[lbo-talk] GERMANY'S FAR-RIGHT WANTS TO EXPAND WEST

[Michael Givel]

GERMANY'S FAR-RIGHT WANTS TO EXPAND WEST
24/09/2006 - Encouraged by their successes at polls in the economically
sagging eastern Germany, far-right political parties are now trying to
appeal to disgruntled voters in the western part of the country. "Now we
want to tackle the west," said Udo Voigt, chairman of the far-right
extremist National Democratic Party (NDP), this week in Berlin, just days
after his party won more than 7 percent of the vote in state elections in
Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania. Under the motto "Work - Family - Home,"
leaders of the NPD and the right-wing German People's Union (DVU) renewed
their alliance Thursday, saying their strategy of striking separately but
winning together has been bearing fruit.

NPD wants seats in "Reichstag"
Voigt's fellow party leader Holger Apfel said the NPD had to "do its
homework in the West" if it wanted to make it into the "Reichstag" in 2009.
With the word "Reichstag," Apfel alluded to the Nazi parliament during the
Third Reich. Since Germany was reestablished in 1948, its parliament has
been called the "Bundestag." When the government moved to Berlin in 1999,
the Bundestag moved into the former Reichstag building.

Counseling for job-seekers
The NPD gained votes in last Sunday's state elections in Mecklenburg-Western
Pommerania on an anti-establishment and anti-foreigner platform. The party
has also emphasized its plan to engage in community work and set up
counseling offices, particularly for the unemployed. "I'll not only devote
all of my energies to parliamentary work now, but also to the overarching
goal of uniting nationalist forces outside the parliament," the NPD's Udo
Pastörs said. "I'll actively work for a political movement devoted to
nationalist and socially caring policies." The neo-Nazis said one of their
aims is to replace parliamentary democracy with a new system of government
in Germany and called the existing system unable to resolve people's
problems. "The federal republic's parliamentarianism cannot be the final
stage," Voigt said. Other members of his party have also argued for Germany
to renegotiate it national borders.

Constitutionality questioned
Against the background of such statements, voices are mounting in Germany
that demand a fresh attempt to ban the NPD for unconstitutional activities.
The latest attempt to do so failed in 2003 after Germany's highest court
threw out a case promoted by the German government and parliament. A study
conducted Friday by German public broadcaster ARD showed 82 percent of
Germans do not believe the NPD to be a democratic party while 70 percent
said the party's gains have hurt Germany's international image. Gerhard
Frey, a multi-millionaire publishing giant and leader of the DVU, however,
said he is confident the far-right will be able to gain ground. "As long as
this government sends our young soldiers into a Middle East conflict that is
not ours and as long as it wastes money on the EU while more and more
Germans pinch and scrape, we will increase our following," he said.

© Deutsche Welle http://www.dw?world.de/dw/0,1595,266,00.html