Bernd Sommer. Patterns of Prejudice. Volume 42, Issue 3, 2008.
For almost ten years, anti-globalization groups and activists have been gathering at the various meetings and summits of the world’s political and economic leaders to stage massive protests and related meetings of their own. Last year’s G8 summit, which took place from 6-8 June 2007 in Heiligendamm in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast, was no exception. However, in addition to the usual suspects, such as ATTAC and other left-wing activist organizations, German extreme-right groups and the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany, NPD) also organized large-scale protests against the summit. As early as January 2007, the NPD’s secretary-general Peter Marx was quoted in the party’s newspaper Deutsche Stimme as saying that the NPD’s organized demonstration in 2007 would concentrate on the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. The NPD organized a political rally for 2 June 2007 under the slogan ‘social not global—no to globalization’ in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s capital Schwerin. At the last minute, it was banned by the court, which provoked spontaneous demonstrations and gatherings by the 1,500 would-be rally participants in various locations including Lüneburg and Berlin.
The NPD was not alone on the extreme right, however, in making extensive plans for protests against the 2007 G8 summit. The same sorts of preparations were being made by other far-right groups, including the so-called freie Kameradschaften (free fellowships) that exist within the larger extreme-right milieu in Germany. The government’s reply to a question posed by a parliamentary group from the German Linkspartei (Left Party) revealed that the violence-prone neo-Nazi groups and freie Kameradschaften were discussing—under the slogan ‘to rock G8 2007’—how to ‘smash’ or at least create a disturbance at the summit. How are we to make sense of this plan by the NPD and other extreme-right groups to participate in activities that are traditionally the province of the left? Was it merely another short-term appeal to a broader spectrum of supporters? There had already been several such attempts by the extreme right to incorporate Zeitgeist issues into its political agenda in a bid to become more attractive to the political mainstream. For instance, in the 1990s, various extreme-right groups included environmental issues in their political platform. And, in 2003, far-right organizations tried to join protests against the Iraq war. All of these attempts more or less failed. The extreme right in Germany remained throughout these years a single-issue movement, supported for the most part because of its negative stance towards immigrants and immigration.
There are good reasons to believe that the extreme right’s protest against the G8 summit in 2007 was not a one-off political ploy. Rather, it can be seen as the latest attempt by extreme-right organizations in Germany to establish anti-capitalist and anti-globalist issues at the centre of their political agendas. In recent years, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization arguments, as well as arguments against the welfare and employment reforms of the federal government, have become prominent throughout German right-wing extremism, within the political parties, neo-Nazi and skinhead groups, in publications and music, and on the Internet. And this embrace of social issues and anti-globalization themes has indeed been successful in appealing to a broader spectrum of supporters, especially in the East. In the autumn of 2004, extreme-right parties won seats in the state parliaments of Brandenburg and Saxony. In September 2006 the NPD won six seats in the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The 2004 election campaigns of extreme-right parties included huge protests against the welfare and employment reforms of the federal government, an issue that took priority over those that had previously characterized the radical right, such as immigration.
This article critically examines this re-emergence of anti-capitalist and anti-globalization arguments within the ideology and discourses of the German extreme right by analysing the latest campaigns of the NPD—the most successful extreme-right party of recent years—and the activities of the freie Kameradschaften, which have, since the mid-1990s, played an increasingly important role within the organized extreme right in Germany. This analysis demonstrates that xenophobic, racist and antisemitic attitudes form an essential part of the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization discourses of the extreme right.
The NPD: from anti-Communism to anti-capitalism
According to the political scientist Herbert Kitschelt, the extreme right would only do well where it was able to find the ‘winning formula’ necessary to attract right-authoritarian support in elections. In recent years, the NPD seems to have found this ‘winning formula’ by strengthening its engagement with local affairs and by taking up social issues that promote an anti-capitalist and anti-globalization agenda.
