‘Popular Potential’ – The Extreme Right and
Germany’s Peace Movement
Gudrun Hentges
On
1 March 2003, some 500 citizens of Anklam participated in an
anti-war demonstration organized by the Farbig anstatt Braun (Multi-Colored
instead of Brown) alliance. Between 80 and 100 neo-Nazis from the
Kameradschaftsbund Anklam (Comrades of Anklam Association), mobilized by the
Pommersche Aktionsfront (Pomeranian Action Front), followed the demonstrators,
behaving provocatively. According to their representative, Michael Kutschke,1
they comprised the “national youth of Western
Pomerania and Ücker-Randow.”2
Waving flags and chanting anti-US policy slogans, the neo-Nazis proceeded to
the Nikolai Church, the destination of the marchers, where they were
denied admission. According to the local press, one of the organizers of the
demonstration, District Administrator Barbara Syrbe (PDS), stated: “We cannot
prohibit anyone from demonstrating against the war” but, she added, the right
wing was inspired by pure hatred and this was no basis for peace.3
The neo-Nazi demonstration in Anklam represents a
relatively new trend of the German extreme right, which since the beginning of
the millennium – and especially since the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq – has endeavored to present itself to the German public as an advocate
of peace and as part of the political consensus. The aim of this essay is to
discuss the ideological concepts behind this trend. It will analyze the linkage
between opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and animosity
toward the US as well as the role of antisemitism. It will further offer an initial overview of the
extreme right’s diverse political activities on behalf of peace, as well as the
reaction of organizers and demonstrators to the – uninvited – neo-Nazi
participants.
Ideological cornerstones
Antisemitism,
anti-Americanism, anti-globalization and the demand to close the Nazi chapter
of German history are the central ideological cornerstones behind the political
agitation of the extreme right. Antisemitism is the constant ideological factor
throughout, particularly in Deutsche National Zeitung, the organ of Deutsche
Volksunion (DVU). Many of its articles claim that
Jews are too powerful in Germany. Citing an unidentified opinion poll, one writer maintained
that a high percentage of the German population considers “Jewish influence” as
“too great.”4 Deutsche National Zeitung pays lip service to
the democratic right of lobbying but denounces Jewish influence as
disproportionate to the small Jewish population:
That advocates of the Jewish community present their
requests with great zeal through a lobby is understandable and perfectly
normal. However, when they appear like bosses of the republic although
representing only a tiny fraction of the population… and when, in addition, the
established media and politicians stand to attention and shout again and again
“Yes, sir!” one should not be surprised at the widespread opinion that Jewish
influence is too pervasive.5
The Link between Antisemitism and Anti-Americanism
US society and politics are often perceived in the
right-wing political camp as threatening, since allegedly only ‘the Jews’ have
influence there. Elie Wiesel, who is quoted in Deutsche National Zeitung as
testifying to the theory of a Jewish world conspiracy, supposedly admitted
that, “in America we have… traffic lights with red, yellow and green
alternating lights at street crossings. That is how traffic is controlled.
Everything else is controlled by us Jews.”6 According to the writer,
only the Germans, condemned to silence, fear to address this reality because
they do not want to be accused of angering the Americans – partly out of shame
and partly for the sake of ‘political correctness’. Similar complaints that a
conspiracy of silence exists in the German Federal Republic and that the media (especially the Springer press)
are under Jewish control appear in various publications of the extreme right.
Occasionally, the US and the German Zentralrat der
Juden (Central Jewish Council) appear as one entity. One writer claimed
in Deutsche National-Zeitung: “Even upper middle class haranguing
directly from Washington or from the executive floor of the Central Jewish
Council failed to shake the ‘nay’ to US war-mongering among 80 percent of the population.”7
The anti-Americanism of the extreme right derives in part from its
antisemitism. An additional ideological root of anti-Americanism is the notion
of decadence, rooted in the ethnic (Völkische) ideology and theory
of the Conservative Revolution (Konservative Revolution) of the Weimar Republic. Carl
Schmitt, for example, considered the United States “a civil society without a
state” – at least when compared to German notions of a state.8
Finally, careful scrutiny of reports about the Middle East appearing in extreme
right-wing journalism demonstrates an obvious preference for the so-called free
peoples (especially Palestinians and Iraqis) while the US and Israel are
considered aggressors and oppressors that should be challenged. 9
The Extreme Right and Islam
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on 11 September 2001 hastened discussions within the German extreme
right on the approach toward Islamist terror activities against US targets.
Activists such as Horst Mahler (former legal representative of the left-wing
terrorist Rote Armee Fraktion and currently defense attorney for the NPD
[National Democratic Party of Germany] in proceedings against restrictive
injunctions) declared their solidarity with the terrorists shortly after the
attacks, which they saw as an “act of war by the weak,” who had to rely on
guerrilla tactics in their struggle against a superior technological power.
