The nationalist backlash in Germany

...economy boomed because of a huge influx of foreign investors buying treasury bonds and other securities...

...One typical neo-Nazi in eastern Germany comes from a desolate, gray, relatively poor suburban housing project, without good schools, playgrounds, or other opportunities for recreation available to his counterpart in West Germany...

...Only four weeks later, on one weekend alone, twenty different cities experienced deadly attacks on foreigners...

...In the late nineteenth century Bismarck substantially weakened the development of democratic government in Germany by treating the Imperial Constitution with contempt...

...Currently, local governments are saddled with the burden, with the result that citizens greatly resent seeing their tax dollars go directly to pay for refugees...

...Germany can expect a similar burst of the bubble...

...A constitutional expert on right-wing extremism, Ernst Uhrlau, has warned that what was once random violence is beginning to be directed into increasingly sophisticated underground networks...

...But Kohl's most recent maneuverings have justifiably caused alarm among political observers...

...The same study showed that 35 percent of the respondents in the West and 38 percent in the East perceived the "presence of foreigners in Germany as unacceptable...

...Around 40 percent expressed "dissatisfaction with democracy...

...The orientation of Germany to democracy and a liberal public policy came late (not until after the Spiegel affair of 1962 (when two editors of that magazine were jailed for publishing "defense secrets") and lasted only as long as the 14 • DISSENT Social Democratic interlude of Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt (until 1982...

...Although we do not believe that the history of the 1930s is repeating itself in Germany, there is an ominous backlash against minorities...

...In Bonn, the government is slowly admitting that its calculations were wildly optimistic...

...Since Kohl came to power ten years ago, conservative ideas about restricting public access to information and decision making have flourished...

...It seems likely that some changes will have to be made to eliminate the clearly unacceptable situation under which hundreds of thousands of foreigners must now wait, in crowded quarters, without permission to work, for many years until their asylum applications go through the legal process...

...Only 10 percent currently do so...

...The planners also grossly overestimated the value of properties, factories, and government enterprises in the East...

...Every night for five days the police WINTER • 1993 • 11 were met with barricades and flaming automobiles...

...Its money goes to pay for the climbing costs of unemployment benefits for up to 50 percent of the East's workers and other benefits of the German welfare state...

...The bubble burst in 1990, leading to the present recession...

...The "problem" of asylum seekers must be seen in this context of ethnic definition...

...Kohl has done everything possible to "normalize" Germany as a nation and as an actor on the world stage...

...We are already seeing trends in the 1990s that will bring more right-wing extremism, exclusivist nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and regressive political movements...

...In this atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, the right-wing slogans of racism and anti-Semitism find a reception...

...The real reason for government inactivity is to be found in a cynical politics of public manipulation and kow-towing to "right-of-center" xenophobic sentiments...

...German history should have taught its leaders at least one thing about the fragility of constitutions...

...Germany at the Crossroads There have always existed right-wing conservatives who have never liked the liberal Constitution bequeathed or imposed upon Germany by the victorious allies after 1945...

...In the 1970s, when the terror came from the extreme left, the police were devastatingly effective at infiltrating underground organizations and clamping down on public demonstrators...

...On August 22, a horde of over a thousand skinheads attacked a housing complex occupied by Vietnamese workers and set it on fire...

...The structures of authority have also been shaken with the demise of "communist" society...

...The hard-fought gains of the 1960s and 1970s in Germany will be endangered...

...The child of a Turk, who grew up in Germany, and whose father emigrated twenty years ago, must still wait up to ten years for naturalization...

...Those who pushed for a complete restructuring of society now see themselves as victims of rapid de-industrialization and a ruthless revamping of their institutions by West German bureaucrats...

...For the sake of social peace and stability, it will be necessary to make some adjustments to the law...

...Italians who have lived for twenty years in Germany aren't able to vote even in local elections...

...The procrastination in dealing with these problems does not originate in the inability of the police to provide for law and order...

...Again, we are not suggesting that Fascism will return...

...Helmut Kohl has tried to fashion his regime as a "chancellor-democracy," that is, one in which the will of the leader takes precedence over consensual, communicative politics...

...The clean-up operation will take years, and will cost billions more...

...WINTER • 1993 • 15...

...At the beginning of November 1992, he suggested that the German state was in an "emergency situation" as a result of the wave of asylum seekers...

...The Germans are not only reacting to a moral imperative—they also realize how much Germany has to lose symbolically, in terms of their already battered image abroad, and concretely, in terms of the imperiled economy and deepening social crises...

...It is now clear that in order to consolidate his power, he is prepared to challenge the Bonn Constitution...

