma (parliament) refusing to censure a senior member of the Communist Party for blaming Jews for the country’s problems, and calling for their extermination.

Germany

In Germany the impact of reunification of the old East and Western states and world recession has fuelled the growth of far right organisations like the Republikaner Party and has led to a series of horrific attacks on hostels for refugees, and on people such as the Turkish community who have lived in Germany for many years. This has been encouraged by the inactivity of the German authorities, who stood by and allowed neo-Nazis to burn a refugee hostel in Rostock, and who have concentrated their energies on restricting the numbers of asylum seekers entering Germany via legislation. In the old Eastern Germany conditions in many cities such as Leipzig have encouraged the growth of neo-Nazi gangs and the development of ‘no go’ areas for foreigners. However, there has also been opposition to these developments: while Nazis gained 13 percent in one regional election in 1998 they were also humiliated in the general elections where they only won 3 percent across the country. In the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern even the three Nazi parties combined, the Republikaner, the DVU and the NPD, failed to get over the 5 percent hurdle needed to get any parliamentary seats.