Mahler stated that the “just side is the side of the people,” representing the
“people of the Middle East, especially those oriented toward Islam:
Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans” who serve as the vanguard because of their
struggle against a world order in which they cannot exist.11
Mahler condemned the US as being responsible for this
world order because of its “limitless craving for enrichment and power,” which
showed no consideration for the fundamentals of life of nations and destroyed
economies and cultures.12 His anti-Americanism became intertwined with
antisemitism when he targeted the American East Coast as “that web of power,
money and the military.”13 Mahler equated ‘imperialists’ with
‘globalists’, claiming that they governed the US which then bled other nations
dry. The financial power of the American East Coast was connected, Mahler said,
to the so-called cult of Jahwe, which he defined as “the cult of world power of
the chosen people.”14 Thus, the linkage was complete: solidarity
with the Islamist attacks on the US, the struggle against imperialistic US power, or
more precisely against Jewish financial control of the East Coast, and the
fight against ‘globalization’ and the Jews.
Another example of far right Islamist cooperation was an event which took place toward the end of
October 2002 in Berlin. The transnational Hizb-ut-Tahir,15 which
was subsequently banned by the German federal minister of the interior in
January 2003 due to its distribution of propaganda inciting violence and
antisemitic agitation, sent invitations to an event at the refectory of Berlin’s Technical University
during which it called for war against Israel and paid homage to Usama bin Ladin. Among those
present were NPD attorney Horst Mahler and NPD party chief Udo Voigt. An “open
letter by Saddam Husayn to the American people and western nations and their
governments” was read before some 300 participants.16 Thus neo-Nazi
opposition to the war in Iraq seems to have been reinforced by extreme
right-wing support for Saddam Husayn, who rejected the State of Israel and
promised a reward of 10,000 dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.17
Extreme Right Anti-Globalization and ‘Liberating Nationalism’ (Befreiungsnationalismus)
“For us globalization is no more
than an adapted, modern form of internationalism,” states a manifesto signed by
miscellaneous European organizations of the extreme right. “Globalization means
the disappearance of national borders in order to wipe out the identity of
peoples during the next phase. We do not want to degenerate into those so-called
world citizens without an identity and a soul. We are nationalists and thus
proud of our peoples and want to remain so in the future.”18
In contrast to “preparations for war by the supporters
of globalization,” neo-Nazis claim to promote “solidarity with the free peoples
of the world.”19 The NPD party chairman stated that it was incumbent
upon the nations of the world to “support the struggle for liberty or forever
accept American hegemony.”20 Remarks like these reflect the
transition from the traditional right weltanschauung to the so-called New Right
ideology. During the 1960s the NPD registered dramatic electoral gains, sending
representatives to a total of seven state parliaments. However, contrary to
widespread expectations, in 1969 the NPD were unsuccessful in overcoming the 5
percent threshold necessary for election to the federal parliament. In the
early 1970s the party began discussions to determine future strategy. The
appeal of national-revolutionary trends and the ideology of the French New Right
led to organizational changes as well as the adoption of topics such as ecology
and peace, formerly the exclusive province of the left.
In 1987, Wolfgang Strauss, a prominent representative
of the New Right, coined the concept ‘liberating nationalism’ (Befreiungsnationalismus),
based on a nationalist-ethnic ideology according to which each ethnic group
forms a closed unit with a unique national and cultural identity which must be
defended against those powers that seek assimilation.21 The appeal
to ‘free peoples’ (ethnic groups or nationalities) serves as a means to
challenge territorial/national/state borders and to encourage the destruction of so-called centralist states from
within by the mobilized ‘free peoples’ in their struggle against the ‘occupying
[controlling] power’.
The first demands of liberating nationalism were made in connection with the ‘German nation’,
which according to the extreme right, had been robbed of its identity because
it did not have a state of its own that included all ‘Germans’. The ‘nations of
the Soviet Union’, too, were to be liberated from their ‘ethnic
imprisonment’, as well as all nations and ‘ethnic groups’ whose territories of
settlement did not coincide with political borders.
Although the extreme right wing had great hopes for
the peace movement of the early 1980s,22 assessing it as a
“potential national revolutionary movement,”23 bridging differences
with argumentation proved too difficult. While the German peace movement
criticized the deployment of offensive weapons such as cruise missiles and
Pershing II on German territory, the extreme right called for ‘political
emancipation’ of Germany from the superpowers in general and from the alleged
American occupying force in particular. The widespread call for the withdrawal
of the Allies provided the extreme right with the opportunity of placing the
national question at the top of the political agenda (see below). In the
mid-1990s representatives of the German New Right Heimo Schwilk and Ulrich
Schacht24 published a journal entitled The Self-Confident Nation,
which aspired to fulfill this description among the German people.25
One of the authors of this volume, Ansgar Graw, who claims to speak for the second or even third
generation of expellees from the former German territories in East Prussia, criticizes
the alleged lack of “patriotic commitment to the nation” after German
unification. According to Graw, the German New Right was convinced of the
necessity of undertaking the task of reconstructing ‘national identity’. This political
camp sought to face the new challenges in restoring former German
self-awareness as a state in the center of Europe. One of the preconditions for
this return was the rediscovery of common religious and emotional values, which
would stimulate the revival of a national fighting community, in which each and
every citizen would be ready to sacrifice his/her life for the community. The
concept of the national community is contrasted to images of the foe,
characterized by enlightenment, rationalism and individualism. Graw – among
other protagonists of the New Right in Germany – aims at forsaking the National
Socialist German past: “Nevertheless awareness
of these crimes [of fascism] must lose its influence and must be replaced by
more significant memories.
the new right vision of europe
The
debate in Junge Freiheit concerning foreign policy options is revealing.