...The CDU-led coalition and the Social Democrats have also reached a compromise and agreed to change the asylum clause in the Constitution...

...In the public sphere, support for right-wing extremism is still very much limited to a minority of citizens, yet some of the statistics show cause for alarm...

...Although the Bonn government is mortgaging the future of Germany to pay for unification, the sums needed to improve the legal process and provide security for foreigners are minimal in comparison to the money being spent in eastern Germany...

...The government holding company (Treuhand) was expected to net at least 300 billion deutsche marks (DM) by selling off public assets...

...The question is: how should the system be reformed...

...Some viable reforms to the asylum procedure can be made without imperiling the Constitution...

...Germany could introduce a quota system for the economically motivated immigrants, based loosely on the U.S...

...Internationally, he has used Germany's growing economic stature as a world force to nibble at the edges of the country's self-imposed abstinence from power politics...

...The latest polls indicate that only around 16 percent of East Germans would today vote for the CDU...

...The current low standing of Kohl and the CDU, combined with the confusion of the SPD, does allow the right wing to increasingly sponge up disaffected voters...

...This very liberal clause was incorporated into the German constitution as a way of making some amends to the Western countries that accepted the wave of German WINTER • 1993 • 13 exiles fleeing Nazism in the 1930s...

...model (which is hardly worth replicating...

...The amount of rage and anger aimed at foreign workers, so-called "ethnic Germans" or Volksdeutsche (who often arrive from Eastern Europe not speaking a word of German), gypsies, refugees from Yugoslavia, and other political asylum seekers is completely out of proportion to the number of people involved and the minuscule amount of money (as a percentage of the unification process) being spent to house and feed them...

...Although the vast majority of the population does not support physical attacks on refugee seekers, a growing number of people accept certain ideas and phrases propagated by the right wing...

...Second, a renewal of the commitment to democracy and human rights must take place, to reduce the backlash of nationalism...

...In comparison to previous years, this wave of violence has shown three new characteristics: (1) the incidents have affected a greater number of areas in Germany...

...Finally, few expected the devastation wrought on the environment by forty years of communist rule to be as egregious as it was...

...It is the German present and future that is in danger of catching fire...

...Political disaffection in this part of the population is growing and shifting rapidly to the right...

...But they have shown how influential the "Hoyerswerda model" has been on the burgeoning neo-Nazi youth scene, and how helpless the authorities proved themselves to be at combating right-wing extremist violence...

...The sharp rise in unemployment and bankruptcies, as well as open dissatisfaction with the manner in which government administration and other services are being taken over by Bonn bureaucrats, has created a political and psychological vacuum, which is fueling racial resentment...

...As in 1945, the little fish are caught, while the big fish get away...

...In the latest wave of right-wing extremist activity, the first symbolic victory occurred in the fall of 1991...

...Their numbers seem to be growing...

...Experts have estimated that there are over 60,000 right-wing extremists in Germany, among them 6,500 dangerous skinheads organized in roughly 75 political groups, including political parties that present a guise of bourgeois respectability—such as the so-called Republicans and the German People's Union—and the explicitly neo-Nazi parties such as the German Alternative or Free Workers party...

...The Treuhand has also been roundly criticized for letting an estimated one-third of all potential deals end up in the courts, where the former owners and their children lay claim to long-lost property...

...Still, a political and cultural battle is going to be fought that will determine the general direction taken by a New Germany in the twenty-first century...

...Moreover, conservatives have been waiting for a long time to "emerge from the shadows of Hitler" (as ultra-right politician Alfred Dregger put it) in order to give back to Germany a legal framework more in line with the "special needs" of the Germans...

...Many of these extremists are only loosely organized, at a local level, but communication and strategic planning between the groups is growing, as the acts of violence go unchecked...

...More seriously, the wellintended but badly executed Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution allowed the president of Germany to rule by emergency decree...

...To make such reforms, changes at the top have to take place, and that must surely include the gracious exit of a chancellor who has held onto power for over ten years and was, at bottom, responsible for the current crises...

...No arrests were made...

...The path had been paved by the ethnocentric wing of the ruling Christian Democrats, especially its sister party in Bavaria, fueled by conservative intellectuals who turned to aggressive nationalistic politics, such as Ernst Nolte, W.J...

...The financial planners did not count on the 12 • DISSENT brain drain—that young, skilled workers would seek better jobs in the West, leaving the very old, very young, and unskilled workers behind...

...The events in Min finally stirred the government from its complacent slumber...

...This disturbing wave of volkish-nationalist resentment did not suddenly emerge in the last two years...

