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The New Nazis
When Menace in Europe was published, no chapter provoked more hostility than the one about Germany, in which I noted that the German band Rammstein’s fascination with Third Reich imagery and dramaturgy might not be as innocent as it sounds, especially given that Third Reich imagery and dramaturgy don’t sound all that innocent. Comments like these–“Claire Berlinski is just a paranoid little Jew”–were among the more printable. In fact, the Nazis sent me more hate mail than the Islamists and the communists (and that’s when I decided to take up the martial arts, but that’s another story).
Unlike many who are keen to deny the danger of right-wing extremism in Europe, proposing instead that we focus our alarm upon the menace posed to liberal democracy by Islamic extremists, I’m a dual-direction Cassandra. Europe does indeed have a dangerous ultra-right, and by “ultra-right,” I do not mean dutiful Anglicans and devout proponents of market deregulation, I mean Nazis. Call them neo-Nazis or new Nazis if you like, but when they start killing immigrants in the name of racial purity, I see no need for that qualifier.
The so-called National Socialist Underground killed nine immigrants (eight of them Turkish, one Greek). They avoided detection for years because the police were looking in the wrong direction. What’s worse, the NSU does indeed appear to have links to Germany’s far-right NDP:
The head of Germany’s crime squad, Joerg Ziercke, said the arrest this week of a 35-year-old man in Jena in east Germany where the cell was based indicated a link to the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party (NPD).
The man was a senior NPD official in the state of Thuringia.
“I am convinced we will find further links to the NPD,” he told a news conference. “But it is up to politicians to decide what to do with the evidence found in our inquiries, that is not our job.”
Anyone who didn’t see this coming just wasn’t paying attention:
“We weren’t surprised at all,” explained Reinhard Koch, director of ARUG, an initiative based in the western city of Wolfsburg that provides counselling for young people exposed to right-wing extremism. “There have long been signs that at some point such groups would form, and not only for us–it should have been clear to the authorities too.”
On top of that, “It can’t be ruled that there are other such groups,” Koch told The Local. “Weapons caches were constantly being found in this scene or that scene–it happened so often that people stopped even wondering what these weapons were for.”
As far as Koch is concerned, the distance between the ‘ordinary’ neo-Nazi scene and the ‘hardcore’ element prepared to commit murder is very small. “You shouldn’t imagine that there are these nationalist gangs like the Kameradschaften, and then there’s a huge gap and then there’s a terrorist scene,” he said. “It all blends seamlessly together.”
Koch’s work with reformed neo-Nazis has taught him that violence permeates all parts of the extremist right-wing scene. This violence does not just take the form of drunken brawling at weekends, but disciplined training with guns administered by ex-servicemen.
“We have people in our programmes who have had weapons training themselves,” said Koch. “They were trained in western Germany, in Lower Saxony, by neo-Nazis who used to be mercenaries, for instance in the former Yugoslavia. Some were part of European training networks and got training in France or Belgium.”
The training takes place in remote country areas, sometimes privately owned, and sometimes rented for the purpose, either in an afternoon or over several days. “They often look for isolated wooded areas,” said Koch.
Dierk Borstel, researcher into right-wing extremism at the University of Bielefeld, was also unsurprised to read the recent revelations about the NSU. “We’ve known that the option of terrorism, the option of militancy, the option of murder has been discussed in the extremist right-wing scene for some time,” he told The Local.
“A few years ago there was a group based in the Potsdam area that went underground that called itself the ‘National Resistance’ who specialized in blowing up Jewish cemeteries,” he said. “We have constantly had weapons and explosives finds, but they were never taken seriously. It was simply massively underestimated. The police just thought they were little boys playing cowboys and Indians.”
The word for that is “denial.” Men who look like Nazis, call themselves Nazis, blow up Jewish cemeteries and kill Turkish shopkeepers are not little boys playing cowboys and Indians. They’re Nazis.
This problem will get worse. Anyone who doubts me on this might note that where Europe’s concerned, I’ve so far been right about everything else.
Published in General
As a pejorative. Employed to repress unwelcome ideas and browbeat their enemies into silence.
If you choose to associate yourself with a group as recognizably evil as the Nazis some measure of evil already dwells within.
1) How is it that the Far Left and the Far Right probably come closest to each other on the subject of Israel?
2) Ireland has many political failings but in spite of an enormous influx of immigrants, mainly Eastern European, also many African,up to 10% of the population from a base of practically nothing 20 years ago, no anti-immigrant party has gained any traction whatsoever. Maybe it comes from being colonised rather than colonial.