Under the title “The End of Slavish Loyalty,” Alain de Benoist, the founding
father of the French New Right (Nouvelle Droite) who in the early 1980s had
urged Europe to become a third world power, updated his concept in
May 2003. Benoist, supported by other representatives of the Nouvelle Droite,
views the German-French bloc as a starting point for a united Europe and
calls on Germany and France to share in claiming its leadership. He notes,
moreover, that the French force de frappe (strike force) would enable Germany to
obtain nuclear arms, thus providing an alternative to the stationing of
American medium-range ballistic missiles on German soil.26
Benoist rejects the planned institutional reform of
the European Union (EU) and claims that Europe needs to be reconstituted so
that it consists of a ‘hard core’ supported by a small group of countries
willing to establish a ‘federal structure’. This would entail common foreign
and defense policies and the establishment of a European army. The current
conditions for a strong alliance between Germany and France are advantageous, he asserted, because the
traditionally close relationship between Germany and the US has been eroded due to the war in Iraq.
According to Benoist, “the removal of this hurdle smoothes the way toward a
strong alliance between France and Germany.”27 He added that other EU states
interested in creating an alternative single political union would join such a
new German-French structure.
A month earlier, in an article entitled “The Great
Western Schism,” Benoist had grappled with the most recent geo-politic shifts.
The break in transatlantic relations would continue, he said, because Europe has a
different vision of the world. Here he assumes that the so-called hard core
would consist not only of France and Germany but also Russia. Only thus, he wrote, can the “impotence and
paralysis of the European Union be prevented.”28
Benoist considers the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis “a true
political European structure, to be accelerated and deepened.”29
Even if the war in Iraq results in a general destabilization of the Middle
East, he argued, it will have increased the “historical opportunities for the
establishment of a European power,” with a French-German(-Russian) core.
Benoist also re-interprets Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis of ‘the clash of
civilizations’, predicting that the true conflict will take place not between
Islam and the West but between the US and Europe, labeling it “the great western schism.”
Benoist applies a similar approach to the subject of
globalization. “In postmodernism,” he says, it would be pointless “to mount a
frontal attack on globalization.”30 It was crucial, said Benoist, to
imagine a different type of globalization. The globalization that New Right
ideologues pursue is not homogenization but diversification. The concept of
globalization must be re-assessed to keep “large continental areas and retain
the co-existence of many powers.”31 Like his attempts to link up
with ecology and peace movements in order to win over activists to the extreme
right in the 1980s, Benoist now seeks to recruit activists in the
anti-globalization movements, among others, ATTAC (L'Association pour
une Taxation des Transactions financières pour L'Aide aux
Citoyens – Association for the
Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Benefit of Citizenry; see France in
this volume)
as possible allies for a new right-wing movement.
Enemy number one: the USA
During
the era of Great Power confrontation, the Nouvelle Droite in France – and in
particular its mentor Alain de Benoist – supported the notion of Europe
becoming a global power; however, it had to determine which of the powers, the
US or the USSR, was enemy number one. In his publications Benoist presented
bourgeois liberalism and the US as the main adversary because the American life style
led to the partial loss of the unique character of nations.32
Once the confrontation of power blocs had ended,
opposition to America intensified. In Europe’s Freedom Is at
Stake, Benoist argued: “but we may and must acknowledge that America is the
most ‘evil rogue state’ in the world and thus our greatest enemy.”33
He defines the concept of enemy number one as the power “whose machinations
have the worst consequences, whose influence is the strongest and most
permanent, whose products dominate the media, who controls the most instruments
of surveillance, who exerts the most pressure on financial markets, whose military
presence is felt most by the rest of the world, and on whom most multinational
companies depend.”34
The central theme of the New Right, namely, the threat
to national and cultural identity, appears not only in its publications of the
1970s and 1980s, but also in recent statements on the conflict between
continental European and Atlantic alignment foreign policy on Europe. The
theory of the US as enemy number one is linked to the notion of this
country as both the servant of global capitalism and the one that most profits
from it. This anti-capitalistic criticism is based on the assumption that
global capitalism destroys the identity of nations and that for global
capitalism “each cultural or human characteristic would pose an obstacle to be
completely demolished.”35 From that point of view business, profit
and the dictatorship of the market are the greatest enemies of human existence
that Benoist can imagine in the life of nations.
In a world in which confrontations between power blocs
have lost their significance, economic, military and political power is
concentrated in the US. While in his earlier publications, Benoist spoke of
liberating nationalism, in his more recent contributions to the debate, the
conflict appears as a revolt of the ‘vassals’, under the banner, “The ‘old
Europe’ rebels against the new barbarism.”36 Benoist sees French,
German and Russian opposition to the military attack on Iraq as a rebellion by
the European vassals against the American imperialists and he points to this
conflict as the “birth of a new politics,”37 which he analyzes as
follows:
The Americans want neither partners nor allies, but
vassals. On the other hand, NATO, which limits itself primarily to American
interests, exists solely as a war machine in contrast to Europe’s political
unity. Within ‘old Europe’, we are currently witnessing the first act of common
resistance against American dictatorship. There are bound to be more.38
praising the ‘special German way’
There
is consensus within the extreme right wing regarding the outlines of Benoist’s
position presented above. The DVU praises the ‘special German way’ (Deutscher
Sonderweg) in its organ Deutsche National Zeitung, thus:
Schröder had the courage to make the planned
military attack of the Americans against Iraq his election campaign issue. His
assurance that Germany would not put itself at the disposal of Bush’s adventure
came as such a complete surprise that his political opponents, of course, want
to view it only as a diversionary tactic from domestic political difficulties.
