Nazi party making a comeback in Germany?

Are you worried yet? I am.

BBC News: 'Poll boost' for German far right


I am absolutely disgusted with any German that votes for this party!

If they keep gaining I am out of here!

Oh for the love of God. They are causing a minor annoyance but nothing more. The BNP has won seats in the past and there will always be constituancies who listen and are willing to vote. All this does is make the major parties sit up and do the minor things they need to do to push them out next time around.

When these people are elected it seems, in such areas, a good idea at the time but eventually it gets turned around once the bare facts emerge

The BNP is not the NPD. It is disturbing. Hopefully it will make the SPD (in power there still) take notice and look at the cause.

You notice it much more in the East than you do here. I know they demonstrate in the larger cities in Germany, so you do get the big rallies, but you definitely do not sense the reality of the NPD here on a daily basis like you do in the former GDR.

I think, like it said in the article, the largest problem is by far the unemployment in the East. The town I lived in had 20% unemployment and the following situation: Large porcelain factory employing thousands was closed right after reunification. West German investors came in and bought up factory buildings and other properties for very little money, then instead of bringing new industry into the area, sat on the properties until they were so run down the buildings needed to be torn down.

You have people who have only ever worked as calligraphers in a porcelain factory trying to find and IT job. They don't have much of a chance. There are so many people in there early 40s who lost their jobs 15 years ago, haven't found anything in the East but because of family or other responsibilities haven't been able/weren't willing to move to the West. Now, with 40, their job applications are constantly rejected on the basis that they're too old.

The other big problem is that you have a large number of Eastern Europeans (mostly Russian, Ukrainian, Turmenistani, etc) who get their visas and are set up with a place to live in the East. Now, I know they do get some kind of compensation for having a great, great grandpa who was German- but it doesn't sit well with the locals. I think the attitude is "Why are they bringing all these Russians in and giving them all kinds of cushy kickbacks when we're here and can hardly get by?" They feel shit on, to put it bluntly.

Now, up until a few years ago, the goverment showered them with unemployment checks and Umschulungskurse (retraining courses). It was a short term fix to keep them floating by on welfare but offered absolutely no long term solution for the economic situation in the East. I could write volumes about the ineffectiveness of retraining programs for the unemployed since I taught in these schools for 5 years... As you can imagine, the government ran out of money, drastically reduced the amount of schooling they were funding, and now everyone who's been in and out of retraining courses for IT-Systemkauffrau or whatever else for the last 15 years is sat on their sofas with no chance of getting another training course.

Anyway, I think people in the East have developed a "desperate times call for desperate measures" attitude. You not only see a much higher support of the NPD, but you'll also find a large number of people voting PDS. In fact, more people vote PDS than NPD in many areas.

The NPD gets more attention here than the PDS though.

Correct. I was using the BNP as an example

I actually had to Google BNP. Had never heard of them...

Why? I would rather be disgusted at the mainstream parties for not catering to the needs of the people who voted for the extremes (right or left). Growing extremism is a direct result of the failure of the centre parties. When the mainstream do not listen or act then people will turn to alternatives. Life in München is pretty rosy for most people. The situation further East is bleak.

These guys arent actually that bad, they are anti-immigration but thats about it, you would have to be some sort of extremist of another type to compare these guys directly to nazis. Any more extreme and they would be illegal though, as other parties have been made illegal in the past. I heard that most of their senior members are actually members of the German secret service infiltrating the scene to keep an eye out for real nazi behaviour anyway.

I don't believe that the leaders are infiltrators - if they were then I'm sure they'd be able to come up with better election posters than "touristen wilkommen, asylbetruger raus" and "arbeit statt einwanderung".

on the other hand, the cdu's posters we're even worse. "Seidel statt Ringstorf. Wir können mehr" tells me what exactly about their policies?

I guess at least the FDP, PDS and NPD posters gave you some idea as to their policies (lower taxes, socialism and blaming everything on foreigners respectively). Maybe that's why all three increased their share of the vote. Not sure how the PBC fared, mind, but then again their "policy" seemed to be that you can never have enough biblical quotations and the grey panthers with "sod everyone else, we want big fat pensions" probably aren't going to appeal to everyone. at least, not all at the same time.

The previous government's attempt to get the NPD banned collapsed in court becasue it was proved to be riddled with state agents.

Dig a bit deeper and you'll actually find these people are very bad. Don't fall for their media image they try to project. Don't believe me? Go to one of their demos. You can see what kind of horrible thugs they are.

Yeah, alot of Germans thought Hitler was not that bad either

wasn"t that short arsed austrian with a dodgy moustache also sent to spy on a fledgling political party? but seriously the npd are like the greens, once they get in power they fuck up and leave all their supporters dissatisfied. i wouldnt worry about them.

Greens are a different kettle of fish.

It was predictable from the very beginning how they were going to end up.
They didn't want to change the world, they wanted to tweak the edges a bit.
And ended up selling themselves out, attacking the working class at home and pursuing militaristic imperialsim abroad.

Anyway, the NPD. Although it is riddled with state agents that figure is perhaps 20-50% ??? so there are a whole bunch of "real" fascists" in there. As the above poster mentions, behind the suave media campaigns are your regular nazis who have so called foreigners, Jews, gays, the disabled, Slavs and the like in gas ovens quicker than you can say "Schicklgruber".

True. But I don't know if Joschka Fischer started out only wanting to tweak the edges a bit.

"He was a member of the APO (German: Außerparlamentarische Opposition; English: Extra-Parliamentary Opposition), as well as a militant in a group called Revolutionary Fight. He was the leader of several street battles fought by the anarchist Putzgruppe which systematically attacked the police, injuring some of them severely." (source)

AAARRR!!! They all be cunts they be, walking the plank is too good for them. AAAARRR!!!

True dat, but it was predictable due to their reformist politics and lack of class analysis.

Joschka Fischer is perhaps the biggest laugh sell out in German politics. He's now taken a cushy job as a professor of international economic policy at Princeton.