from Debatte: Review of Contemporary German Affairs (UK) 2 1993 pp. 131-151
Thomas Assheuer and Hans Sarkowicz Rechtsradikale in Deutschland: Die Alte und die neue Rechte C. H. Beck, Munich 1990 pp. 222. Index.
Bundesminister des Innern Wehrhafte Demokratie und Rechtsextremismus Bonn 1992 pp. 124.
Werner Halbauer and Volkhard Mosler Stoppt die Nazis: Argumente für den Kampf gegen Rassismus und Faschismus Sozialistische Arbeitergruppe, Hannover 1991 pp. 49.
Bernd Siegler Auferstanden aus Ruinen: Rechtsextremismus in der DDR Edition Tiamat, Berlin 1991 pp. 191.
Richard Stöss Politics against Democracy: Right-wing Extremism in West Germany Berg, Oxford 1991 pp. xvi+272. Index. figures. Maps.
Fascist organisations have been increasing their influence in the developed world during the 1990s. Such a widespread growth has not occurred since the 1930s. During the post World War II period right-wing extremist organisations had sporadic successes in a series of western European countries including the United Kingdom (the National Front), Germany (Sozialistische Reichspartei, SRP; Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD) and France (the Poujadist movement, Organisation Armee Secrete). There were the authoritarian but increasingly moribund regimes in Spain and Portugal, but only in Italy was there a significant, though small right-wing extremist party, the MSI which consistently attracted votes and held parliamentary seats in a western European democracy.
The 1980s saw such organisations grow in strength in Germany (Deutsche Volksunion,
DVU and Republicans) and France (Front National) in particular. The economic
and social chaos which followed the anti-stalinist revolutions in 1989 have
also provided fertile ground for fascism in Eastern Europe. The extreme right
made progress during the 1980s and 1990s across western Europe, including in
Italy (Northern Leagues), Norway and Denmark (Progress Parties), Sweden (New
Democracy), Austria (FPÖ), Belgium (Vlaams Blok) and the Netherlands (Centre
Party and Centre Democrats). Nor has North America been immune from this trend,
as the level of support for David Duke, with his Klu Klux Klan associations,
in US Senate, the Louisiana House of Representatives and gubernatorial elections
indicated. In Canada the Reform Party represents a similar phenomenon.
The resurgence of fascism in Germany since unification is therefore not an isolated phenomenon. Any discussion of German events must draw attention to this international trend in order to avoid attributing the growing significance of fascism there simply to local factors, peculiarities of German institutions and history or, most misleadingly, to the German psyche. A discussion of developments in Germany can, however, throw light on the international trend and help in assessing the adequacy of different approaches to understanding and combating fascism. It should also be noted that while fascist movements have undergone rapid growth recently, their impact on social and political life has increased and propitious circumstances for continued expansion of their influence remain, they are as yet a long way from taking power in Germany or elsewhere in the economically developed world.
The five publications considered here analyse German fascism and its antecedents from different viewpoints. Richard Stösss Politics against Democracy: Right-wing Extremism in West Germany is a discussion of the development of right-wing extremism in Germany between the end of World War II and 1989, the year the original German edition was published, from a liberal perspective. The largest section of Assheuer and Sarkowiczs 1990 Rechtsradikale in Deutschland: die alte und neue Rechte (Right-wing Radicals in Germany: the Old and the New Right) covers similar ground. The book is overwhelmingly empirical. In Auferstanden aus Ruinen: Rechtsextremismus in der DDR (Resurrected from the Ruins: Right-wing Extremism in the GDR) Bernd Siegler focuses on the background to contemporary right-wing extremism in the east of Germany, which is also treated very briefly in Rechtsradikale in Deutschland, to mid1991. His position can probably be best described as new left. The collection Wehrhafte Demokratie und Rechtsextremismus (Vigilant Democracy and Right-wing Extremism) was published by the Bundesminister des Innern, (BMI, Federal Interior Ministry) in March 1992 but written at least six months earlier. Most of its eight essays are official and/or conservative accounts of right-wing extremism and justifications for state repression of both the extremist left and right in Germany. The argument in the pamphlet Stoppt die Nazis by Werner Halbauer and Volkhard Mosler derives from Trotskys analysis of fascism and deals with events up to December 1991.