...The escalation of violence reached an apogee on November 23 when neo-Nazis threw firebombs into a house in the Northern German city of M011n, killing three Turkish long-time residents, a woman and two girls...

...Whereas left-wing terror has traditionally been persecuted with legendary Teutonic efficiency, the attorney general, von Stahl, has not, until now, ordered a thorough police surveillance of the right-wing scene, because he did not consider it an "organized threat" to democracy...

...In the last few months, some of the largest demonstrations in favor of tolerance and human rights have taken place in major cities all across Germany, sanctioned and supported by major political figures like President Weizsacker and Rita Siissmuth...

...Nor did they count on capital drain—the fact that Western firms would rather keep their factories in the West and feed the East with consumer goods...

...The new democratic Germany, made rich with the help of allied support and protection, was supposed to open its doors to the politically persecuted all over the world...

...In particular, the coalition government led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has shown little inclination to change its disastrous economic course, which is devastating the labor market in eastern Germany and creating an atmosphere of helplessness and disorientation...

...But many neo-Nazi youths come from functioning, working-class families...

...As the Israeli novelist Amos Oz warned after a recent arson attack in Sachsenhausen (site of a death camp near Berlin that Chancellor Kohl has refused to visit): "It is not the past that is buried in Sachsenhausen...

...When things go wrong, people search for easy explanations...

...Since the fall of the Berlin wall, Kohl has repeatedly asserted Germany's unilateral will...

...In eastern Germany, the only thing remaining from the euphoria of unification is the nationalistic cant that says a German is at least better than a Pole, or a Rumanian, or a Russian...

...Today one finds chic, well-stocked stores all over eastern Germany, but the profits made are funneled back to the West...

...It is now estimated that it will receive less than 50 billion DM...

...q POSTSCRIPT: As of this writing (December 7, 1992), the number of deadly attacks by right-wing skinheads has risen to seventeen...

...Meanwhile, the former GDR bigwigs have moved into the glamorous financial worlds of Frankfurt and Duesseldorf...

...It would, however, be reprehensible if the government were to introduce an absolute quota (a limit of 50,000 per year has been suggested) because such restrictions would lead to draconian measures to turn away political refugees...

...Failure to comply with the rules would result in mass expulsions at the border...

...At the moment, the German government is being forced to keep interest rates high in order to hold down inflation, encourage domestic savings, and attract capital...

...That was a time when advances were made for the first time in Germany toward constructing a pluralistic society, when minorities and foreigners began to be tolerated, human rights respected, and democratic experiments attempted...

...The forces of democracy are strong and well aware of the dangers of the ideology being refurbished by neoconservatives and revisionists...

...Second, they realized how effective targeted violence could be in evoking support among ordinary citizens...

...Judges and administrators fly in and out daily to command, rearrange, and impose sentence on former German Democratic Republic (GDR) (communist) petty office holders, now unemployed, ostracized, and humiliated as traitors...

...Such was the case when Germany recognized Croatia's and Slovenia's independence...

...In the East this figure reached "only" 40 percent because unemployment caused even more concern...

...The situation in Germany can best be compared to that in the United States in the mid-1980s...

...In order to make sense of all this we must consider the conditions under which young people have grown up...

...In Wuppertal on November 12, a pensioner was killed by two neo-Nazis, who were falsely informed that the man was Jewish...

...The reasons why the Kohl government does not take the necessary measures to defuse the tensions and reverse the trend of spiraling violence against foreigners are easy to deduce...

...The right-wing gangs learned several important lessons...

...He was trampled to death and then set on fire because, as one of the thugs shouted, "Jews must burn...

...The balance of terror to date for 1992 amounts to over 1,600 acts of terror by neo-Nazis, 12 persons dead, and over 2,000 persons injured...

...The "experts" either pretended to believe, or actually did believe, that the situation in 1990 was comparable to 1948—in other words, that simply introducing free-market reforms would convert a stagnant economy overnight into a blooming economic miracle...

...All polls show a dramatic increase in the number of people who condemn the activities of the right...

...The bright future promised by Kohl just two years ago has grown dark...

...The old has been destroyed but the new has yet to be born...

...Finally, they discovered that the police hesitated to enforce the law and, in some cases, even sympathized with their assault on foreigners...

...If article 16 is substantially weakened or eliminated, world opinion will conclude that Germany has begun to renege on its historical debt...

...They cheered neo-Nazi hooligans who pelted the building with bricks...

...The killings in MOIln have also brought home to the German population the extent to which the threat from the right has not been taken seriously...

...In the more recent case of Italy's and England's currency devaluations, Germany made only modest attempts to lower interest rates and shore up the value of the other currencies, with the result that many members of the European Economic Community are getting the jitters about a German-dominated continental economy...

