Germany kicks out US nazi David Duke

David Duke poses in his Klan robes in front of the House of
Parliament in London in March 1978. Photo: Associated Press

David Duke, the ex-Ku Klux Klan leader, former US nazi boss and still close associate of British National Party boss, Nick Griffin, has been kicked out of Germany after being arrested in Cologne last week ahead of speaking at a nazi gathering in the city.

The arrest of the 61-year-old embezzler and fraudster – aka Dorothy Vanderbilt – came at a time of mounting public concern in Germany over the brutal murders, over an eleven-year period, of nine immigrant traders and a female police officer by members of the terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU). Other NSU violence included bombings in Cologne in 2001 and 2004.

On his release, Duke who, like his pal Griffin, has been closely connected with Germany’s biggest nazi organisation, the National Democratic Party (NPD) – which, in turn, has been linked with the NSU killers – pledged to fight his deportation, begging supporters to send him money. Urgently. “While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight,” he wrote.

Any would-be donors should exercise caution: Duke has form in this regard having served a year in US federal prison for filing a false tax return and mail fraud in 2003-2004 after it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of donations he had solicited from his followers were actually used to pay off his gambling debts.

Police in Cologne branded Duke an “undesirable foreigner” who was “obliged to leave German territory without delay”. The police statement added that Duke “was not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in another, unspecified, European country. It was later disclosed that the group he was scheduled to address was the hardcore nazi Freies Netz Köln, in cooperation with the violent Kameradschaft Sturm Rhein-Sieg.

Press reports have compared Duke’s latest escapade to his 2009 expulsion from Czech Republic, following his arrest in Prague on suspicion of “denying or approving of the Nazi genocide and other Nazi crimes” and “promotion of movements seeking suppression of human rights,” which are crimes in the Czech Republic punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment. At the time of his arrest, Duke was being protected by thugs from the nazi group Národní Odpor.

Duke habitually describes the Nazi murder of six million Jews during WW2 as a “myth” and his antics have made him one of world’s most infamous racist extremists. In recent years Duke, who claims he intends to run in the next US presidential elections, has been active in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle Eastern states of Syria and Iran.

He was a keynote speaker at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference in December 2006 telling the audience that: “The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel... This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world... The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder.” Duke is also the author of several books including My Awakening (1998) and Jewish Supremacism (2002).

After being expelled to Austria where he now lives, the cosmetically altered racist was, incredibly not questioned by the Austrian police on his return.

Hope not hate

Germany to compensate 'neo-Nazi' murder victims

One alleged member of the neo-Nazi group,
Beate Zschaepe, blew up her flat before handing herself in

Germany has agreed to compensate families of victims of an alleged neo-Nazi cell accused of killing 10 people over a decade.

The parliament, chancellery and presidency also agreed to hold a national memorial service for the dead. The killings have long been known as the "kebab murders" because many of those killed ran snack shops. Detectives have charged a woman and arrested another person in connection with the case.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called it a national disgrace, and questioned how the group could have slipped under the radar when it was known to the authorities. Among the alleged victims were nine immigrants - eight from Turkey and one from Greece - and a police officer.

Promising compensation, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told reporters: "I fear that at the end of the investigation, we will uncover more victims of xenophobia than we are aware of today. Even if financial help cannot undo the suffering, I will attempt to give the victims' families a sign of our solidarity with compensation from my budget."

The existence of the cell, linked to the National Socialist Underground group, emerged when two alleged members of the group killed themselves. The two men, Uwe Mundlos, 38, and Uwe Boenhardt, 34, were found dead earlier this month in a caravan in Eisenach in eastern Germany. They had left behind a DVD in which they admitted to the 10 killings.

Beate Zschaepe, 36, who had shared a house with the two men, has since been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation. She had handed herself in.

Germany's top prosecutor Harald Range said two other people are suspected of helping the group.

Detectives are reopening all unsolved cases stretching back to 1998 in which possible racist motives could have been involved. The alleged neo-Nazi cell is also suspected of carrying out a bomb attack in Cologne, in which 23 people were wounded, and a number of bank robberies.

The killings have reheated the debate in Germany as to whether to ban the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). A previous attempt was rejected by the country's constitutional court in 2003.

BBC

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

German neo-Nazi terrorists had 'hitlist' of 88 political targets

Names of two prominent Bundestag members on list found by police investigating activities of National Socialist Underground

Police investigating a German neo-Nazi terrorist group have discovered a hitlist of 88 possible targets, including two prominent members of the Bundestag and representatives of Turkish and Islamic groups.

Investigators have been trying to establish whether the list included people the group was actively plotting to kill, or was simply a list of high-profile political opponents.

Two of those apparently targeted are senior politicians from Munich: the Green MP Jerzy Montag and the Christian Social Union MP Hans-Peter Uhl. Both said they were deeply shocked by the revelation.

According to Spiegel Online, investigators discovered the list during inquiries into the activities of the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU), which is suspected in a string of terror attacks in Cologne and Düsseldorf from 2000-2004. The number 88 is significant, corresponding in the alphabet to HH, or Heil Hitler.

The neo-Nazi cell had gathered the names and addresses in 2005, German police said.

Montag said he was alarmed at the discovery. "This is a terrible feeling for me. The fact that the most significant members of the group have been eliminated doesn't resolve this. If they can come up with something like this, so can others."

Montag told Spiegel Online he was convinced there were other neo-Nazi terror cells in Germany capable of doing something similar. Uhl added: "When I heard I was on the list I was deeply upset."

German authorities have been widely criticised for their failure to stop the group, which killed 10 people, robbed 14 banks and planted two nail bombs over 13 years.

On Tuesday, the Hessen branch of the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV, admitted one of its agents had been present in April 2006 when two members of the NSU shot dead a 21-year-old Turk in an internet cafe.

It has now emerged the agent, who was transferred to less sensitive work following an investigation, openly held rightwing views and was known in the village where he grew up as "Little Adolf".

When police raided his flat following the murder, they found a cache of guns, for which he had a legitimate licence, and extracts from Mein Kampf, according to Der Spiegel. There were unconfirmed reports the man was present at three or more other neo-Nazi murder scenes.

Hajo Funke, an expert in rightwing extremism, told ARD television: "It can't be ruled out that this BfV employee took part in the murder, and that is a scandal." He called the case "a Watergate-scale" crisis for German secret intelligence.

The interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has called for a national register listing all neo-Nazis. The database should hold "information about potentially violent rightwing extremists and rightwing politically motivated acts of violence", he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It should be accessible to all 16 regional branches of the domestic intelligence service, as well as the national umbrella organisation, plus police authorities, he said.

Following the discovery of the terror cell's base in the quiet town of Zwickau, near the Czech border, the German government is under pressure to explain how the group managed to murder undetected for so long. The two men and one woman believed to be founder members of the NSU were known to police in their home town of Jena, east Germany, after a bomb-making factory was discovered in the garage rented by the woman, Beate Zschäpe, in 1998.

The local branch of the Thuringian secret service allegedly had 24 lever-arch files on the trio and yet only uncovered the cell years after they carried out at least 10 murders – and after the men were found dead, apparently following a joint suicide pact, and Zschäpe turned herself in to police.