The use of the term fascist to describe right-wing extremist organisations is controversial. Apart from Halbauer and Mosler, these publications prefer right-wing extremism. This is partly because the term is associated with the official anti-fascism of the stalinist east German state. But, in the west, it also gives legitimacy to the idea of an anti-fascist movement, as opposed to exclusively state initiated measures against right-wing extremism which Stöss and most of the BMI authors advocate. In fact Jesse implies that anti-fascism is a cover for left-wing extremism (BMI 17). Fascism can, however, be understood as having an analytical content which highlights some fundamental similarities between certain contemporary movements or parties and interwar National Socialism/Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Today the use of the terms fascist and neo-nazi are less controversial when applied to usually small groups of politically motivated skinheads or thugs or organisations which claim to stand in the tradition of Nazism or Fascism (or the national equivalents in other countries). The tactics of these jackbooted groups (Stiefelfaschisten) parallel the street violence and public displays of strength of the Nazis and Fascists. They are designed to impress potential supporters with the fascist organisations power and ability to intimidate their enemies. Currently the most successful fascist organisations in Germany concentrate on electoral tactics, which were also employed by the fascist organisations of the 1920s and 1930s, though not to the exclusion of public mobilisations. They play down, if in ambiguous terms, associations with pre- or World War II fascism. Emphasis on electoral or violent methods is, however, a matter of tactics rather than strategy. The same political outlook, social base, and orientation often underlie both uncouth skinhead political thuggery and the suit and tie wearing respectability of much of the electoralist extreme right (Kravattefaschisten). The organisations which constitute the two tactical faces of contemporary fascism also share members.
Of the five books, those by Stöss, and Assheuer and Sarkowicz provide the most detailed and useful outlines of the organisational history of postwar west German right-wing extremism. Stöss, a Berlin political scientist, also deals with the main themes in right-wing extremist thought and contributes some theoretical assessments of developments. After illustrating what right-wing extremism means in practice and its ideological preoccupations, he provides some background in terms of attitude surveys and denazification in the west. Chapter four, the longest, is an historical account of right-wing extremism since World War II. His conclusion assesses different explanations of the phenomenon and strategies for combating it. It is followed by a final chapter in point form Summary of the Theories Outlined in this Analysis and an Appendix of seven brief documents. The Appendix provides interesting illustrations of the propaganda and preoccupations of several right-wing extremist organisations between 1953 and 1978. But they are only accessible to German readers, as they remain, for some reason, untranslated.
Rechtsradikale in Deutschland, by journalists Assheuer and Sarkowicz is really two books. The first, by Assheuer, consists of two sections. The opening section is made up of separate chapters on the main right-wing extremist organisations and currents, dealt with in Stösss chapter four. The experience in the DDR is very briefly examined in the second section. The second book, by Sarkowicz, deals in some detail with the New Right, an intellectual current modelled on its French namesake. Sarkowicz provides some insights into the internal structure of a particular intellectual current, without examining its wider political and organisational influence in German society or even the wider fascist milieu in any depth.
Stöss explains how the policies pursued by the western occupying powers and West German governments, repressing and glossing over the past facilitated the survival of fascist ideas. Denazification (the punishment or removal from positions of responsibility of people compromised by the National Socialist regime) was only briefly and unevenly pursued. Soon after the Cold War started, the western occupation powers, especially the United States, concluded that such measures could only weaken an important ally. Nor was the Adenauer Government any more single-minded in weeding out Nazis from the bureaucracy, politics or business. It pursued a policy of integrating such elements into its electoral support base.
Right-wing extremism has experienced several periods of rising influence in West Germany. The first, examined by Knütter (BMI 46-49) as well as Stöss, was associated with the growing electoral support for the SRP, between 1949 and 1952, particularly in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen. During the early reconstruction period, with widespread privation, this party provided a focus for some dispossessed German refugees from Communist countries and former beneficiaries of the National Socialist regime. The success of reconstruction together with a ban on the SRP in 1952 and subsequently on successor organisations dispersed the bulk of its supporters, though its core moved on to other right-wing extremist groups. Right-wing extremism had little impact during the following decade.
Germanys first post-war recession coincided with the formation of a Grand Coalition of the Christian Union Parties and the Social Democrats in December 1966. These circumstances favoured the rapid growth of the NPD, which gave form to right-wing dissatisfaction with the economic downturn and hostility to the Government. The NPD entered parliaments in seven states between 1966 and 1969, with between 5.8 and 9.8 per cent of the vote. Three factors contributed to the collapse of support for the NPD from 1969. As Halbauer and Mosler emphasise, militant anti-fascist mobilisations confronted NPD rallies, meetings and marches during 1968 (41-43). When the 1969 Federal election took place the level of support for the NPD, already forced by the anti-fascist movement to call off all large public meetings, had already been declining for several months. The NPD achieved only 4.3 per cent in the election, the best result for the extreme right at a national level since 1949, but still below the 5 per cent hurdle a party must clear before it can win any seats. The election ushered in a Social-Liberal coalition, with the conservative Christian Union parties going into opposition and providing a more respectable focus for right-wing discontent. The resumption of economic growth also undermined one of the causes of that discontent.