The red/green [Social Democrats/Green Party coalition] ship is said to be
sinking and as his final maneuver Schröder rid himself of the foreign
policy ballast, only to gain points in domestic politics! Be that as it may,
readers of National Zeitung might appreciate that a governing Social
Democrat has adopted positions which this newspaper has represented since last
September [2001]. In any case, the world and its many conflicts can be viewed
with more hope; German soldiers are no longer subject solely to the
machinations of vassals craving for recognition.39
Thus,
according to the explicitly antisemitic Deutsche National Zeitung,
German soldiers are no longer tools of German irresponsibility and thus cannot
be sent to distant lands to serve under the command of foreigners without good
reason.40 The refusal of the federal red/green government to
participate in the war on Iraq under US leadership was seen as the first step
in confronting the US and dissolving the traditional Atlantic Alliance.
The extreme right seeks to create an analogy between
the bombing of Iraqi cities by the US with the bombardment of German cities during World
War II. DVU leader Dr. Gerhard Frey states in Deutsche National Zeitung
that it is slowly becoming understood that Germans were equally victims of the
“pitiless, bloody and arbitrary American air raids as the poor Iraqis today.”41
There should be no doubt as to the nature of the US, the author concludes: “During
the past 200 years the US has brought death and suffering to this world. Like a
trail of blood, crimes and massacres flow throughout the history of this
self-proclaimed world power.”42 The current situation, however, is
different than previous wars: “Yankee, you have been caught! Tear the mask off
the face of this well-disguised villain!”43 Of course, there is no
mention of the Nazi past or the crimes of the German military; these topics are
ignored in the historical debates and press coverage of this publication. In
fact, many articles question the extermination of European Jewry or discuss it
in relative terms. In this context, with the outbreak of the 2003 Iraq war, the
extreme right typically chastised the “shameless craving for war” of the
Christian Democrats and criticized CDU/CSU chairman Angela Merkel for her
“slavish submission theories.”44
Vanguards of the new world order
ambition for global power
Professor Werner Weidenfeld, an influential
political advisor, director of the Centrum für Angewandte Politikforschung
(Centre for Applied Political Research – CAP) in Munich, and a member of the
boards of the Bertelsmann Foundation and of the German Society for Foreign
Policy, sees in the current constellation the possibility of Europe entering into an open
power struggle with the US. In this period of radical change, Europe could advance to global
power status, according to Weidenfeld. No new formations oppose these dangerous developments, and “the US, the only remaining
superpower possesses neither the will nor the capability to realize policies of
global hegemony.”46 On the other hand, Europe has considerable
potential at its disposal: the population of the EU will soon be double that of
the US; European gross
national product exceeds that of the US; and, a larger share of global production
and trade is in European hands. Only two criteria remain for fulfilling global
power status: the EU is not capable of acting as a political system with the
ability to mobilize its resources for global political goals, and there is no
political consensus regarding the concept of a global order.
Weidenfeld calls for a
new foundation of global political thinking:
The
deficit in strategic imagination proves to be the real Achilles heel of Europe. There is no agenda
which could provide direction to Europe during crises and conflicts and the lack
of one affects not only transatlantic disputes but also those in the Middle East, the ethnic explosions
in the Caucasus and in Southeast Asia, the conflict in Kashmir and the disintegration
of African states.47
A CAP position paper outlines five scenarios for
Europe’s future, ranging from worst to best.48 The first, dubbed
‘Titanic’, warns of a European ‘decline’, while the last scenario predicts a
‘rise to global power’, which it designates as ‘superpower Europe’. The
‘sinking of the Titanic’ paradigm describes the decline and break-up of the EU
and the renaissance of US influence. Based on increasing divergences of
interests and differences in performance, the EU would prove to be incapable of
action. Only a minority of member states would share “ambitions to realize the
role of global political protagonist.” The Titanic scenario warns of a
re-nationalization of European foreign and defense policies. The relations
between the European states would be determined by “distinct power politics of
earlier days.”49
Only the last scenario, ‘superpower Europe’, would
enable the establishment of “power parity with the US” corresponding to the
expectations, as formulated by Weidenfeld, of a European perception of global
political interests.50 If this scenario were to materialize, greater
Europe would live up to its “objective global potential.” In a ‘superpower Europe’, the process of
integration would be linear: the EU would be accepted by its citizens; the
entire European public would constitute the basis for a civilian society; and
the EU would develop into a political union into which central spheres of
politics would be consolidated. A European union with superpower status would
be able to accept more new members and would be “the only global system that
would expand steadily.”51
According to CAP, ‘superpower Europe’ would
also be a nuclear power. “The establishment of a security and defense union
and, especially of the Vereinigten Strategischen Streitkräfte (United
Strategic Armed Forces – VESS), serving under a shared European high command,
and the nuclear arms umbrella of France and Great Britain, would change the
international role of the EU.”52 The EU would receive a seat in the
UN Security Council and, in accordance with its ability to exercise power
throughout the world and meet international commitments, a new definition of
European foreign policy would become necessary. “Superpower Europe finally
takes leave of the concept of a civilian power and helps itself unreservedly to
the means of international power politics.”53 The extensive
political and economic power potential of the EU – compared to that of the US – would
permit an analogy with the old superpower rivalry. This would lead to a balance
of the international system and parity of power with the US.54
neo-Nazi attempts to present themselves as part
of the peace movement
As
noted, the extreme right had discovered the peace movement in the early 1980s.