Zschäpe has remained silent since turning herself in last week, but some local media reports suggested she had told police she was ready to be interviewed about her involvement.

On Tuesday evening, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) voted at its party conference in Leipzig for a ban on the NPD (German Democratic party), a legal far-right group which has seats in a number of local parliaments in the former East Germany. The opposition Social Democrats have also called for the NPD to be outlawed.

Such calls have been criticised by politicians in Merkel's own coalition. Uhl, an expert in interior security, said: "There is no better sign of democracy than for the electorate to vote against the NPD at elections. That's the most noble way."

Uhl said it would be better for Germany's strict data protection laws to be changed to allow detectives to analyse communications. "The whole country is wondering how big the neo-Nazi quagmire is in Germany. Without using internet and telephone data collected from the Zwickau cell that is going to be difficult to establish," he told the Neue Osnabrücke Zeitung.

Earlier this week Merkel described the case as a "disgrace" for Germany.

The Guardian

Neo-Nazi boss to appeal to top court for hotel ban

Udo Voigt, chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party, is preparing to appeal to the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe, after he was allegedly barred from a hotel for his political views.

Voigt's wife booked four days in the Hotel Esplanade in the eastern German spa town of Bad Saarow in December 2009, but the hotel refused to accept the booking, saying that Voigt's "political beliefs" meant that the hotel could not fulfil its aim of "providing every single guest with an excellent wellness experience."

Voigt's legal complaints have been unsuccessful so far, and according to a report on news magazine Der Spiegel's website on Sunday, he is planning to appeal to the BGH next Friday.

His lawyer countered the hotel's decision by saying that other guests could be disturbed by the presence of "black Africans, Muslims and severely disabled people."

But, Voigt's lawyer said, "in a free democracy, our citizens are expected to show tolerance that some people might consider an imposition." Otherwise a democratic society cannot function, "because there would be too many moves towards discrimination, and at the end we have a fractured society without solidarity."

The hotel's lawyer argued that Voigt was demanding "tolerance that neither he nor the NPD extend to others."

The Local

Far-Right Humor? Neo-Nazi Village Features 'Happy Holocaust' BBQ

"A place for people to gather," is how far-right NPD
politician Stefan Köster describes the garden behind his office.

Jamel, a tiny German village, is well-known for its connections to right-wing radicals. On the eve of elections in the state where the community is located, a journalist ran across a BBQ brandishing the phrase "Happy Holocaust." Was it a tasteless joke or a further symbol of a town that has lost its way?

Much has been written about the village of Jamel near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Hitler salutes in the streets, firing practice in local forests and outsiders chased away. The small run-down settlement has become a dark symbol of the growing reach of neo-Nazi ideology.

In the run-up to Sunday's local ballot in the state, a journalist from the website VBS TV arrived in Jamel. Although she was familiar with the village's larger-than-life reputation, she was shocked to see a large rusty barbeque inscribed with the phrase "happy holocaust."

The grill was in the barbed-wire encircled garden of the office of the far-right extremist National Democratic Party (NPD). The backyard was overlooked by a watchtower and a red, black and white old German Reich flag of the type used by the far-right scene.

'Stupid or Provocative?'

"I was shocked and I just couldn't believe what I saw. It felt really surreal," VBS TV journalist Barbara Dabrowska told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It was like in a bad American movie that tries to come up with the most ridiculous idea for how to make Nazis look really terrible. ... They probably meant it as a joke, but I was annoyed by their either stupid or incredibly provocative approach."

In her news report, Dabrowska interviewed Stefan Köster a politician for the NPD, a party dubbed "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Köster stressed his party's social outreach, explaining how his party distributes CDs in school yards and promotes German folk dancing. Asked about the happy holocaust barbeque in the garden behind his office, he said he hadn't noticed it before.

"Maybe someone is making fun of the political class because of how they repress open discussion," he said. "After all, if someone has an opinion about the holocaust, they should be able to express it," he stated, adding that he didn't find it to be funny.

"It must belong to someone in the building, but to me that matter is unimportant," he said.

The NPD party won seats in the state parliament for the second time in Sunday's state election.

Spiegel Online

The stork sticking its beak into the German far right

Armed with a copy of Mein Krampf (My Cramp),
Heinar tours Germany to lampoon its neo-Nazis

He wrote a book called Mein Krampf (My Cramp), sports a toothbrush moustache and a rigid side parting and infuriates members of Germany's main neo-Nazi party with his satirical take on the Teutonic far-right.

The character in question is Storch Heinar, an anti-Nazi cartoon stork, whose image has appeared more than 5,000 times on anti far-right campaign posters in north-eastern Germany where state elections will be held on Sunday. The stork posters proclaiming "Stork Power instead of Nazis" have been deliberately placed beside the campaign placards of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

The lampooned NPD is furious. Party workers have made frenzied efforts to rid the region's big cities of stork posters to avoid further ridicule. Hundreds of Stork Power placards have been ripped from lampposts in the port of Rostock. "We are on the home stretch. The stork is giving his all to keep out the extremist idiots," says creator and Social Democrat politician, Matthias Brodkorb.

Storch Heinar began life as a satirical anti-Nazi figure whose aim was to debunk the "Thor Steiner" clothing frequently worn as a status symbol by members of far-right and skinhead groups. Heinar's Hitler moustache and Mein Krampf biography is complemented by his penchant for steel helmets and egg nogs and a rabid intolerance of frogs.

Mediatex, the company which owns the "Thor Steiner" label, tried to get "Storch Heinar" banned for belittling its products. But last year a court in Bavaria threw out the case after a judge ruled that he could see no reasonable grounds for the complaint. Aping the language of Adolf Hitler, Storch Heinar boasted afterwards: "The enemy has been destructively defeated."

Storch Heinar has since gone from strength to strength. The cartoon character has toured Germany with his own rock band: "Storchkraft" (Stork Power). T-shirts and badges bearing his image are best-sellers. He has even travelled the country promoting Mein Krampf.

The Social Democrats' decision to use the stork for their election campaign in the north east is a new development, but has gained popular local support. Benjamin Weiss, a Rostock hotel owner, grew so irritated by the NPD's xenophobic propaganda in a region that depends heavily on tourism that he joined the "Storch Heinar Division" and organised his own team to put up some 300 stork posters around his hotel. "I am fed up with seeing my guests welcomed to Rostock with slogan such as: 'Tourists welcome – foreigners out,'" he said.

The NPD has parliamentary seats in the east German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Pomerania. The government's bid to ban the openly racist organisation was rejected by Germany's constitutional court in 2003 after it emerged that intelligence service moles were the source of incriminating evidence against the party.

The NPD's chances of retaining its north-east seats are considered so narrow it is toughto make an accurate prediction. "The far right gets particularly annoyed by humorous initiatives," said Gudrun Heinrich, a political scientist at Rostock university. "Because it doesn't know how to deal with them."

Independent

Hiding in plain sight: Germany's Neo-Nazis ditch skinhead look

Far-right groups are hoping to win votes by blending in with mainstream society – but they are still clinging to the hate crimes.