Rechtsradikale in Deutschland outlines the background and evolution of militant neo-nazism since the War in slightly greater detail than Politics against Democracy whose attention, as far as such groups are concerned, is focused on the growth of right-wing terrorism and storm trooper units during the mid1970s. These organisations did not organise more than 1 500 people between 1975 and 1987. Both books neglect the efforts of the NPD to reestablish its influence during another recession by means of extraparliamentary mobilisations, particularly in Frankfurt, in between 1977 and 1979. Perhaps this is because the NDP did not make major electoral gains at this stage. Intimidatory and demonstrations marches are, however, like electoral campaigns and other forms of violence, notably assaults by individuals and small groups, part of the strategic repertoire of fascism. Halbauer and Mosler argue that the failure of the NPD to sustain its activity on this occasion was overwhelmingly due to militant counterdemonstrations, which mobilised 7 000 people on 17 June 1977 and 50 000 on 17 June 1979 to prevent the NPD from marching (43-44). Neither parliamentary changes nor the resumption of impressive levels of growth played a significant role in undermining the NPD on this occasion.
During the late 1980s two other right-wing extremist organisations, concentrating on electoral tactics achieved some successes. One DVU member entered the Bremen parliament in 1987 and the Republicans won six seats in the European Parliament and 11 in the Berlin Senate in 1989. Both organisations are based in Bavaria (though the DVUs successes have been concentrated in northern states) and target foreigners as the source of economic and other problems in Germany.
Sieglers treatment of the background to right-wing extremism in eastern Germany
complements the account of developments in the old Federal Republic in Politics
against Democracy.
Over half a million exNazi Party members in the Soviet Occupation Zone were sacked between the end of the War and March 1948. This was used by the communist regime to emphasise its anti-fascist credentials compared to West Germany, where limited denazification had left nazis in prominent positions in business and the public sector. The Adenauer Government responded in kind, in 1960, with an extensive list of exNazis holding important positions in the DDR (99-110 also see Assheuer and Sarkowicz 99-102 on the cold war and former nazi officials). Siegler, Knütter (BMI 56) and Rosen (BMI 96-97) contend that the regimes ideology of institutionalised anti-fascism sheltered the population from settling accounts with National Socialism. Siegler also makes important points, though imprecisely, about the weaknesses of German Communist policy during the 1930s (112). Halbauer and Mosler provide a better account of the disastrous effects the rise of Stalinism had for working class resistance to National Socialism (20-23). In the early 1930s it was crippled by the Communist International and hence the German Communist Partys characterisation of social democracy as a wing of the fascism. Later the Party followed the Comintern in supporting the Hitler-Stalin Pact and persecuted members who criticised it. After the War, the Soviet military very rapidly repressed anti-fascist committees set up spontaneously by rank and file German Communists and Social Democrats in favour of authorities under reliable German Communists flown in from Moscow. Suppression of the east German working class took its most overt form when the uprising of 1953 was put down with tanks. Nor did the Communist Party (SED) shrink from using anti-semitism (Siegler 120-137, Halbauer and Mosler 22-23).
Since the 1970s fascist organisations have existed in the DDR. They have experienced a greater tolerance than left-wing and liberal critics of the communist system. Skinheads and right-wing extremists in the DDR expressed the same virtues stridently promoted by the regime: order, discipline and dedication. Instances of co-operation between fascists and the state authorities were therefore not coincidental. In the mid1970s there was a neo-nazi group in a paramilitary police unit in Basdorf. Subsequently the police have used skinheads and neo-nazis to clear out occupied houses, harass oppositionists and in drug investigations. A particular focus for right-wing radicals was the stewarding group of the Free German Youth (FDJ), the youth arm of the SED. This organisation provided scope for rignt-wingers to impose their conception of acceptable behaviour on others, sometimes with violence, to maintain order at FDJ events (Siegler 74-88).