In Germany, there are three political parties that could be labelled ‘extreme right’: the Deutsche Volksunion (German Peoples Union, DVU), the so-called Republikaner (Republicans) and the NPD. While the DVU and the Republikaner have occasionally been successful in regional elections, especially in the 1990s, for more than thirty years the NPD has been seen as a party of old Nazis and historical revisionists, with a strong anti-Communist profile, and of ever diminishing importance. In 1996 Udo Voigt was elected as the new chair of the NPD and it opened its ranks to neo-Nazi skinheads and activists. Furthermore, under the new leadership, the focus of the party’s political agenda shifted from anti-Communism to explicit anti-capitalism. The NPD’s ideological agenda, in turn, systematically shifted away from issues relating to historical National Socialism and the Third Reich towards more up-to-date concerns, such as unemployment, the economic problems of the welfare state and the so-called ‘social question’. This shift is reflected in the NPD’s 1997 manifesto, which is still current—in which four of the fifteen issues addressed deal with the economic situation and contain harsh criticism of international capitalism and globalization—as well as in the party’s newspaper Deutsche Stimme. However, under Udo Voigt it was possible to witness more than just a programmatic change. The NPD also modified its field of activity. For instance, May 1st—international workers’ day—became one of the NPD’s most important annual occasions for organizing large-scale demonstrations. In 2007 more than 1,800 people attended the NPD’s May Day demonstration in Erfurt (Thuringia), and another 600 people came to the party’s demonstration in Dortmund. In the same year, more NPD May Day events were held in Nuremberg, Rüsselsheim/Raunheim (Hesse) and Vechta (Lower Saxony). In addition, the NPD leadership has attempted to establish regional strongholds, largely by concentrating its energies on certain regions in the East. With an unemployment rate of about 15 per cent and an electorate that demonstrates only weak ties to mainstream political parties, Eastern Germany appears to the NPD leadership to be an ideal recruiting ground.
It took a couple of years for the new strategy and the efforts of the new NPD leadership to bring results. 2004 marked a crucial point in this development when the German federal government passed a number of laws, including measures that liberalized the labour market and substantially limited the welfare safety net. These reforms were highly unpopular in Germany and led to massive protests by trade unions and various leftist groups. The NPD attempted to participate in these protests from the very beginning by joining political demonstrations and running its own campaigns against the new social reforms. At the same time, several state elections and European elections were held across Germany. The NPD leadership put opposition to the welfare reforms at the heart of its campaign platforms. Its principal election campaign advertisement in 2004 consisted of one simple slogan: quittung für hartz iv (Payback for Hartz IV). What is striking about this campaign is that the NPD’s opposition to the welfare reforms includes no reference to traditional campaign issues of extreme-right parties, such as immigration. Advertisements with an anti-immigration theme were also used during the 2004 campaigns, but those protesting the social reforms were far more prevalent.
The strategy was extremely successful. In fact, the 2004 campaigns were the NPD’s most successful for thirty-five years. The party won 4 per cent of the vote in the Saarland state elections (compared to around one per cent in the previous elections) as well as around one per cent of the total vote in the European elections. In Saxony, the NPD got more than 9 per cent of the vote in the state elections, winning twelve seats in parliament, making it the first time since 1967 that the party was represented at this level. Sixty per cent of the party’s electorate acknowledged that they voted NPD this time because of the party’s resistance to the Hartz IV welfare reforms.
Due to this tremendous success, the NPD party leadership continued to focus on the ‘social question’ and anti-capitalist issues, and even to strengthen its positions. Social issues played a dominant role in all of the NPD’s subsequent election campaigns. This shift in the NPD’s policy orientation is definitively expressed in the following statement of February 2006 by the party’s executive board member and chief ideologue Jürgen Gansel:
The national opposition has got every chance of being successful if it develops a nationalism relevant to the present. That’s only possible if it stops nonsensical debates that lead into a political dead-end, such as nostalgic appeals to the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler and historical National Socialism are the past and nothing but the past. Being swamped by foreigners, Hartz IV, foreign domination by the EU and globalization are the bitter present.
The strategy continues to be successful. Although the NPD failed to win seats in the Bundestag in the autumn 2005 elections, it still won 1.6 per cent of the vote, its best national result since 1969. And, in the autumn of 2006, the NPD won 7.3 per cent in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state elections, giving it seats in another state parliament, as well as in several local parliaments in East Germany.