The summer fete was well under way in the normally sleepy village of Lübtheen in the Mecklenburg region of eastern Germany. Locals tending stalls outside low red brick houses offered home-baked bread and smoke-cured sausage. They hardly noticed the group of well-groomed young men in orangeT-shirts mingling with the crowd and distributing balloons and leaflets.

"The shirts they were wearing were exactly the same colour as those usually worn by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives at campaign rallies," Ute Lindenau, Lübtheen's mayor, told The Independent. "Nobody had the slightest idea that the men were all neo-Nazis until after they had left and people had time to study their vile propaganda."

The new and almost covert style of canvassing was being practised by Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), which is fighting to retain parliamentary seats in key elections in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern this autumn. The party first won seats there in 2006 after mounting a virulent campaign against foreigners. It also has seats in the east German state of Saxony

For Mrs Lindenau, the tactic was not much of a surprise. As a committed anti-Nazi and the mayor of a town known as a far-right stronghold of the east, she has watched the NPD gradually shed its skinhead image in an attempt to appeal to more voters. "These days the neo-Nazis are almost invariably polite and they make an effort to look respectable. They seem to have realised that the skinhead look is a vote loser," she said.

Mrs Lindenau's observations have now been borne out by Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVS), the equivalent of Britain's MI5. In a report published last week, the domestic intelligence agency concluded that the country's far right had all but completely shed the aggressive skinhead image it was renowned for in the 1990s. "Members of the far right scene prefer to wear clothing or brands that orient themselves more towards general trends in youth fashion," the report noted. "The more noticeable skinhead culture is becoming increasingly less interesting for far right extremist youths."

But the less aggressive image adopted by the German far right has not resulted in a corresponding drop in violence. On the contrary, the BVS found that the number of neo-Nazis prepared to use extreme violence to convey their political message had increased dramatically, from 5,000 in 2009 to 5,600 last year. The report put the total number of far right extremists at 25,000 and noted that the number of far right crimes in the former communist east had risen by an alarming 40 per cent.

The kind of violence meted out by Germany's growing "autonomous nationalist" groups was graphically illustrated in March this year at the trial of members of a banned neo-Nazi group called Sturm 34. In a style reminiscent of the campaign mounted by Hitler's Nazis to make German towns and villages "Jew-free", Sturm 34 set about trying to make the east German town of Mittweida "insect-free and brown".

"Brown" is a German byword for Nazi. By "insect-free", the group signalled that it was out to rid the town of anyone who held a different opinion to its own. The court heard how the gang patrolled Mittweida and set about "insects" – mostly punk rockers and vagrants – with baseball bats and boxing gloves filled with sand to double the effect of face punches.

Sturm 34 persecuted the town's inhabitants for months before police finally intervened. In one particularly brutal incident the gang appears to have practised a favourite form of neo-Nazi assault called "kerb biting" in which the victim's lower jaw is smashed against a kerbstone with a kick from a steel-capped boot.

Experts on the far right say that in public the NPD's political core goes out of its way to distance itself from such behaviour in public. Many of its members have exchanged skinhead haircuts and boots for an almost preppy look.

Michael Weiss, the author of a new study on neo-Nazi dress codes entitled Hide and Seek, says the increasingly ordinary appearance of far-right extremists means they can often blend in at left-wing demonstrations or in sports stadiums. "These people no longer stand out," he said.

To recognise each other, neo-Nazis now resort increasingly to an array of about 150 secret codes, according to Mr Weiss. These include the number 88 on T-shirts or other garments. The eight represents the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 corresponds to HH, for Heil Hitler, a phrase banned in Germany along with the swastika.

Neo-Nazis have also started to wear the black and white Palestinian Kaffiyeh scarf – a garment once the preserve of the far left at demonstrations – in an attempt to signal that they are against Israel. "Their style incorporates elements from rock and pop culture. Neo-Nazis now have piercings," Mr Weiss said.

In Mecklenburg, where the NPD's popularity may be just enough to enable it to stay in parliament after this autumn's state election, the party's attempts to garner support have not been confined to a new dress code. The Social Democrat-run state government recently became so concerned about the party's attempts to infiltrate schools and youth groups that it insisted teachers sign a declaration pledging their commitment to democracy.

However some of the far-right party's politicians have not managed to hide behind the new guise of respectability. Sven Kruger, a building contractor who is also an NPD politician, has been exposed for using a sign to advertise his company which shows a sledgehammer smashing what looks like a Star of David. His premises were searched last year and prosecutors discovered photographs of German Jewish community leaders which were suspected of having been used as targets for pistol shooting practice.

Finding new support

* Germany banned Hitler's National Socialist Party in 1945, but the neo-Nazi NPD was allowed to form in West Germany in 1964 and made some short-lived political gains during that decade, although it has never entered a national government.

The party found new support in east Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has since won seats in eastern state parliaments.

The government tried to ban the NPD in 2001, but the constitutional court overruled it. The NPD merged with another far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU) last year. It is estimated to have 6,600 members and 25,000 supporters, many of whom belong to other neo-Nazi groups.

Independent

'Nazi Leaks' And The NPD - Leak Of 60,000 Far-Right E-Mails Reveals Extremist Chaos

A massive leak of internal communications, dubbed "NaziLeaks," has embarrassed Germany's far-right NPD. The roughly 60,000 e-mails which have been obtained by SPIEGEL reveal blatant racism, internal strife and shady financial dealings within the party.

Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), had hoped that 2011 would see the radical right make an important step forward in Germany. On Jan. 1, a merger with its rival far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), went into effect, thereby combining their numbers just in time for a year that will see parliamentary elections in seven of Germany's 16 federal states. In a New Year's speech, Voigt confidently told his supporters that 2011 would be a "small super-election year."

"State elections, municipal elections -- Germans will finally get a chance to punish those at the top," Voigt said, looking straight into the camera. "We have a chance. We have a program for the future."

Now, less than six weeks later, Voigt's cockiness has given way to disillusionment. For the second time since 2008, tens of thousands of internal party e-mails have been leaked. SPIEGEL, along with other publications, has been given access to more than 60,000 e-mail messages from the accounts of NPD politicians. The party has labeled the people behind the leaks "criminal suppliers." It remains unclear whether the digital information came from a disgruntled individual within the party's headquarters or was obtained by a hacker.

The e-mails lay bare the chaotic internal life of the far-right party. They testify to the problems encountered during the merger with the DVU, shady finances related to state election campaigns and internal wrangling that often degenerated into hateful words and insults toward other party members.

The e-mails also document blatant racism. One senior Bavarian NPD official writes about "Kanacken," a racist term of abuse directed against people of immigrant descent, while a well-known neo-Nazi from the southwestern city of Aschaffenburg reflects on the "National Socialist movement." One NPD official from Hamburg complains about another party member having a "Negress" as a Facebook friend.

Sensitive Details about the NPD-DVU Merger

Still, the most awkward details from the data leak regard Voigt's prestige project, the NPD's merger with its former rival, the DVU. They disclose that there was massive resistance to the move within the DVU. One DVU member wrote in an e-mail sent ahead of Dec. 12, the day of the party convention where the merger was voted on, that DVU chairman Matthias Faust would get to experience his own "Waterloo" -- in other words, a total defeat. In order to help the merger go through, one NPD official from the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg offered the support of a "Kampfgruppe" (a term associated with the Nazi era, referring to a combat unit) from the city of Schwabisch Hall. The unit, the official wrote, could be transported in a rental van to the DVU convention, which was being held in Kirchheim, a small town in the eastern state of Thuringia. "Nine men cost €524 ($710)," he wrote. The fee included €45 for meals, he explained, "as an incentive."