The treatment of foreign workers, employed in relatively small numbers in the DDR in an effort to overcome a chronic shortage of labour, indicates that racism was a feature of the communist regime. The largest group of such workers were from Vietnam. They were isolated in separate, crowded apartment blocks and their lives were highly regimented; women were forbidden from becoming pregnant and were subject to deportation if they did. The isolated living conditions of foreign workers and the fact that they were permitted to send home some items in short supply made them racist scapegoats for sections of a population suffering from chronic shortages of many goods.
The racism experienced by foreign workers in the east worsened after the fall of the Berlin Wall and political liberalisation, as right-wing extremists operated more openly and confidently. These developments are discussed in the first section of Sieglers book. The period after the revolution saw considerable activity by local fascists and others coming or returning from West Germany. From late 1990 there were rising numbers of assaults against foreign workers and students in east Germany. The first racist murder by neo-nazis occurred in the village of Eberwalde in Brandenburg in November. Neo-nazis protested against the opening of the German-Polish border in April 1991, attacking Polish visitors at some border crossings. The city of Dresden became a particular focus for neo-nazis in 1990 and 1991. In June 1991 two thousand neo-nazis marched unhindered through Dresden in a funeral procession for a murdered leader, Rainer Sonntag.
The revolution in East Germany and German unification, presided over by conservative Chancellor Kohl, took place after the publication of the German edition of Stösss book, on which the English translation is based. These events sidelined the right-wing extremists in the West Germany for a period. A key aspect of their program, unification, was being implemented, at least in part, by a mainstream party, as Halbauer and Mosler note (45). Lange and Sippel, officials of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Defence of the Constitution) intelligence agency draw attention to this phenomenon too (BMI 30, 73). Their contributions are the most useful in the volume. Langes essay is essentially an account of the legal arrangements for and procedures of the Verfassungsschutz. Sippel surveys right-wing extremist organisations since unification, providing a useful, though brief, update of material in Politics against Democracy, Rechtsradikale in Deutschland and Auferstanden aus Ruinen to about September 1991. He draws attention in particular to the favourable prospects facing the electorally oriented DVU and NPD. This assessment also applies to the Republicans party which has been more cautious in expressing sympathy with the Nazi regime. On this basis it is not classified as right-wing extremist by the Verfassungschutz and is not therefore subject to its surveillance.
Jesses and Knütters chapters in the BMI volume are instructive as symptoms of the inability of some conservative academics to come to grips with a right-wing extremist movement. Jesse, in an essay devoted to justifying repressive state action against extremists, focuses on the threat from the left, vindicating the 1970s Berufsverbot, a ban on the employment of leftists in the public sector. Knütter after an historical survey of right-wing extremism in the east and west of Germany, argues that prospects for right-wing extremism are negative for the moment (62).
Racist violence in east Germany reached a highpoint in late September 1991 in a sustained assault on a refugee and guestworker accommodation block in the Saxon town of Hoyerswerda. The attacks by skinheads and organised neo-nazis were applauded by onlookers over two nights. Hoyerswerda triggered a still uninterrupted series of attacks across the east and west of Germany. Published in December 1991, Stoppt die Nazis, deals with the events in Hoyerswerda and subsequent advances by electoral fascists in the western states of Bremen and Lower Saxony. Mosler and Halbauer discuss the social basis of racism in capitalist economies, including that of the DDR, the class nature of fascism and assess different strategies for combating it.
Embarrassingly for the police chief of Rostock in his contribution to the BMI volume, the violence reached a new crescendo in August 1992 in his home town when, over five nights, up to 1 000 thugs, again supported by significant numbers of onlookers, attacked the central asylum seekers refuge for the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. Siegfried Korduss essay maintained that the potential for right-wing extremism in Rostock should not be underestimated. The police are, however, prepared in terms of organisation, personnel and equipment for any possible further escalation.
It quickly became apparent, after the first post-unification elections in December
1990, that Kohls promises of a relatively painless integration of east Germany
were baseless. He was obliged very rapidly to increase taxation across Germany
and the rate of unemployment in the east continued to rise. The Christian Democratic
Union performed very badly in the January state election in Hesse and lost office
in the April 1991 poll in Rhineland-Palatinate (Kohl’s home state). During
the first half of 1991 there were also mass protests by western coal miners
and eastern workers defending their jobs and wages. In August 1991, in the run-up
to the Bremen elections, Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union initiated a
major public debate and distracted attention from its problems by calling for
a change to the asylum clause in the constitution (article 16) to deal with
the flood of asylum seekers coming to Germany. This paid off in Bremen where
the Social Democratic Party lost its majority. But by appealing to racist sentiments
Government leaders made them and their most extreme advocates, the fascists,
more respectable. The DVU increased its representation from one to six in Bremen,
while the Republicans did well in the Lower Saxon communal elections in October
1991. This was not the first time, Halbauer and Mosler point out, a German government
had made tactical use of racism (11-13). The Social Democratic/Liberal coalition
did so in the mid1970s, the Christian Union/Liberal coalition in 1984 and again
in 1986. The prestigious political weekly, Der Spiegel pointed out
early in 1992 that the [conservative] union parties have used the so called
flood of asylum seekers for years for their electoral purposes.