Evidence of neo-Nazi manipulation of this movement was manifested even before
the terror attacks on New York and Washington.55 On 1 September
2001, designated as anti-war day, neo-Nazis in Weimar, Greifswald and Leipzig
marched through the streets under the banner “Then as now: For peace, freedom
and self determination,” carrying placards reading: “Against war and
militaristic megalomania” or “Against war and war-mongering.” The local chapter
of the NPD Iserlohn in the Märkischer Kreis District, North Rhine
Westphalia, also called for a demonstration, on
14 September, under the motto: “For peace, freedom and self determination – Germany for us
Germans.”
As a US-led war against Iraq became imminent, the number
of neo-Nazi demonstrations increased. On 23 November 2002 some 90 neo-Nazis
marched under the slogan “No blood for oil” in Drewitz near Potsdam; on 7
December 2002, approximately 100 neo-Nazis chanted “Yankee go home” in front of
the US base in Grafenwöhr/Upper Palatinate; and some 260 neo-Nazis marched
through Greifswald on 8 March 2003. On so-called X-Day, 20 March 2003, when
the Anglo-American coalition attacked Iraq, neo-Nazis demonstrated in Rostock/Reutershagen. Two
days later supporters of the NPD and the Junge Nationaldemokraten (JN)
protested in front of the US training grounds in Grafenwöhr. Neo-Nazis of the
JN and Free Nationalists also protested, among other locations, in
Frankfurt/Hanau (29 March 2003) and Erfurt (5 April 2003).
As a self-proclaimed member of the peace movement, the
NPD felt that as well as organizing their own demonstrations they should
mobilize for demonstrations organized by other groups, too. Thus, the district
association of the NPD’s Märkischer Kreis supported the Lüdenscheid
peace group, the Iserlohn peace plenary assembly and the peace initiative of Menden (Sauerland),
North Rhine Westphalia, in their calls for
demonstrations against the threat of war on 15 February 2003.
The national NPD mobilized for a major demonstration against the war in Iraq,
organized by the peace movement in Berlin on 6 April 2003.
The extreme right sometimes succeeded in marching
against the US alongside the peace movement. On 10 February 2003, a
rally took place in Gelsenkirchen, organized by the Coalition against the War in Iraq and
supported mainly by the MLPD, the Marxist Leninist Party of Germany. Jamal
Karsli56 was announced as the sole speaker. Earlier Karsli had
generated headlines for his antisemitic remarks during an interview published
in the extreme right Junge Freiheit, among others. Among the
participants in the demonstration were members of the Bürgerrechtsbewegung
Solidarität (Citizens Solidarity Movement) – a part of Lyndon LaRouche’s
international organization – as well as supporters of the local Freie
Kamaradschaft, who positioned themselves next to the speaker’s podium with a
banner proclaiming “Peace for Germany – no votes for the war parties.” After protests by
anti-fascists, the banner was first covered up and then seized. On 14 February,
15 neo-Nazis participated on the edge of a peace demonstration in Görlitz.
During the peace demonstrations in Halle (24 February
2003 and 10 March 2003), as well as in Dessau (13 March 2003),
neo-Nazis showed up repeatedly, distributing handouts, without being stopped by
the organizers of the event. Approximately 30 members of the Freie
Kameradschaft participated in the anti-war demonstration demanding “freedom for
all peoples” in Cottbus on 10 March
2003 and some 25 neo-Nazis were among
the demonstrators in Neuruppin on the same day. After a short discussion about
the possible exclusion of neo-Nazis, the organizers decided that their presence
must be tolerated in a democracy. Forty neo-Nazis took part in the peace
demonstration in Magdeburg on 17 October
2002, as well. In Eberswalde,
neo-Nazis of the so called Märkischen Heimatschutz (home defense) took
part in a vigil against the threat of war on Iraq and distributed handouts to
passers-by and other participants in the rally.
With the permission of the organizers, the NPD
participated, on 19 April 2003, in a rally of the Arab Student Association in Greifswald
which, according to a NPD press release, was aimed against “Israeli terror in
the Middle East and the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory
by the Israelis and their vassals.”
Analysis of the local press indicates that neo-Nazis
were far more successful in joining local political peace activities in east
German cities then in west German ones. This is due to the fact that militant
west German neo-Nazi organizations took advantage of existing extreme right
subcultures in the DDR, such as skinheads, ‘Faschos’ and hooligans, and
immediately after unification of the two German states in 1990 began to
establish a tight extra-parliamentary neo-Nazi network.57 In most
cases, however, the attempts of the NPD, the JN and the Freien Kameradschaften
to ‘assimilate’ into the peace movement were unsuccessful – especially in west
Germany: Several members of the NPD from Greifswald and from the east of Western
Pomerania participated in a rally, on 14 November 2001, against the war in
Afghanistan organized by the peace forum of the University of Greifswald. As
they unfurled their banners, the organizers requested that they leave. When
they ignored the demand, they were removed from the gathering at the
organizers’ request. During another peace rally in Greifswald on 30 January 2003, NPD
supporters, bearing its flag and banners, mingled with opponents of the war,
although some of the latter demanded that they be removed. The organizers
finally disassociated themselves from the NPD.