However, it would appear that not all of the van's passengers would be eligible to vote. The NPD official asked Faust to supply him with a "back-dated DVU membership card and a back-dated invitation" for his girlfriend, who would be coming along. When approached by SPIEGEL, Faust denied having supplied a back-dated membership card or invitation. Talk of the "Kampfgruppe" could only have been "a joke," he added, saying that "absolutely no combat units were present" at the convention. What's more, he said, guests wouldn't have been allowed to vote.

A majority of people attending the Dec. 12 convention voted for the merger. Since then, the right-wing extremists have been calling their common party "NPD -- The People's Union." Still, the merger is far from being a done deal. After the vote was held, senior officials representing DVU associations in four states complained of voting improprieties, such as not having been given enough time to properly review and respond to certain documents in the run-up to the vote. In January, a state court in Munich sided with the complaining officials, declaring that the vote did not meet democratic requirements and that a new vote would have to be held before a merger agreement could be signed.

Money Problems and Inflated Ambitions

In addition to such legal troubles, the NPD continues to struggle with financial shortfalls. The NPD is hoping that it will clear the 5 percent hurdle in the March 20 election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and secure seats in the state parliament. But, to support its campaign, the party has apparently been forced to meet its financial needs with the help of private loans.

According to one of the internal emails, the family of Udo Pastors, the deputy head of the NPD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, extended a €25,000 loan to the Saxony-Anhalt campaign organization under his wife's name. Ironically, Pastors, an avowed critic of capitalism, is charging the Saxony-Anhalt brethren 3.5 percent interest on the loan and only appears to trust his notoriously cash-strapped party to a certain degree: As collateral for the loan, Pastors demanded a guarantee from the NPD's national organization, which had to be personally signed by the NPD's national leader Udo Voigt.

This, in turn, does not seem to have entirely conformed to Voigt's understanding of loyal camaraderie. In an e-mail to Matthias Heyder, the NPD's lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections, Voigt grumbled that it was "a joke that, of all people, a man as well-off as Udo (Pastors) still wants a guarantee in this case." Pastors has confirmed the existence of the loan but refuses to provide any additional details. Voigt opted to not respond to questions regarding the loan.

The financial shortages also have something to do with the costly campaign in Saxony-Anhalt as well as with Heyder himself and his at times ambitious campaign plans. For example, although he is just a regional politician, Heyder wanted to have a "documentary" filmed about him in which he flies "from appointment to appointment" in an airplane and is welcomed upon arrival at airports. What's more, as Heyder wrote to the NPD's media relations officer, he wanted to have members of the press accompany him on his flights, who would get to see "real rallies" whenever he landed. The point of all these staged events would be to portray the NPD as a serious party -- despite the fact that recent polls put its support at a meager 3 percent -- and to help it secure the votes it needs to win seats in the state parliament. Heyder has also declined to respond to inquiries.

NPD Struggling to Mobilize Supporters

While the NPD in Saxony-Anhalt have their heads in the clouds, their colleagues in Baden-Wurttemberg are having a hard time mustering enough people on the ground. The NPD in the state is suffering from mobilization problems: The far-right party has to collect 150 valid signatures in each election district in order to be allowed to field their own candidates in the state parliamentary election on March 27.

In December, Janus Nowak, a local party official from the town of Boblingen, wrote an e-mail with "ALARM" in its subject line. In the e-mail, he reported that, despite months of trying, party members were "apparently incapable" of even "getting merely a single signature per day." In order to increase the yield, the NPD official provided the would-be signature-gatherers with detailed suggestions on how they "could address people on the street and be successful." For example, he suggested that every pitch should begin with the words: "Hello, I'm not trying to sell anything. No vacuum cleaners or washing machines or anything."

Once they had gotten that far, campaign workers were instructed to make sure "to look people in the eye," rather than looking at their clipboards, and to avoid saying anything too "complicated." The most important piece of advice regarded what came last: "Say 'Thank you' and don't talk too much." The idea of deploying professional signature collectors, such as an "NPD organizational wizard" from the town of Volklingen, was even considered. But the man in question appeared to lack selfless dedication to the party. Instead, as Nowak complained in an e-mail, he asked for "€1,000 a week" in addition to "meals + additional helpers + information kiosks + accommodation." Nowak also declined to comment on the e-mail exchanges.

'Capitalist' Scheme

Rudolf Schützinger, a member of the NPD's executive committee in Baden-Wurttemberg, also gave some thought to how to increase the number of signatures being collected. He suggested paying €1 to "each collector who turns in an acceptable, unauthenticated signature" and €2 for every authenticated signature.

Schutzinger also had another idea up his sleeve: attracting campaign donors with a sort of "profit-sharing" scheme. He suggested that, if the party succeeded in winning more than 1 percent of the vote, donors would get their "entire donation back within a set time frame + 30 percent." But, if the NPD could "not master" the 1 percent hurdle, donors would get back half of their contribution, while still being able to write the donation off against their taxes. In doing so, they would "have a loss of only 25%." According to Schutzinger, this scenario offered the advantage that the party would not have to assume any "financial risk," while at the same time motivating "the gamblers among our sympathizers" to make donations.

In an e-mail, the NPD official admitted that the scheme had "a capitalist aftertaste" and noted that it would need "legal validation" as far as party finance laws were concerned. In the end, the idea was apparently rejected. Schutzinger also chose not to respond to SPIEGEL's inquiries.

Threat of Legal Action

NPD spokesman Klaus Beier has threatened legal action in response to the publication of the emails. According to Beier, the "e-mail traffic between both party officials and party members, which used encryption technology (was) copied in breach of (Germany's) communication secrecy law" and that "the texts, whose content was probably manipulated" were "provided to the compliant journalists." On Saturday, the news agency DPA reported that the NPD had filed a criminal complaint over the publication of the e-mails.

In any case, Beier refused to say anything about who was behind the data leak or how it came about. He did say, however, that one had to assume that "the system has far-reaching means at its disposal for reading all of the NPD's e-mail communication."

Beier's remarks are reminiscent of the stance that the party took back in 2008, when SPIEGEL published an earlier collection of internal NPD e-mails.

Free Internet Press

The Village Where the Neo-Nazis Rule

Hitler salutes in the street and firing practice in the forest: Neo-Nazis have taken over an entire village in Germany, and authorities appear to have given up efforts to combat the problem. The place has come to symbolize the far right's growing influence in parts of the former communist east.

Horst and Birgit Lohmeyer have been working on their life's dream for six years, renovating a house in the woods near Jamel, a tiny village near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Birgit Lohmeyer writes crime novels, her husband is a musician, and both try to pretend everything is normal here in Jamel.