Today, despite horrific scenes of arson, racist riots and street violence, the
fascist currents which attract the most support in Germany, as elsewhere in
developed countries, are electoral in their current orientation. The Kravattefaschisten
do, however, have a symbiotic relationship with their jackbooted co-thinkers
who are already putting racist elements of their common program into practice.
While in the east of Germany there have been proportionately more acts of racist
violence compared to the size of the population, a larger absolute number of
attacks have been made in the west. And compared to the drawing power of the
small groups of Stiefelfaschisten, the DVU and Republicans have a mass
base which is disproportionately located in the west. Opinion poll results published
in Der Spiegel since September 1991 have consistently shown both more
widespread sympathy for racist violence and a greater preparedness to consider
voting for electoral fascist organisations in the west than the east.
The books considered here offer various explanations for the growth of fascist organisations in Germany during the 1980s and 1990s, some more coherent than others. Stöss understands right-wing extremism as a set of ideas held by individuals for essentially social-psychological reasons. For him, right-wing extremism involves antipathy towards democracy, aggressive nationalism and historical revisionism. He argues that democratic nationalism has not found any response in Germany in the long term. It is true that nationalism as a label certainly elicits hostility across a wide political spectrum, and is a central concept for fascists. But this misses the point that, in practice, the democratic parties have all appealed to national interests in their pursuit of domestic and foreign policy. Fascists do reject democracy as inimical to national interests, embodied in a particular fascist party or leader. Their conception of national unity is intimately bound up with appeals to race, a concept which is not discussed in Stösss second chapter, on the characteristic ideas of right-wing extremism. By way of contrast, Lange, a Director of the Verfassungsschutz, who also defines right-wing extremism in terms of ideas, is clear that racism is a key characteristic of right-wing extremism (BMI 30).
In the chapter of Politics against Democracy on causes and countermeasures, Stöss argues that the expression of anti-democratic attitudes can be traced back mainly to an authoritarian, prejudiced character formation. This results from shortcomings and mistakes during early childhood socialisation (208). Following Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Stöss attributes these problems of socialisation to the breakdown of institutions which gave people a sense of identity, notably the family. The interaction of social and individual factors in generating right-wing extremism is noted. But the analysis that emerges has as its core the conception that right-wing extremism is essentially a form of individual thought and consequently behaviour. This is reinforced by the confusion in Stösss treatment of social factors. Thus he maintains that the significance of economic crises for the success of right-wing extremism is frequently overstated, though they can play a role, as an important requirement for peoples personal satisfaction. Social crises are of greater significance. But social crises, affecting housing, neighbourhood relations, social contacts and social care, cultural infrastructures and opportunities for leisure are largely determined by economic factors (214). It can be similarly argued that the crises of democratic means of social integration Stöss discusses are frequently an effect of major economic problems. Finally, he suggests, political culture can facilitate anti-democratic activity. This is an allusion to his earlier discussion of the repression and glossing over of National Socialism in the Federal Republic. Racism is mentioned in this connection but only in a long list of other factors which are bridges to the right (217). Attitudes to the Third Reich are a factor in the current appeal of fascism, but a very subordinate one. Stöss does not grasp how racism and nationalism are both far more important points of contact between mainstream German politics and the extreme right (and this is true in most other liberal democracies) which speak more to the direct experiences of postwar generations than historical judgements about the Third Reich.
Historical revisionism is, nevertheless, the intellectual cement that ties contemporary fascists to the Nazi regime and plays an important role for the cadre of fascist organisations. The arguments assembled under this heading either deny or downplay the atrocities of the National Socialist period, particularly in relation to the genocide of Jews, Gypsies and other groups. On the other hand the positive aspects of Hitlers rule - national pride and greatness, low unemployment, law and order - are emphasised.