When neo-Nazis appeared during a strike by 8,000
students in Rostock on 20 March
2003, it was made clear to them that
they were unwanted. Five days later when 1,000 students from two schools in Greifswald
demonstrated against the war, NPD sympathizers who mingled with the
demonstrators were driven away. Similarly, during a student demonstration in
Schwerin on 20 March 2003, several right-wing extremists were asked to leave;
right-wing extremists and their banner were also prohibited from joining the
vigil of the ‘peace platform’ of Wolgast on 24 March 2003. A group of neo-Nazis
who sought to join a demonstration in Römer Square, Frankfurt/Main, was
greeted by many participants with shouts of “Nazis get out.”
NPD identification with the peace movement, together
with its own banners and slogans, takes place not only in the streets but in
virtual space as well. The following slogans – illustrated with photographs of
sad-looking Iraqi children, fluttering Iraqi and Palestinian flags and the
collapse of the Twin Towers – can be found on the Internet pages of the national
and district organizations of the NPD: “Stop Bush. No war for oil!”; “Stop US
imperialism”; “USA – international centre of genocide”; “No support of US
imperialism. No to War!”; “Against the genocide in Iraq
instigated by the US. Stop the US warmongers”; “Those against war must rise up! –
Silence means support!”; “Boycott. Not one cent for the US. Don’t buy
and consume US goods”; “Peace for Germany: No votes for war parties!” The web page of the NPD
district association Greifswald read: “At this time remember the many women, children
and old people in Iraq.”58 Moreover, in the party organ Deutsche
Stimme, NPD national chairman Udo Voigt declared in February 2003: “We, the
National Democrats, today consider ourselves part of the peace movement and we
urge the government of the Federal Republic of Germany to commit itself
publicly and diplomatically, without ifs and buts, to oppose this war.”59
conclusions
French, German and Russian opposition to
war against Iraq had far reaching
domestic and foreign policy consequences. From the most recent German debates,
it appears that a variety of options was discussed. The traditional conservative
camp claimed that Schröder and Fischer had caused a transatlantic rupture,
which it criticized as premature; the Federal Chancellery and Foreign Office
opposed the Anglo-American war. The various extreme right streams seized the
opportunity, in the slipstream of the federal government’s policies, to further
disseminate historical hatred of the US which, it claimed, symbolized a lack of
tradition, culture and liberalism, decadence, and the breakdown of morality.
Furthermore, they declared solidarity with Saddam Husayn’s Iraq and with Islam in
general and openly proclaimed war on ‘Zionism’.
The extreme right DVU
and NPD reacted positively to the government’s course and viewed the Christian
Democrats with contempt because of their ‘slavish loyalty’ to the US. Deutsche National
Zeitung rescinded its old accusation of the SPD as a party of traitors to
the fatherland, and in the party organ Deutsche Stimme, NPD national
chairman Udo Voigt challenged the federal government to oppose the war in Iraq. Since the NPD
considers itself explicitly an integral part of the peace movement, the entire
extreme right spectrum (NPD, JN, Freie Kameradschaften, among others) initiated
not only their own numerous anti-Iraq war activities, but mobilized support for
peace movement events and, as long as they were tolerated by organizers and
demonstrators, participated in their vigils, rallies and demonstrations
bringing their own banners and handouts. The protests against the war in Iraq were exploited by
neo-Nazis to agitate against the US, Israel and globalization,
disseminate revisionist history and demand ‘liberating nationalism’. Perusal of
the intellectual organ of the Junge Freiheit – and especially analysis
and integration of the theories in Alain de Benoist’s articles – clearly
demonstrates that the break between Germany and the US is viewed as a
transformation in German, i.e., German-French, foreign policy. Returning to the
earlier concepts of the New Right (‘liberating nationalism’, ‘ethno-pluralism’,
‘the third way’ concept of a greater Europe), Benoist now observes with
satisfaction that since the international political upheavals of 1989/90 – in particular,
against the backdrop of fragile US-German relations – the conditions for the
assertion of European global power (under German-French leadership) have
clearly improved.
In regard to policies on
immigration, integration, refugees and expellees, as well as debates on
multiculturalism, Leitkultur or German ‘national pride’, there no longer
appears to be a clear delineation between extreme right and mainstream
political positions and ideologies and ‘rightist issues’ have become ‘centrist
ones’.60 How does this affect future foreign policy options? Some of
Werner Weidenfeld’s and CAP’s predictions envision a Europe that has the potential
to become a global power or even a nuclear superpower. These views point to an
amazing congruence with ideologies developed by New Right intellectuals since
the end of the 1970s. In 1982, Alain de Benoist’s notion that the German Federal Republic could refuse the
stationing of US intermediate-range ballistic missiles and rely instead on the
French strike force in a Europe under German-French leadership was still a
pipe dream. Now, political advisors speculate in the daily Die Welt as
to the conditions that would be required for Europe to become a superpower.