...In short, if German politics are not to lead to further turmoil, three challenges will have to be met...

...A further necessary reform would be to change the financing structure for housing refugees...

...For the last twelve years asylum-seekers, and foreigners in general, have been kept at the edge of national politics...

...A fair process of differentiation should be introduced to separate people whose motives are primarily economic from those who are politically persecuted or are victims of civil war—though that hardly settles the matter of humanitarian justice...

...Henceforth refugees will not be allowed to enter Germany if their countries are deemed by bureaucrats in Bonn to be "free of persecution...

...3) and onlookers are beginning to play a role, either through passivity or open encouragement...

...It has also been systematically manipulated by the politicians and the media...

...Although the number of people who openly take up arms against foreigners is relatively small, the neoNazi skirmishes at the street level are taking place against a background of larger shifts in the population...

...In the latest polls, 86 percent of respondents in the West regarded the question of asylum seekers and foreigners as Germany's "most important problem...

...Finally, a new economic and political master plan for the East is called for...

...The federal government could alleviate political tensions by setting up a comprehensive, federally funded program for the needs of foreigners entering the country...

...It is also without any new, overarching strategy...

...In more and more cases, the police stand by while light-skinned citizens applaud the terrorizing of foreigners by skinheads...

...First, the issue of asylum-seekers can no longer be used to win election campaigns...

...It has nothing to do with money...

...In fact, 90 percent of them are justified in seeking asylum under the Geneva accords, which stipulate that refugees are entitled to protection if it is evident that they would be subject to persecution in their own country...

...Can German democracy combat it this time around...

...Another measure being considered would require all asylum-seekers to make applications before entering the country...

...On a September evening in Hoyerswerda, a small town in eastern Germany, an angry crowd gathered around a government home for people seeking political asylum...

...It will also be interesting to see how the "experts" are going to decide which countries are exempt from political persecution, since Amnesty International has registered abuses in this respect in just about every country in the world, including Germany...

...Siedler, and ArnuIf Baring...

...NOVEMBER 15, 1992 The recent attacks on foreigners in Rostock and other eastern German cities have received intense negative publicity...

...Although this amendment has wide public support, the right wing correctly perceives the change in the law as its victory...

...2) the violence is more dangerous...

...Somebody must be at fault, and since good, hard-working Germans can't be to blame, the outsiders, the foreigners, make a good target...

...Copycat attacks followed during the next week in fifteen other German cities...

...After being vociferously challenged by the press and opposition leaders, Kohl backed down somewhat, but the threat of emergency rule remains...

...The Bonn government and the sensationalist press have however spoken about all asylum seekers as if they were bands of criminals...

...Hitler used this loophole to consolidate power after 1934...

...Since the fall of 1992, a new wave of violence has swept through all parts of Germany...

...Young workers face unemployment or underemployment, and, if they have a job, they are afraid of losing it...

...The government needs to redirect resources to the local level so that citizens feel empowered and the needs of the community, not the needs of the bureaucracy in Bonn, are fulfilled...

...Among youth below the age of 24, 20 percent sympathize with right-wing parties...

...Although it is true that the number of asylum seekers is expected to reach 470,000 in 1992, the number of those deemed to have economic, and thus "false," motives is a minority estimated at around 30 percent...

...As interest rates soared between 1982 and 1989, the U.S...

...He declared further that means would have to be found to circumvent Article 16, either by having the Supreme Court re-interpret it or by passing "emergency legislation...

...Sold on Black, Red, Gold During the process of national unification, the workers and petite bourgeoisie of Leipzig and Rostock conflated their wishes for freedom and deutsche mark power with the black-red-gold colors of the German national flag...

...in a hierarchical world of complicated technology and "high" culture only experts are presumed able to make decisions...

...The Legal Debate Over Asylum The question everybody is now discussing is whether the laws should be changed so that it will be more difficult for political refugees to enter the country and seek the protection guaranteed by the Sixteenth Article of Germany's Basic Law...

...Under cover of night, police evacuated the traumatized victims...

...First, they found that a cohesive group identity could be constructed around hate directed toward "others...

...The typical target of the gangs was housing units for families of political refugees...

...Instead of rapid economic growth, the eastern part of the country is being kept afloat by huge subsidies financed by government debt...

...Citizenship in Germany is still defined by membership in a Volk community...

...The millions of citizens who braved the streets in the heady days of the October-November 1989 revolution were promised that economic conditions would for most people at least remain stable and would improve for the great majority...

...Since December 8, more than a million people have taken to the streets to protest...