An analysis of right-wing extremism, like Stösss based on a methodological individualism, is apparent in Jaschkes short essay (BMI and sketchily in Rosens essay, BMI 97). He also explicitly identifies the importance of continuing cultural and organisational traditions in several neo-nazi youth groups in the contemporary growth of right-wing extremism (BMI 68). One might add that this fascist cadre extends to the core members of the DVU, NPD and Republicans.
Stöss examines several countermeasures against right-wing extremism. He maintains that bans on right-wing extremist groups, though not parties, can be effective if undertaken in the context of other measures to reduce their attractiveness. Jesse and Lange, as strong advocates of the theory of Streitbare Demokratie (Combative Democracy) and the importance of repressive measures against extremists, concur. The other measures Stöss advocates include steps to expand historical knowledge, communicate democratic norms and to create acceptable economic and social opportunities, as well as a political order with which people can identify. Recommendations at such a high level of abstraction are more like the amorphous political goals of any mainstream politician (conservative or social democratic) than a specific anti-fascist strategy. But Stöss does assert that When confronting right-wing extremism, the main concern is to protect youth from anti-democratic forces (235), and this priority derives most directly from his essentially individualist analysis of fascism. His proposals about social work amongst youth and education on National Socialism are a little more concrete than his other suggestions. Jaschke adds the promotion of multiculturalism to his recommendations for youth work (BMI 7071) and Rosen, an official in the Interior Ministry, outlines similar measures advocated in official reports (BMI 100-102).
The favourable effects of economic instability and crisis for the extreme right
is recognised by a range of authors, Stöss, Jaschke (BMI 68), Knütter
(BMI 43-44) Rosen (BMI 97), Sippel (BMI 77). Rosen (BMI 197) in particular and
an important strand of thought in mainstream German politics regard strategies
premissed on restoring sustained economic growth as crucial in undermining the
appeal of the extreme right.
Certainly, economic growth and the elimination of unemployment would decisively undermine, though not eliminate, the attractiveness of right-wing extremism. But if German fascism develops a wider base during the current recession it will be able to sustain the loyalty of a larger and more committed cadre during the subsequent economic recovery. And, to the extent that fascist organisations are more able to exercise more influence and demonstrate their political effectiveness at a national level, they will therefore be better placed to grow even as the economy picks up and during future recessions or social crises.
There is, however, a major problem with attempts to address unemployment, poverty
and their consequences directly, if economic crises are a characteristic and
unavoidable feature of capitalism or, at the very least, if Germany in the 1990s
cannot avoid deep recessions. This is what Wilfried Herz argues in the influential
Die Zeit; Germany is slithering into an economic crisis and no-one
knows how to pull it out.
The countermeasures discussed above all rely on the state, either to repress
the extreme right or to fund and organise schemes that shield people from the
influence of right-wing extremists. Halbauer and Mosler point out that the state
is not a neutral institution. The police in Hoyerswerda (and Rostock) took action
against anti-fascist demonstrators with much greater alacrity than when their
task was to stop assaults on foreigners which lasted days. This is not difficult
to understand given the racist sympathies of sections of police forces in the
east and west Germany (40-41). The Governments recourse to racist tactics also
casts doubt on a strategy of relying on the welfare arms of the state to eliminate
the attractiveness of right-wing extremism. Some state-funded efforts to undertake
social work amongst neo-nazi youth have even ended up providing them with the
means for more effective efforts to politically organise and recruit.
Siegler does not look to the state for a solution to the problem of right-wing extremism, but then the picture he paints is, apart from the pressure of international opinion (186), depressing. His explanation for the growth of fascism in Germany amounts to an identification of a continuing tradition that goes back to the Third Reich. There was, he believes, throughout the post-war period, insufficient effort to persuade east (and west) Germans of their responsibility for Nazism (7, 105-106, 111-112). This reproduces an aspect of Stösss analysis. As Siegler makes only minimal reference to the material conditions that can make fascism attractive, his analysis has a moralising flavour. He sees German unification and the reemergence of Germany as an independent power as responsible for the resurgence of this tradition. Siegler is sceptical about the use of right-wing extremism as a justification for strengthening the police, given the priorities of the state and federal governments. He also offers a moral critique of Heitmeyers analysis of the basis of right-wing extremism as exonerating those guilty of politically motivated racist violence.
Halbauer and Mosler systematically relate the experience of individuals and
shifts in the ideological climate to Germanys economic difficulties, to ground
an argument for countermeasures against fascism which neither rely on the state
or the utopia of uninterrupted capitalist growth. Economic problems are not
simply a matter of personal satisfaction (Stöss 212-213) but of survival.