It is foreseeable that the various currents of the extreme right will use the
changes in US-German relations to tie into now openly expressed global European
(i.e., German-French) ambitions. In the future, careful attention should be
paid to the alliances and coalitions that result from the transformation in
foreign policy orientation and the appeal of global power status.
notes
1. Neo-Nazi
Michael Kutschke represents the Pommersche Aktionsfront and, inter alia,
is chief editor of the neo-Nazi newspaper Der Fahnenträger aus Pommern.
2. “Gewalt beginnt mit Worten,” Ostseezeitung,
3 March 2003 –
http://www.theater-anklam.de/Pressespiegel/Pressedetails.php?idneu=267.
3. See “Hunderte Anklamer machen sich für
den Frieden stark – Anti-Kriegs-Demonstration zieht durch die Stadt – An die 80
Neo-Nazis marschieren mit,” Nordkurier-Anklam, 3 March 2003 –
http://www.links-lang.de/presse/624.htm; also Christian Grünert/Andreas
Speit; “Avancen und Aversion. Extreme Rechte gegen den Irak-Krieg,” Der
Rechte Rand, 5 June 2003, pp. 4–5.
4. A
study of extreme right-wing attitudes by Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler
(University of Leipzig) and Prof. Dr. Oskar Niedermayer (Free University of
Berlin), conducted in September 2002, showed that 31 percent of west German and
14 percent of east German respondents (a total of 2,051 individuals) believed
that even today the influence of the Jews is too great. Between 1994 and 2002,
antisemitic attitudes rose slightly in east Germany (from 7 to 12 percent). The
nationwide rise from 17 to 31 percent demonstrates a considerably greater
increase of antisemitic views in west Germany. See
“Antisemitismus nimmt im Westen stark zu” –
http://antisemitismus.juden-in-europa.de/antisemitismus/deutschland/texte/hagalil-04-01.htm.
5. “Sind Juden zu mächtig? Jürgen
Möllemann und der (deutsche) Michel,” Deutsche National-Zeitung – http://www.dsz-verlag.de.
6. Ibid.
7. “Zwingen die USA Schröder in die Knie?
Washingtons wachsender Druck auf Deutschland,” Deutsche National-Zeitung
– http://www.dsz-verlag.de.
8. The
right-wing Conservative Revolution (Jungkonservatismus is another term
for the same political camp) of the Weimar Republic, as opposed to the old
conservatism of the empire. See: Gerhard Scheidt, “Der große und der kleine Teufel. Thesen zum Verhältnis von
Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus,” in Thomas Uwer et
al. (eds.), Amerika. Der “war on terror” und der Aufstand der alten
Welt (Freiburg, 2003); “Antiamerikanismus
und Dekadenzkritik. Ein Rückblick auf die Berichterstattung der ‘Jungen
Freiheit’ zum 11. September,” in Archiv Notizen (Duisburger Institut
für Sprach- und Sozialforschung), Part 1: Nov. 2002; Part 2: Dec. 2002.
9. See Alfred Schobert: “Die Krise im Nahen Osten
aus der Sicht der Rechten,” in Archiv Notizen (Aug. 2001), pp. 1-9
10. Hannes Barth: “Schulterschluss zwischen radikalen Islamisten und
Neo-Nazis,” Rheinpfalz Online, 18 Dec. 2000; see also Michael Kiefer: Antisemitismus
in den islamischen Gesellschaften. Der Palästina-Konflikt und der Transfer
eines Feindbildes (Düsseldorf, 2002), p. 135.
11. Barth: “Schulterschluss zwischen radikalen Islamisten.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15.
The organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir describes itself on the Internet
as a political party based on Islam, which seeks to establish a caliphate.
Shaker Assem, who resides in Duisburg, is the representative of the German
section – http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/,
2 June 2003. See Pressemitteilung des BMI, 15 Jan. 2003.
16. Frank Jansen: “Neo-Nazis suchen
Verbündete aus Schurkenstaaten’ Verbrüderung mit Irakern,
Nordkoreanern und Islamisten,” Tagesspiegel, 4 Nov. 2002.
17. Falco Schuhmann: “Über Bagdad nach
Dresden,” Antifa Nachrichten, 10 April 2003, pp. 6–7.
18. “Warum sind wir gegen Globalizierung,” cited
in www.gegen-globalisierung.de.
19. “Nie wieder Krieg!” (NPD press release), 13
Jan. 2003.
20. Declaration of the chairman of the NDP on the campaign ‘No
blood for oil!’ “The UN at a turning point: Community of free peoples or
community of the peoples for the protection of US-American interests? Ami out
of Iraq – Ami out of Germany!” 25 March 2003.
21. See “Befreiungsnationalismus,” in Margret Feit, Die “Neue Rechte” in der Bundesrepublik. Organization
– Ideologie – Strategie (Frankfurt am Main/New York, 1987), p. 125ff,
compared to nationalist ideology: Georg L. Mosse, Die völkische
Revolution (Frankfurt am Main, 1991).
22.