It wasn't easy to find their new home. The Lohmeyers spent months driving out to the countryside every weekend, heading east from where they lived in Hamburg, but most of the houses they saw were too expensive. Then they came across the inexpensive red brick farmhouse in Jamel. Slightly run-down, but not far from the Baltic Sea, the house sits surrounded by lime and maple trees, near a lake.

The Lohmeyers knew that a notorious neo-Nazi lived nearby -- Sven Krüger, a demolition contractor and high-level member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). What the Lohmeyers didn't know was that other neighbors felt terrorized by Krüger. He and his associates were in the process of buying up the entire village.

Jamel is an example of the far-right problem that has plagued Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for years. The rural region, once part of communist East Germany, has a poor reputation in this regard -- the NPD, which glorifies the Third Reich, has been in the state parliament since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of daily life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politicians from all the democratic parties has shaken the state. Sometimes hardly a week goes by without an attack on another electoral district office, with paint bombs, right-wing graffiti and broken windows.

Norbert Nieszery, leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the state parliament, calls it an "early form of terror." Nieszery's own office windows have been smashed twice. State Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) says he has registered a "new level" of right-wing extremist violence. He believes the NPD is trying to raise its profile through aggressive behavior ahead of the state parliament election in September. One local mayor requested police protection after receiving repeated right-wing threats. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has warned that the NPD is becoming increasingly influential in local municipalities and that the neo-Nazis are trying to entrench themselves in daily life.

Mounting Concern About Far-Right Influence

Nowhere have they succeeded as well as in Jamel. If the right-wing extremists left, the village would be empty. Jamel is no longer just a problem at the regional or federal state level -- even Berlin is growing concerned about the situation.

SPD member Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, visited the village a few months ago. He spent half an hour in the Lohmeyers' living room and promised to support them in their fight against the neo-Nazis. So far, nothing has changed. Jamel has come to symbolize the fact that there are places in Germany where right-wing extremists can do virtually whatever they want.

When the Lohmeyers moved here in 2004, they started to fix up their country house and to make contact with the neighbors -- although not with the neo-Nazi Krüger. They were sure right-wing extremists wouldn't be the only people in Jamel.

Only gradually did they realize just where they had ended up. Plaster crumbled from many of the houses in the village and one roof had collapsed completely. Beer bottles, car tires and gas canisters were littered behind the bus stop. There were metal fences surrounding some properties and attack dogs strained against their chains in the front yards. No one bothered to remove the swastika scribbled on the sign at the entrance to the village.

Children Giving Hitler Salute

There were young men with shaved heads and army trousers in the village and Nazi rock music could be heard from across the fields on the weekends. Shots sounded from the woods, where the neo-Nazis practiced their shooting -- police later found bullet casings in trenches there. When the Lohmeyers walked through the village, children raised their hands in the Nazi salute.

Krüger has shaped the village. He grew up here, with a father who was known as a right-wing radical and who used to make his son salute each morning in the snow. Young Krüger was an outsider at school, an acquaintance remembers, and didn't find friends until he joined the skinhead scene. As a young man, he incited right-wing thugs to attack a campsite and spent time in pre-trial detention on suspicion of burglary. Still, for a long time, the Krügers were the only neo-Nazis in the village.

"Now," says Horst Lohmeyer, "they see Jamel as a 'nationally liberated zone'" -- a neo-Nazi term for places foreigners and those of foreign descent must fear to tread. The extremists took over the village in just a few years. They now own seven of the 10 houses and have driven out anyone who couldn't come to terms with them. They battered down doors and broke windows, slashed tires, flew the German imperial war flag and celebrated Hitler's birthday. In the 1990s, they stuck dead chickens on one family's garden fence with the warning, "We'll smoke you out."

The village emptied and Krüger encouraged his right-wing friends to buy the available houses. Few others dared to venture into Jamel anymore. Neo-Nazis greeted one couple that wanted to move there with "Piss off" -- and the couple's house burned down shortly before they planned to move in. One new property owner dared to set foot in the village only accompanied by police.

The Lohmeyers have made it their life's work not to let themselves be driven out of Jamel. Each year, they host a rock festival on a field behind their house. Governor Erwin Sellering of the SPD has been patron of the festival since 2009. Police fence in the area and guard the entrance, and in past years, things remained largely calm.

Help is Far Away

This summer, though, neo-Nazis jumped over the fence, yelling slurs and attacking concertgoers. Police stepped in and stopped the troublemakers. But police can't always protect the Lohmeyers -- the nearest station is 12 kilometers away.

Horst Lohmeyer sits in his kitchen, bent over a map, and runs his finger along the roads and through the towns -- Gressow, Neu Degtow, Grevesmühlen. It takes a quarter of an hour to reach the nearest police station. When Krüger got married this summer, the village was inundated with several hundred right-wing extremists from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, including a number of high-ranking NPD politicians such as Stefan Köster, NPD party head for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Jamel has become a right-wing pilgrimage site -- they come from all over Europe to see the village where neo-Nazis call the shots. They celebrated Krüger's wedding until late in the night, with nationalist rock music and fireworks. The Lohmeyers lay awake in bed, frozen with fear.

Mayor Uwe Wandel is helpless in the face of the right-wing movement in his community. He sounds bitter when he talks about Jamel. "The police, the authorities, no one dares to intervene," he says. "The Nazis are laughing in our faces." Wandel says he has repeatedly asked the state government for help. The interior minister and a parliamentary delegation came by one time, he adds. "They stayed for 20 minutes, expressed concern -- then they left again."

No One Responsible

Jamel has become a lawless place, Wandel complains, and the authorities don't take decisive enough action against the right-wing extremists. He says Krüger is allowed to dump demolition waste and burn trash in the village with impunity. The head of the department of public order in nearby Grevesmühlen says higher-level officials at the district level need to tackle the problem. They in turn say the local authority is responsible for Jamel.

Krüger, meanwhile, has much bigger plans. He has been a member of the district council for the NPD since 2009 and has bought parts of a concrete factory in Grevesmühlen, which he uses for his NPD office and his demolition company. The company logo shows the outline of a Star of David being smashed; the slogan is, "We do the dirty work." Barbed wire encloses the factory premises and dogs bark. A sign above the entrance reads, "Better dead than a slave." Krüger prefers not to comment on the accusations against him. All he says is, "Nothing that's written about me is true. I don't stand a chance against the system."

Krüger has hired new employees in the last few months. He gets contracts from fellow members of the far-right scene, but also from local businesses. Mayor Wandel says he's appalled by how far these right-wing structures now extend. "I'm afraid of a second, third, fourth Jamel," he says.

Neo-Nazis placed a boulder at the entrance to the village. A plaque attached to the rock reads, "Village of Jamel - free, social, national." Signs next to it point the way to Hitler's birthplace ("Braunau am Inn 855 km") and to the formerly German cities of Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). No one has removed the rock. "We've given up on Jamel," Wandel says.

Only the Lohmeyers are left.

Spiegel Online

Germany: The rise of the far-right in the East

Along with many other prejudices, eastern Germany has had to contend with a reputation for neo-Nazism. It's not entirely unjustified, but right-wing extremism in the East has roots in economic hardship.


Right-wing violence was most dramatic in the first years of the newly unified Germany - and more and more often, they occurred in the former East Germany.