The search for solutions and explanations in the face of a reality or threats
of unemployment and falling living standards is rational rather than a social
pathology. When alternative strategies have declining credibility the attractiveness
of racist and fascist ones increases. The credibility of the Governments explicit
response to the crisis in east Germany, as opposed to the message implicit in
its recourse to racism, started sinking soon after it was articulated. Despite
criticisms, from business interests amongst others,
I am certain we will be able to resolve our economic problems -- not overnight to be sure, but within a reasonable period of time." This assessment, given by Chancellor Kohl on October 2 1990, the eve of German political unification, continues to be correct two years after that historical date.10
Fascism can best be understood, according to Halbauer and Mosler, in terms of the social conditions which generate it and the social class at its core (27-29). The social base of fascism is middle layers in society. This does not mean that all members of fascist organisations are exclusively drawn from the new and old middle classes. Rather their ideology expresses the experience of these layers. The old middle class, particularly in economic crises, is squeezed between large enterprises which compete with family concerns on unequal terms and unions which endanger their existence by pushing up wage, transport and other costs. Similarly the new middle class in large public and private corporate hierarchies, may be pressured by senior managers to whom they are subordinate on the one side and the demands or resistance of subordinates whose confidence and power is enhanced by union membership. In east Germany declassed middle level and some senior functionaries of the old Stalinist apparatus have additional cause for discontent.
Fascists reject both organised labour and capital (generally equated with only a segment of the capitalist class, particularly financial capital, rather than the system of generalised commodity exchange). They blame social problems on racially identified scapegoats, the Jews or foreign workers, who can be thwarted by fanatical nationalism and pogroms. Fascist organisations therefore offer simple, if false, solutions to real problems. On this basis they can mobilise people adversely affected by economic crises and left hopeless by the failure or lack of alternative responses. This applies particularly to the unemployed and youth with no reason to have faith in the future. The appeal of fascism to organised, employed workers is far less, especially when they can respond to their problems through their unions or works councils. This has been the case in Germany recently, where unions in the west achieved partial victories in wages campaigns early in 1992, action by unions in the east has secured improvements in wages and groups of workers across the country have resisted shutdowns and redundancies with different degrees of success.
Using this framework, Halbauer and Mosler argue the Governments appeals to
racism, to distract attention from economic problems it was unable to solve,
have played a crucial role in the rapid growth of fascist organisations and
activity. The Governments naturalisation of racism and victim blaming behaviour
is in effect reproduced by Sippel and Lange. They assert that the arrival of
refugees has itself generated a racist response or deepening social problems
(BMI 31, 76, 77) and hence expanding the scope for right-wing extremist activity.
This is reflected in their use of the pejorative term Asylanten for asylum seekers
(31, 76).
Developments since their publication appeared have borne out Halbauer and Moslers analysis. The world recession hit the west of Germany in 1992. In April public sector workers engaged in their biggest ever strike campaign, preventing governments from shifting the burden of unification costs onto their and other workers wages. In the face of its continuing difficulties the Kohl Government repeatedly raised the asylum question. In a series of elections, opinion polls and campaigns of violence and even racist murders it has become clear that the fascists are the main beneficiaries. In Schleswig-Holstein in April 1992 the DVU it won almost seven per cent of the poll and entered the state parliament. The Republicans won 11 per cent of the vote in the Baden-Württemburg state poll on the same day and achieved gains in the Berlin communal elections of May 1992.
A few weeks before the Rostock pogrom, the Government again gave a melodramatic account of the asylum problem. On 4 August Interior Minister Seiters contended in the Federal Parliament that Germanys capacity to absorb newcomers. . . been strained to the limit by misuse of the asylum law. The fascist attacks on the Rostock asylum refuge set off another, more determined round of assaults across the country. The Social Democratic Partys national leadership dropped its opposition on the question and for the first time agreed to discuss the possibility of a revision of the asylum provision of the German constitution in late August 1992. A special Party conference in November endorsed the leaderships new position on article 16. In early October the Free Democratic Party, the liberal junior partner in the Kohl Government, followed suit. This has given further credibility to the racist preoccupations of the extreme right.