The peace movement consisted primarily of activists from the churches and the
trade unions, as well as Social Democrats, the Green Party and ecologists,
small parties such as the Demokratische Sozialisten (Democratic Socialists –
DS) and the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (German Communist Party – DKP), and
citizen’s groups from all over the republic, but also of extreme right
opponents of the global powers, the US and USSR, who were protesting against
the supposed allied occupation of Germany and calling for ‘emancipation’ and
neutrality, while forsaking the German past. The common denominator of this
heterogeneous movement was opposition to the so-called NATO-Doppelbeschluss,
the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershing II at American bases located in Germany.
The peace movement considered these weapons to be offensive, not defensive, and
aimed at attacking the USSR.
23. See Feit, Die “Neue Rechte” in der
Bundesrepublik, p. 156.
24. Heimo Schwilk and Ulrich Schacht (eds.), Die
selbstbewußte Nation. “Anschwellender Bocksgesang” und andere
Beiträge zu einer deutschen Debatte (Berlin, 1994). Compare the
contribution of Schwilk and Schacht against the background of ‘renationalization’ and historical policy (Geschichtspolitik) after 1989: Gerd
Wiegel, Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit. Konservativer Geschichtsdiskurs und
kulturelle Hegemonie (Köln, 2001), p. 165ff.
25. Schwilk and Schacht, Die selbstbewußte
Nation; see also Wiegel, Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit, p. 165ff.
26. Alain de Benoist, “Das Ende der
Vasallentreue,” Junge Freiheit, 16 May 2003; Benoist, Die
entscheidenden Jahre. Zur Erkennung des Hauptfeindes (Tübingen, 1982).
27. Benoist, “Das Ende der Vasallentreue.”
28. Alain de Benoist, “Das große westliche
Schisma,” Junge Freiheit, 11 April 2003.
29. Ibid.
30. Alain de Benoist: “Netzwerke funktionieren wie Viren,” Junge
Freiheit, 13 Nov. 2002.
31. Ibid.
33. Alain de Benoist: “Es geht um die Freiheit
Europas,” Junge Freiheit, 7 Feb. 2003.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Alain de Benoist: “Der
atlantische Graben,” Junge Freiheit, 31 Jan. 2003.
37. Alain de Benoist:
“Europa sagt Nein,” Junge Freiheit, 14 Feb. 2003.
38. Ibid.
39. “SPD und deutscher Weg: Vaterlandslose
Gesellen?” Deutsche National-Zeitung 37 (2002) –
http://www.dsz-verlag.de/Artikel/NZ35/NZ35_3.html.
40. Ibid.
41. Sven Eggers: “Wie Bush lügt, heuchelt,
mordet,” Deutsche National-Zeitung –
http://www.dsz-verlag.de/Artikel_03/NZ14/NZ14_2.html.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. This
and the following citations in Volker Zastrow, “Neue Freiheit,” FAZ, 17 Feb. 2003.
46. Werner Weidenfeld:
“Thinktank: Die verhinderte Weltmacht,” Die Welt, 8 March 2003.
47. Ibid.
48. See Franco Algieri,
Janis A. Emmanouilidis and Roman Maruhn, Europas Zukunft. Fünf
EU-Szenarien (Munich: Centrum für angewandte Politikforschung, 2003).
49. Ibid.,
p. 6..
50. Ibid.,
p. 18
51. Ibid.,
pp. 15, 16
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Additional
information on German foreign policy – strategic papers and strategic options
as well as political and public debates – can be found at the informative
Internet website http://www.german-foreign-policy.com.
55. See
note 22.
56. Jamal
Karsli became a deputy of the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1995 and
was spokesman for immigration and refugee policy of his party, the Greens.
Karsli’s press release in March 2002, entitled “Israelische Armee wendet
Nazi-Methoden an,” drew protests from his party. Karsli left the Greens on 23 April 2002, because they supposedly had let the Palestinians down. Shortly afterwards
he joined the FDP of former party chairman, Jürgen Möllemann in order
to support positions which were critical of Israel. Due to Karsli’s antisemitic
positions expressed in an interview to Junge Freiheit, he was asked to
resign from the party by Guido Westerwelle, FDP national chairman. Karsli later
attacked the Central Council of Jews in Germany, accusing it of taking
advantage of every domestic policy topic to support Israel. See
“Fischer hat die Ideale der Grünen verraten.” Parteien: Interview mit dem
Ex-Grünen Landtagsabgeordneten, der zur FDP überwechseln will, Junge
Freiheit, 3 May 2002.
57. See Richard Stöss, Rechtsextremismus im vereinten Deutschland (Bonn, 1999), pp. 88 and 155–163.
58. http://www.npd-greifswald.de/nie%20Krieg/nie_krieg.htm.
59. Udo Voigt, cited in: Interior Ministry of
North Rhine-Westphalia: “Haltung der rechtsextremistischen Szene zum
Irak-Konflikt” (Düsseldorf 2003),
p. 4 – http://www.im.nrw.de/sch/doks/vs/irakkon.pdf.
60. Christoph Butterwegge, Janine Cremer, Alexander Häusler,
Gudrun Hentges, Thomas Pfeiffer, Carolin Reißlandt and Samuel Salzborn, Themen
der Rechten – Themen der Mitte. Zuwanderung, demografischer Wandel und
Nationalbewusstsein (Opladen, 2002).
Dr. Gudrun Hentges is an assistant
professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Cologne.
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