Sorry Claire, but you chose to conflate Nazi’s with the Right, and then you want to simply brush it aside. I don’t think you understand how offensive that reads to most of your audience here on Ricochet. Honestly, it made it difficult for me to read the rest of what you wrote it bothered me so much.
I am thoroughly on the side of Israel and I am disgusted when people from our leftist elite to Arab street protesters scapegoat Jews. So when you carelessly associate me with them it is not going to go away easily.
Nazism and all its cousins, The Klan, The Nation of Islam, and any other racial purity groups attract people when times are tough. It is natural for people to seek other people more like themselves, in good times people join clubs in bad times people join gangs. If people have found themselves in negative circumstances for decades or generations they tend to revert back to a kind of tribalism. This is what European socialism has created we see less of this problem in the U.S. because for most of our history there has been economic upward mobility for most people. Again the solution is a free market economic system and limited government intervention.
You’re right. This strategy is the only way in Norway to keep Breivik locked up indefinitely. If he is declared sane, he would be out in about 12 years, I think.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
I have a feeling that to right-leaning Americans, the European brand of right-wingism should be perplexing. So exploration of terms is in order. ·Dec 3 at 9:24am
So in other words, they don’t make room on their spectrum for liberty. It’s all Statism and it’s just a question of choosing which flavor of Statism you’d prefer.
No wonder Europe is in trouble.
Mendel
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
No wonder Europe is in trouble.
Yes and no.
Personal liberty in Germany is very strong – in some ways even more so than in America (think alcohol, speed limits, and public nudity).
But the role of the state in many facets of life – health, business, welfare, education – is certainly an order of magnitude greater than here. The conservative parties in Germany (CDU/CSU) usually support measures like austerity, privatization and deregulation, but they’re starting from a much, much higher baseline than us in most categories.
Comparisons are confusing. What we call “right-wing” in America is small-government, pro-tradition, religious/churchly, patriotic. Historically, these views in Europe were represented by “Center” parties– people who resisted radicalisms of all sorts (communists, Nazis, anarchists, etc.). In Norway this political party is still called “Sentrum.” On the continent, this stream lives on in the parties usually called “Christian Democrat.” Rattlesnake, that’s not right. In Germany the FDP is against Statism and for small government. We would call them Libertarians. Just like our Libertarians, they don’t fit on the spectrum (exhibit A: Ron Paul). Then there’s the Pirate Party, which just won seats in some German states for the first time (over the 5% minimum)– geeky, young, uber-libertarians
Spot on.
One scary development is that the Communist party has become resurgent in eastern Germany as unemployment remains around 20% in many places. It is sad that many people there blame capitalism for their plight, when it is actually the ravaging of their society for 40 years under socialism that is still pulling them down today.
I’d substitute “conservatives” for “the right”, but agree with the general statement … we are suspicious of concentrated power and think ill effects are an inevitable outcome of it.
As you correctly point out, Communism is just as evil as Nazism. However, the Left has worked very hard to succeed in preventing Communism from being universally labeled as evil. I don’t agree with that, but I accept that they won that linguistic argument. Thus, when I see someone with a Che Guevara T-shirt on, I understand that they could just be blindingly ignorant to history rather than being automatically evil.
What everyone has collectively agreed on, however, is that the Nazis were astoundingly evil. Thus, if I see someone with a Nazi T-shirt on, I will reasonably conclude that they are evil people and will offer no apologies for doing so.
If you choose to associate yourself with a group as recognizably evil as the Nazis some measure of evil already dwells within.
My point is that we subjectively choose to define what is “recognizable evil.”
Some measure of evil resides in each and every one of us. No one escapes from evil thoughts and all of us have at times been cruel, indifferent, duplicitous, covetous, larcenous, etc. We are weak and yield to temptation and selfishness. Imagine the number of Germans–even Nazis–who never personally harmed a Jew, but profited in ways great and small from their suffering. A better apartment after the Jewish neighbor was sent off. A Jewish girl forced into unwanted sex in return for not having her family sent off–or just for food rations. The sickening possibilities are endless. They weren’t all SS-like acts of barbarity, however.
Now turn to Blacks in America under slavery or Jim Crow. Or Kulaks in the Ukraine under Stalin. How hard is it to imagine similar instances of situational evil? Why do we focus on the one but not the others?