The German ‘groupuscular right’
Having examined the NPD’s recent ideological shift, let us focus on the other dominant force within the extreme-right milieu in contemporary Germany: organized neo-Nazism and the so-called freie Kameradschaften. Whereas extreme-right parties such as the DVU or the Republikaner have reported high losses in membership over the last ten years, the neo-Nazi subculture has seen continual growth. At present, more than 4,200 neo-Nazi activists are operating in over 180 freie Kameradschaften in Germany, compared to 3,000 activists in 2003.
These ‘free fellowships’ can be counted as part of what Roger Griffin terms the ‘groupuscular right’. The groupuscular right evinces characteristics of a political movement. It comprises small, locally based groups of twenty or thirty members without any central or formal structure. Although these groups operate mainly at a local or regional level, they share revolutionary, ideological, organizational or activist agendas and cooperate through the arrangement of regular meetings and increasingly via the Internet.
As with the NPD, protests against the social reforms as well as anti-capitalist and anti-globalization campaigns have been the most important fields of activity for the German groupuscular right in recent years. After the NPD opened its ranks to neo-Nazi activists, numerous freie Kameradschaften have regularly participated in and supported its events and demonstrations. In addition, the freie Kameradschaften organize their own campaigns and events. For instance, ‘free fellowships’ linked to the leading neo-Nazi activist Christian Worch, who is critical of the NPD, have organized rival May Day demonstrations in recent years.
Several freie Kameradschaften usually cooperate in the organization of campaigns, with the Internet playing a crucial role. Websites post information about upcoming events and political demonstrations, and host material that can be downloaded. The ‘Zukunft statt Globalisierung’ (The future, not globalization) campaign serves as a good example of how this operates. ‘Zukunft statt Globalisierung’ is supported by various ‘free fellowships’ and chapters of the NPD’s youth organization Junge Nationaldemokraten (Young National Democrats). The campaign is organized mainly via its webpage www.antikap.de. On the homepage of the www.antikap.de website, one can see slogans such as freie menschen statt freie märkte (Free people not free markets). The site includes an extensive glossary in which terms such as ‘globalization’, ‘socialism’, ‘private equity’ and ‘public private partnerships (PPP)’ are explained. Additionally, it includes elaborate information booklets, about the dangers of privatization for example, that can be downloaded. Most importantly, events relating to the ideological orientation of the campaign are given advertising space, and photographs of and information about past demonstrations are also available. What is striking about this website is that the slogans as well as the web design—as regards symbols, the type of language used and the visual aesthetics—closely resemble the websites of anti-globalization campaigns of the radical left. As is also true of the NPD’s election campaign posters, there is here no trace of the aesthetic values that have traditionally been characteristic of the extreme right, either in a visual sense or in terms of its content.
The emergence of so-called ‘autonomous nationalists’ may serve as another example in this context. Autonomous nationalists are a relatively small but growing subgroup of the wider milieu of violence-prone neo-Nazis. At present, the German Verfassungsschutz counts c. 200 individuals who regard themselves as autonomous nationalists. In contrast to most freie Kameradschaften, autonomous nationalists dissociate themselves from the NPD and all parliamentary ambitions. What is most striking about them autonomous nationalists is their distinctive appearance as well as their political tactics and actions, which are modelled on those of the radical left. Much like left-wing autonomists, autonomous nationalists dress mainly in black. During political demonstrations they hide their faces, form a so-called ‘black bloc’ and occasionally actively seek to get involved in street fighting with the police and/or political opponents. Although no coherent ideology is discernible among autonomous nationalists, they borrow ‘national-revolutionary’ ideas from the ‘left’ wing of the early Nazi Party (NSDAP), which was chiefly represented by the brothers Georg and Otto Strasser. Thus, agitation against capitalism—or, in short, ‘the system’—is a crucial element in the sphere of activity of the autonomous nationalists.
The new old strategy: turning the social question into a national one
One might wonder, looking at such neo-Nazi campaigns or the NPD’s anti-Hartz IV campaign, whether they are still right wing? What distinguishes them from left-wing anti-globalization or social protest movements? On the surface, there are indeed similarities: with regard not only to slogans and visual aesthetics but also to enemies. These include rather abstract concepts, such as ‘globalization’ and ‘capitalism’, but also—more concretely—multinational corporations and the United States. However, if we probe the critique of globalization by the extreme right more closely, we soon find evidence that, under the surface, racist, antisemitic and xenophobic sentiments are still at its heart. This becomes clear when we look at the reasons for the rejection of global capitalism given by the NPD and neo-Nazi groups, as well as their political aims and their alternatives to globalization.