For three consecutive nights in August 1992, several hundred neo-Nazis - watched by up to 2,000 locals - attacked an apartment block for asylum seekers in the north-eastern town of Rostock. With the police unprepared and initially outnumbered, the violence continued unchecked until it culminated in an arson attack.

The Rostock riots quickly achieved international notoriety. Pictures of drunken, violent East Germans doing Hitler salutes were printed around the world. This was not the dawn of a new, hopeful country that had been celebrated less than two years before.

Authority vacuum

Neo-Nazi violence was not just a stain on the former East Germany. Over 100 of the 370 rioters arrested in Rostock had travelled from the former West, where there was a string of horrific attacks on Turkish immigrants in the early nineties.

But Rostock cemented the reputation of post-Wall eastern Germany as a new haven for neo-Nazism, and that reputation stuck. What characterized the Rostock riots as specifically East German was the powerlessness of the authorities.

For two or three years after the fall of the Wall, state institutions in the former German Democratic Republic were weakened by the period of transition. Police officers suddenly found themselves associated with a discredited regime. Dierk Borstel, a researcher into right-wing extremism at the University of Bielefeld, described the precarious circumstances in the early 1990s as linked to a lack of functioning insitutions.

"The police force was destabilized and the church had little influence anyway," Borstel told Deutsche Welle. "The eastern German trade unions and the PDS, the successor party to the former ruling communist SED, had little authority, and the trade unions and industry associations coming in from the West were all very weak in the east."

Worst of many worlds

These semi-anarchic conditions were fertile ground for far-right activists in the former East Germany, and their cause was further helped by the disappointment and poverty that spread in the East after reunification.

"The expectation of East Germans after reunification was: 'We're going to get the security of the East plus the freedoms of the West,'" Borstel says. "The result was that they lost the securities and couldn't afford the freedoms."

Even though the skinhead neo-Nazi scene originated in western Europe, it already existed in East Germany before the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was often linked to certain football teams, and occasionally broke out in extreme violence, such as the attack of 30 skinheads on a concert in a church in central East Berlin in 1987.

The far-right movement in the East capitalized on what many describe as the GDR's denial of its own Nazi history. Olaf Sundermeyer, author of "In the NPD," a book about the development of Germany's populist far-right National Democratic Party, believes the GDR's distanced attitude to Hitler's Germany helped feed the neo-Nazi movement.

"Communist leaders in the GDR said, 'We are an anti-fascist state and we have no responsibility for history. There are no Nazis here.' Of course that wasn't true. There were former Nazis in both East and West Germany, but there was no denazification in East Germany - the Nazi history was not dealt with," he said.

Imbalance and injustice

East German society was never particularly multicultural, and the government's immigration policies showed a determination to keep the population monotone. Immigrant workers from other socialist countries like Mozambique were sent home if they got pregnant, or as soon as their allotted time ran out. The lack of a multicultural foundation is still reflected in eastern German society today.

"Eastern Germany has a lot fewer immigrants - and it has long been acknowledged that where there are no immigrants and no Jews, there is more racism and anti-Semitism," Borstel said.

Neo-Nazis were also able to win over some East Germans with familiar ideas. "National Socialism often starts out with the idea of socialism, and then that is combined with frustration, unemployment, lack of opportunity, and populations moving away." This is the opinion of a former neo-Nazi who wants to remain anonymous, working for Exit Deutschland, an organization that helps people leave the far-right scene.

There is a widespread feeling that the West left the East behind economically. In the last 20 years, unemployment in the former East has been consistently twice as high as in the West, and the emigration of young eastern Germans remains a problem. Statistical evidence shows that German far-right parties tend to prosper in times of economic depression, and the NPD has aimed its electoral resources aggressively at the most neglected districts.

The Exit Deutschland representative, who has counseled numerous former neo-Nazis, said that the frustration that comes from being left behind after watching friends leave your home town is a factor common to many of those who turn to right-wing extremism.

"Those who stay, for whatever reason - because they can't find a job anywhere else, for example - feel an enormous frustration. That is fertile ground for far-right groups - and for extremist groups in general," he said.

Sympathy for the Left

This growing eastern German sympathy with the far-right chimed in with a study completed in 2003, which found that 16 percent of Germans had an extreme right-wing world-view - that is, they expressed chauvinistic, anti-Semitic, social-Darwinist or xenophobic opinions, and tended to trivialize the Nazi regime. In the East, this world-view was found in 23 percent of the population, compared to 14 percent in the West.

This showed a marked change from the early 1990s, when a similar study found far-right-wing opinion more prevalent in the West. Statisticians have linked this switch to a decline in economic expectation. Whereas easterners were more optimistic about their economic prospects in the early 1990s, by the late 1990s, westerners had become more positive about the economy.

Behind this turnaround lay a real sense of betrayal. In a study written in 2005, political scientist Richard Stoess wrote, "That the eastern German people overtook their western compatriots in sympathy for right-wing extremism lay in the fact that their initial trust in the western system of democracy and market economy had turned into particularly bitter disappointment."

Neo-Nazis for the new century

As state authority began to re-assert itself in the East, the far-right developed more subtle ways to organize. "The structures have become smaller," said Borstel. "They no longer rely on large parties like the NPD, but rather local cells, which are more difficult for the state to break up. They have become anchored in local communities in a way I thought would never happen."

This assimilation was mirrored in the far-right political parties, which have spent the past decade making themselves electable in the East. Although the NPD have steadily lost ground in the former West, in the East they have gained a foothold in several state parliaments.

"The Big Bang was the state election of 2004 in Saxony, where the NPD first gained representation in an eastern German state parliament," said Sundermeyer. "Since then it has very gradually established itself as a 'normal' party."

The NPD was re-elected to the Saxony parliament in 2009, with 5.6 percent of the vote. The NPD's membership figures had risen from 4,000 in 1995 to 6,800 in 2009.

The NPD has achieved this success by aiming its messages at young people, especially via the Internet, and appealing to sentiments shared by the far-left - anti-Americanism, anti-Israel, anti-globalization. It has worked to pick up the youth protest vote, targeting sub-cultures with an anti-system stance.

Deutsche Welle

Germany's far-right flops

Support for the National Democratic Party of Germany is sliding, and it's resorting to premium-rate phone lines to stay afloat

When the Berlin wall fell apart, back in November 1989, fears that Germany's forthcoming reunification would lead to the revival of violent nationalism and bitter revisionism were looming all over Europe. Were those anticipating the Third Reich spirit's renaissance right? Looking at the reunified Germany 20 years on, they surely were not.

Ever since the wall came down, Germany's political establishment has made efforts to ease the anxieties of its neighbours to the east, namely Poland and the Czech Republic. Critics of Germany's détente with both countries have been marginalised and deprived of any tangible influence on German politics.

Evidence of this tendency was visible this week, when foreign minister Guido Westerwelle intervened to stop a figure unpopular with Poles being appointment to a museum post. The Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen) had been trying to place its chairwoman, Erika Steinbach, on the board of a planned museum about the ethnic Germans expelled from countries in central Europe after the second world war. Steinbach's candidature was unacceptable to many Poles, as back in 1991, she was one of the Bundestag members who voted against the recognition of the German-Polish border. By blocking her bid, Germany's incumbent government has once again proved its commitment to the reconciliation process.