Stoppt die Nazis, unlike the other books under review, deals seriously with mass anti-fascist movements and mobilisations. Stöss briefly mentions the movement against the NPD during the late 1960s (148). But he conflates such actions with individual acts of violence against fascists (226) and on this basis rejects them, as do several of the BMI authors for whom organised anti-fascism is a (left-wing extremist) problem rather than a suitable response to right-wing extremism (Jesse 16, Lange 33, Knütter 60). Halbauer and Mosler distinguish between elitist actions by anti-fascist fighters and mass mobilisations to confront events organised by fascists. Sections of the autonomist movement (sometimes called anarchist in the English language press) regard the bulk of the German population as incapable of confronting fascism because compromised by racism and even see little distinction between the police or existing state and the fascists. The tactical conclusion is actions by small groups of dedicated antifascists which leave no space for involving the large numbers of working people whose interests the fascists threaten. Drawing on the experience of the struggle against fascism in Germany during the late 1960s and the 1970s, Stoppt die Nazis rejects this position and argues that it is possible both to confront the fascists publicly and politically and draw wider sections of the population into activity around defence of their own interests.
Challenged by big counter-demonstrations when they try to march or rally fascists loose several of their most important means of attracting support. The acceptability of their ideas is challenged when large numbers of people publicly demonstrate their hostility. The cultivated image of power, ability to intimidate political opponents and hence the credence for their racist programs fascists seek is deflated when they are unable to dominate the streets. Even massive moralistic displays of anti-racism or anti-fascism, such as the demonstrations in France over the last couple of years, cannot do this if they are removed in time or space from the fascists attempts to rally support. But Halbauer and Mosler maintain the large anti-racist marches and rallies after Hoyerswerda indicate that a bigger anti-fascist movement with more effective tactics is possible. Subsequently 20 000 anti-fascists and anti-racists marched in Rostock shortly after the pogrom there, anti-racist rallies on 8 November 1992 drew 350 000 people (even though it was organised by the Christian Democratic Union with an international audience in mind) and a 14 November mobilisation saw 200 000 demonstrate in Bonn against proposals to change the asylum article of the constitution. The potential to organise a large and militant anti-fascist movement remains.
Neo-liberalism and racism can be successfully challenged from below, and the workers' movement can experience its strength in struggles against attempts to subordinate jobs, wages and democratic rights to profits. The wharfies' victory did not threatened capitalism, but it provided workers with a glimpse of their potential power.
1. For surveys of some of these developments see P. Hainsworth (ed) The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA Pinter, London 1992, Parliamentary Affairs 45(3) July 1992, G. Ford Fascist Europe Pluto, London 1992. The final contribution to the Bundesminister des Innern volume, by Shlomann, also, though much less systematically, surveys right-wing extremist organisations outside Germany. [main text]
2. Also see P. Ködderitzsch and L. Müller Rechtsextremismus in der DDR Lamuv, Göttingen 1990. [main text]
3. Der Spiegel 17-2-92 p21. Jürgen Peters, spokesperson for the massive IG Metall union has made a similar point, Sydney Morning Herald 9-11-92 p. 13. [main text]
4. For an account of the nationality issue and the realities of the refugee intake see L. Hoffmann ‘Die unaufhaltbare Einwanderung: drei Grundirrtümer der Asyldebatte’ in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 12 1991 pp. 1469-1481 and his Die unvollendete Republik PapyRossa Verlag, Köln 1990. [main text]
5. See Der Speigel 25-11-91 and 26-10-92. [main text]
6. Thus Heinz-Peter Finke argues that ‘Society must give [young right-wingers] new hope for the future, above all a job, and then the chance to do something meaningful without using violence’ (Stuttgarter Nachrichten 14-8-92, translated in German Tribune 28-8-92). [main text]
7. Die Zeit 14-8-92 translated in German Tribune 28-8-92. [main text]
8. See T. Leif and R. Fromm Neonazis als Sozialarbeiter Erziehung und Wissenschaft (magazine of the trade union which covers social workers) October 1992. [main text]
9. WirtschaftsWoche 25-10-91 cover story argued that migrants make a significant net contribution to public income. This magazine is Germany's premier business weekly. Both a report from the Cologne Institute for the German Economy and the President of the Confederation of German Industry have subsequently offered positive assessments of the economic role of migrants in Germany, Rheinscher Merkur 23/10/92 translated in German Tribune 6/11/92. [main text]
10. Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Information Service Canberra 24-9-92. [main text]
11. Jaschke uses the term in a somewhat different context (BMI 65). [main text]
Back to Rick Kuhn's home page | Back to Rick Kuhn's publications list
Author Rick Kuhn.
File created 2000. Last revised 28 Apr 2008.
Feedback Form
Original URL:http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/rick/fasger.htm