In opposing globalization, left-wing organizations usually criticize an unjust and profit-oriented economic world order that is forcing an increasing proportion of the world’s population into poverty and impending environmental disaster. Many of the solutions offered by the political left to the problems brought about by globalization are global ones, such as the introduction of a Tobin tax or global governance. Thus, most of today’s anti-globalization groups, such as ATTAC, do not reject globalization per se but rather espouse a different sort of globalization. In contrast, the solutions to the challenges of a globalized economy that are proposed by the extreme right keep strictly to a national framework. The extreme right’s claim, therefore, that it is the only real anti-globalization movement—the only political force that opposes globalization fundamentally and not only one particular kind of globalization—arguably rings true.
In addition, extreme-right organizations do not necessarily oppose a capitalist economy (not even financial market capitalism), as left-wing anti-globalization groups almost always do, but are rather against a certain type of globalized capitalism. For instance, in its manifesto, the NPD implicitly argues that enterprises that operate in Germany should serve the interests of the German national economy. Instead of international free trade, the NPD promotes the fuzzy concept of a raumorientierte Volkswirtschaft (regionally oriented national economy). This entails a free enterprise system under protectionist conditions with special financial aid for German medium-sized businesses and the agricultural sector. In additional, available jobs would be offered first to Germans before any foreign employee could be hired. Similar proposals, as well as the demand that international trade be reduced ‘to a reasonable level’, can be found in the public statements of the ‘Zukunft statt Globalisierung’ campaign. Neither are the NPD and other extreme-right organizations particularly interested in a ‘fair world order’, ‘global solidarity’ or ‘social justice’. The ‘social justice’ and ‘solidarity’ referred to in the NPD’s manifesto are something to which only Germans are entitled. And ‘German’, for the NPD, means not merely being a German citizen but being what the party regards as an ‘ethnic German’.
This brings us to the core reason for the antipathy of the NPD and the freie Kameradschaften towards globalization. Their opposition to global capitalism is based on very different ideological grounds from those of the radical left. The extreme right’s central reason for opposing globalization is not because it produces economic inequality and poverty, but because it threatens its ethno-nationalist concept of a homogeneous society, the so-called Volksgemeinschaft. In ethno-nationalist ideologies, the term Volksgemeinschaft refers to the members of a nation conceptualized primarily on racial grounds. In a policy statement of December 2000, the NPD’s executive board declared that, since political opposition in its view necessarily meant opposition to globalization, any political opposition that sought to be effective had to orientate itself politically in relation to the Volksgemeinschaft. In other words, in the eyes of the NPD leadership, the Volksgemeinschaft was what was endangered by globalization and was at the same time the solution to all its problems. Again, the same argument can be found in the declaration of the ‘Zukunft statt Globalisierung’ campaign. Here it is stated that ‘nationalism with its idea of Volksgemeinschaft’ was the ‘only effective socialist weapon against international capital’ and ‘the capitalist devaluation of human beings’.
The argument that global capitalism is used as an instrument of the United States in order to gain world supremacy is another line of reasoning that can frequently be found among neo-Nazi and extreme-right organizations. In this context, references are regularly made to so-called ZOGs (Zionist-occupied governments) or the ‘East Coast’ (shorthand for alleged Jewish control of the US government and the financial markets). In short, in this line of argumentation, the opposition to globalization is motivated primarily by antisemitic sentiment.