Still, German nationalism is not quite dead, and if it has a face, it is that of the BNP's sister organisation, the NPD (National Democratic party of Germany). There was a time when the neo-Nazi party was on the ascendancy. In 2004, the NPD managed to break into Saxony's state parliament with a 9.2% share of the vote, followed by its success in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two years later. Prior to 1989, both states were part of East Germany, and since the reunification they have suffered from soaring unemployment, deindustrialisation and migration to the west. The NPD has managed to spin political capital from the eastern Germans' dissatisfaction, just like the BNP has seduced a section of British society.

But the similarities end right there. While the BNP's leader rejoices in his Question Time debut, and his party benefits from two recently gained seats at the European parliament, his fellow travellers in Germany are making desperate attempts to save their own party from imminent bankruptcy. The NPD has found itself in financial dire straits owing to a series of accounting irregularities, for which it was fined a total of €2.5m in April. Last year the party's treasurer was arrested on suspicion of transferring €627,000 from the party's accounts to his own company. Perhaps the best measure of the NPD's desperation is that it launched a 0900 prefix phone line, mostly employed by German sex-line operators, through which its supporters can donate much-needed euros. "Every phone call counts!", encourages the NPD's website.

In the most recent Bundestag elections, the nationalists pulled a meagre 1.5% share of the vote, overtaken by the German Pirate party, who received 2%. In the light of all these setbacks, it seems that, after years of rising fortunes, the BNP's German allies have found themselves at the edge of a steep political slope. This rise-and-fall scenario could very well repeat itself in the UK.

UTV

Tensions Mount in Neo-Nazi Hotel Case

Neo Nazi training ground? If the squatters are allowed to stay,
this hotel could become a hub for right-wing extremists.

Despite efforts to have them evicted, right-wing extremists in Germany continue to occupy a hotel building they plan to turn into a training center. And now police fear a violent clash between local left-wingers and their new neo-Nazi neighbors.

Bullets have been fired and weapons confiscated. But as tensions between left and right wing groups mount, a court has rejected an application to evict a group of neo-Nazis from a disused hotel in the village of Fassberg, in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.

The Hotel Gerhus went into receivership just one day before Jürgen Rieger, deputy leader of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), signed a 10-year lease on the property. That has sparked controversy about whether the neo-Nazis are there legally or whether they are squatting.

The receiver himself, Jens Wilhelm, had hoped to be granted a court order this week to force the neo-Nazis off the property. But he was unsuccessful and will now have to wait for a court hearing at the end of the month. Reacting to the decision, Wilhelm told Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper: "What could be more urgent than vacating an illegally occupied hotel?"

And as Wilhelm's frustrations grow, so too do those of left-wing groups outraged by reported plans to convert the hotel into a neo-Nazi youth camp and training center. After shots were fired in the area over the weekend -- nobody was injured -- police seized pepper spray from two left-wingers and a baton from a group of right-wingers. Local police are also stepping up their presence because of fears of a violent clash between left and right. Local police spokesman Christian Riebandt said: "We have squad cars patrolling the area around the hotel around the clock."

The right of the neo-Nazis to remain in the 80-room hotel will be depend on whether a court deems their current lease -- signed off by the debt-ridden owners just one day before they went into receivership -- legal and valid.

Spiegel Online

Nazi Strength Through Joy leisure programme to get museum in German far-Right proposals

The NPD - friends of the BNP and not even a little bit nazi

Germany's far-right NPD Party is on a collision course with the government over plans to build a museum celebrating the Third Reich's "Strength Through Joy" movement, which organised leisure activities for the masses.

Jürgen Rieger, the vice-president of the party that seeks to ban all immigration and sever all ties with the EU, has submitted plans to authorities in Wolfsburg - home to car giant Volkswagen - for the museum intended to "show the people what this organisation did and what it meant". But critics have accused Mr Rieger of using the museum as a way to spread pro-Nazi propaganda.

Strength Through Joy, at one time the largest tour operator in the world, was created to promote "a National Socialist people's community and the perfection and refinement of the German people" through its tightly structured recreational programmes. Battalions of Strength Through Joy workers built the massive holiday complex of Prora on the Baltic Sea intended to be used by 20,000 holidaying Nazi loyalists at one time. the organisation also controlled a fleet of cruise ships that allowed pre-war Germans to travel to far away destinations at rock bottom prices. And it also financed the production of the "people's car" by VW, which later became the classic Beetle of the post-war years.

By the time war broke out, it was virtually redundant, but had accomplished its task: binding the people to Hitler and controlling leisure the way every other activity was controlled under the regime.

Mr Rieger's plans to turn an old furniture warehouse into a museum have met with stiff opposition. Ralf Schmidt, a spokesman for the city, said: "We will use every legal means at our disposal to stop this from becoming a reality." Because Mr Rieger has made his application to have the museum as a "commercial enterprise", the initiative, which critics say "glorifies Naziism"will be more difficult to stop than if it were merely being opened as a political showcase for the NPD viewpoint.

Mr Rieger has already assembled a fleet of Nazi-era cars, propaganda posters, documents, flags and uniforms of the movement ready to go on display.

Local officials fear that the museum will become nothing more than a shrine to the far-right, who continue to indulge in violent racist attacks while attracting more vulnerable young people during the economic downturn. In June, Mr Rieger founded an association to promote the museum. A barbecue and music evening at the intended site turned bloody when NPD members with shaved heads attacked journalists who turned up to report on the event with clubs and beer bottles. Later the same night, a black man was beaten up at the main train station.

Telegraph

Germany's major neo-Nazi party faces ruin after €2.2m fine

Germany's largest neo-Nazi party is facing financial ruin after the Bundestag imposed a €2.2 million fine yesterday for filing fraudulent accounts. Leaders of the National Democratic Party (NPD) vowed yesterday to launch a legal challenge to the fine, due for payment in a month.

“Of course we are going to challenge it,” said Peter Marx, NPD general secretary. The party has little choice: long-running financial difficulties have left the NPD almost bankrupt. Last year, the former treasurer was imprisoned for two years and eight months for embezzling €750,000 in party funds.

Yesterday’s fine arises from falsely declared assets and funds in its 2007 accounts, a Bundestag statement said.

Although the NPD has no MPs in the Bundestag, it has representatives in two state parliaments, qualifying it for public funding although the party questions Germany’s democratic order. A Bundestag committee that audits party accounts said it found significant irregularities in the NPD’s 2007 figures.

The total fine imposed was €2.5 million, but NPD officials had already agreed to the withholding of €300,000 in state funds due this year.

Starved of funds, the party has let go over half its staff members in the Berlin headquarters. The financial difficulties will frustrate party ambitions in a series of state elections later this year. Yesterday’s fine is likely to cause further divisions between the NPD’s so-called “modern” and “Hitlerite” camps at this weekend’s party conference in Berlin.

Since entering the Saxon state parliament in 2004, the “modern” wing has pushed for the party to concentrate on a far-right social conservatism. They argue that bomber jackets and swastika flags scare away potential voters frustrated with the mainstream political handling of the financial crisis, social welfare cuts and bank bailouts. But the “Hitlerite” wing, drawn from extreme-right groupings, accuses the “modern” politicians of pursuing their careers at the expense of the party’s neo-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic principles.