Analysing a campaign of the NPD’s youth organization Junge Nationaldemokraten shows how traditional issues of the extreme right are integrated into the protests against welfare cuts without being explicit. In recent years, the Junge Nationaldemokraten published an advertisement in which the head of a donkey was captioned: ‘Only a donkey still believes in the German welfare state’. At first glance, the caption appears to be quite innocent, but for members of the extreme right it contains a potent double meaning. In the 1980s a central figure of the neo-Nazi scene in Germany (Michael Kühnen) organized a bizarre political performance in the city of Hamburg. Several neo-Nazi activists wore donkey masks and a sign that read: ‘I am a donkey who still believes in the Holocaust’. As German law prohibits Holocaust denial, the neo-Nazi group around Kühnen found a way of denying the Holocaust indirectly without the authorities being able to persecute them. This episode became extremely popular within the extreme right in Germany. Today, by modifying the phrase, the Junge Nationaldemokraten seem, on the surface, to be expressing harmless protest against cuts in the welfare system; for insiders, however, it includes a direct reference to Holocaust denial.
The NPD’s call for a minimum wage of €8.80 is shaped by the same tactic of double meanings. Again, at first sight, it can be seen as a demand that simply exceeds the trade unions’ call for an hourly minimum wage of €7.50, and can therefore be regarded as relatively harmless. Here too, however, a hidden meaning can be found that, for the NPD’s neo-Nazi following, is not hidden at all. As a result of the comparatively restrictive German laws concerning the use of symbols and idioms associated with the Third Reich, neo-Nazis have in recent years developed an elaborate system of number codes that circumvent these laws. Typically, bann ed slogans or the names of banned organizations are represented by the numerical place of their first letter in the alphabet. For instance, the number 28 stands for the white supremacist music network Blood and Honour, the German chapter of which was banned in 2000. Thus, the NPD’s call for a minimum wage of €8.80 is not only an economic demand, but also a direct reference to the number 88, which, in neo-Nazi circles, is a cipher for Heil Hitler.
Of course, this political strategy of selecting social problems and interpreting them according to a racist, antisemitic and ethno-nationalist ideology—in short, turning the social question into a national one—is not new in the history of the extreme right in Germany. Even in the Wilhelminian empire, parties such as the Soziale Reformpartei (Social Reform Party) or the Christlich Soziale Arbeiterpartei (Christian Social Workers’ Party) were advocating ethno-nationalist and antisemitic forms of anti-capitalism. Certainly, as already indicated, a prime example of this is the Nazi Party during the Weimar Republic. Although German companies profitted enormously from the Third Reich’s war economy and system of forced labour, the Nazi Party defined itself as ‘national socialist’ and a ‘workers’ party’ and—/especially during its early years—/highlighted its anticapitalist and anti-western perspective. Accordingly, it gained an increasing amount of support through its opposition to what it called ‘Jewish finance capitalism’ during the world economic crisis of the 1930s. Franz Neumann called these features of the praxis and ideology of the Nazi Party ‘pseudo Marxist elements’. Even after the Second World War, one could occasionally find anti-capitalist sentiments within several extreme-right groups in Germany. In the post-war period, however, the dominance of social issues on the agendas of the extreme right is a relatively new phenomenon. Nevertheless, at present, it is more appropriate to speak of the re-emergence of anti-capitalist attitudes in the ideology and discourses of the extreme right.
More than mere opportunism
Anti-capitalist and anti-globalization sentiments have increased significantly in importance within both of the main movements of the German extreme right: the NPD and the ‘groupuscular right’. By picking up on social issues, the extreme right has been successful in appealing to a broader spectrum of supporters, especially in regional elections in the East. But it would be shortsighted to misinterpret this development as solely another strategic attempt by the extreme right to incorporate Zeitgeist issues into its political agenda in order to become more attractive to the political mainstream. Analysis of recent campaigns of the NPD and of neo-Nazi groups such as the freie Kameradschaften show that adopting social themes as well as anti-capitalist and anti-globalization issues marks a deeper shift in the ideological agenda of the German extreme right. Although it formulates its opposition to globalization in different ideological terms to those used by radical left groups, its resistance to attempts to dismantle the welfare state and to globalized capitalism is still not simply a political strategy but something that genuinely forms part of its core agenda.
Nevertheless, racist and antisemitic sentiments do not disappear in this shift, but are linked to and incorporated in the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization discourses. A look at German history shows that this ideological development is far from new but rather one with several historical precedents, Hitler’s Nazi Party being the prime example. Without a substantial improvement in the socio-economic situation, especially in East Germany, it is highly likely that this new old strategy of the extreme right—to interpret social issues in nationalist and racist terms—will continue to be successful.