Party leader Udo Voigt has his own problems: he faces a challenge to his leadership at the weekend party conference. Then, later this month, he is likely to be convicted of defamation and inciting racial hatred over a party pamphlet published during the 2006 World Cup that ridiculed the German side’s only black player.

Earlier this week, the federal government banned a far-right youth movement for spreading Nazi propaganda.

Irish Times

German Boys Join Anti-Immigrant, Neo-Nazi Groups, Study Shows

A study funded by Germany’s Interior Ministry showed that more than twice as many German boys belong to anti-immigrant or neo-Nazi groups than claim membership of the major political parties’ youth organizations.

Out of more than 26,000 youths surveyed in 2007 and 2008, 4.9 percent of boys said they belonged to a “right-wing group or ‘Kamaradschaft’,” the study by Hanover-based research institute KFN showed. That compares with as many as 2 percent that belong to youth organizations for established parties.

“It’s shocking that these right-wing groups can be more successful at mobilizing our youth than the established parties,” KFN Director Christian Pfeiffer told reporters today in Berlin. While a comparison between such groups is inexact, since many established party youth clubs charge membership fees, Pfeiffer said it was instructive.

Last month, about 6,000 German skinhead and neo-Nazi groups in the eastern city of Dresden staged one of their biggest demonstrations since German reunification in 1990. The groups, mostly made up of youths tied to the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party, used the 64th anniversary of the 1945 firebombing of Dresden on Feb. 14 to hold a “mourning march.”

Speaking alongside German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble at a press conference, Pfeiffer said he didn’t know whether the 4.9 percent figure had increased, since a comparable number wasn’t available from previous studies. Some 2.6 percent of girls said they belonged to anti-immigrant and neo-Nazi organizations.

Kamaradschaften are clubs that offer a forum for symbols and songs that often recall Germany’s Nazi past. The display of Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany.

The study also revealed that 29.7 percent of youths agreed with the statement that there are “too many foreigners in Germany;” another 34.8 percent tended toward that position, according to the study, Youth in Germany as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence.

Bloomberg

Defectors expose plans of Germany's 'real' Nazis

Inside report reveals the violence and Hitler worship of the National Democrats, an overtly racist party on the brink of electoral success

Germany's main neo-Nazi party pretends to be democratic. But its members hoard weapons, plan to rebuild Hitler's Reich and are using the economic crisis to try to make sweeping gains in this year's elections, a new and disturbing study of the extreme right has revealed.

To write their exposé on the increasingly influential neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), the authors spent two years infiltrating Germany's far right. They interviewed party leaders and defectors who have since quit the organisation in disgust. "The NPD is a dangerous organisation," warned Olaf Sundermeyer, one of the two journalists who wrote In the NPD, published in Germany last week. "It pretends to be democratic, but make no mistake about it: these people are genuine Nazis."

Despite government attempts to ban the party, the overtly racist NPD has already won seats in two of Germany's 16 regional state parliaments. It has some 220 members on local councils, and expects to consolidate its political power base in a series of regional and local polls this year. The NPD's leader, Udo Voigt, admits that his party is unlikely to gain a foothold in the national parliament in Germany's general election this September. But he insists: " My vision is to obtain seats in the Reichstag in 2013."

To outsiders and the press, the NPD tries to portray itself as a middle-class party. Members are schooled in Berlin on how to cope with difficult questions about the Third Reich and the Holocaust. At election time, rank-and-file skinheads are replaced by men with short haircuts and suits and its handful of far-right "intellectuals".

In their book, Mr Sundermeyer and his co-author, Christoph Ruf, make it clear that the economy and unemployment are playing into the hands of the NPD. The party has infiltrated militant jobless groups, and is winning support. "Germany's ability to cope with such developments is going to be on trial in 2009. It will be a test of the country's political maturity," they warn.

Some of the most disturbing revelations about the NPD, which began life in the mid-1960s, are provided by former members who were shocked by the violence of its members and their hero-worship of Adolf Hitler. Uwe Luthardt, a taxi driver, was in the NPD leadership for three years, but resigned after watching his party colleagues severely beat a punk rocker who had shouted "Goodnight white pride" at the group. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," Mr Luthardt said.

He revealed that the party's regional headquarters in Jena is deliberately called the "Brown House" after Hitler's Munich HQ. The cellars of the building contain a weapons cache, and are adorned with photographs of SS men. Party members sing the outlawed Nazi "Horst Wessel" anthem and a song called "We're Going to Build an Underground Train Line from Jerusalem to Auschwitz".

Mr Luthardt described how the party is funded by donations from expatriate Nazis and their families who fled to South America after the Second World War. Cash also comes from concerts staged by far-right skinhead rock bands. "The objective is to bring back the Third Reich," he said.

"A new organisation of stormtroopers would take revenge on anyone who disagrees with them. The concept is simply: let's kick out all the foreigners, then Germans will have jobs again. The are convinced that they will win an election one day, and that then things will really get going."

Mr Ruf and Mr Sundermeyer say some areas of eastern Germany have been designated "national liberation zones" by the party, because intimidated foreigners do not dare to be seen there. The head of the NPD's youth wing, Michael Schäfer, justifies the party's anti-foreigner campaign, saying: "The German Volk [people] have existed for 1,000 years; they cannot simply be allowed to disappear."

Independent

Spot the difference: the NPD and the BNP

A big-mouthed nazi (left) and another one (right)

The revelations of a former senior member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) as reported in Spiegel a day or two ago, make fascinating reading, not least for the startling similarities between the NPD and this country's own far-right British National Party.

In fact, before the interview had even started, the similarities were evident. In the introduction to the article, Spiegel says;

'...he describes the NPD as a deeply radical party where Hitler salutes and financial irregularities are common'

The parallels go beyond that however, and one wonders if the current BNP is based on the NPD or vice versa. Whichever it is, it's clear that the far-right across Europe has had a makeover that is and always has been purely cosmetic.

Although the interview is short, connections can be made between the two groups in a number of interesting ways, the British version containing Arthur Kemp's ideological training, the Red, White and Blue event and of course, the perennial financial shenanigans, while the German version contains one Thomas Salomon doing a similar job to Kemp, the Festival of Peoples and familiar financial shenanigans. In fact, the two parties appear to be largely interchangable. Read on...

Hitler Salutes, Nazi Songs and Dreams of a New Reich

Uwe Luthardt was a senior member of the right-extremist NPD. But he quit after three months. In an interview, he describes the NPD as a deeply radical party where Hitler salutes and financial irregularities are common -- and which is bent on restoring the German Reich.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You recently quit the right extremist party NPD. Aren't you afraid?

Luthardt: The local party leader threatened me. He said a board member doesn't quit the party, he's either thrown out or disappears. I replied that I know more about him than he does about me. Since then it's been quiet. Someone who just quits usually gets a lot of problems, and can find himself waking up in intensive care.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So people who leave are threatened?

Luthardt: It happens. Otherwise the party would have even fewer members. The mood isn't good at the moment. It's easy to see that the party is short of money.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What didn't you like about your fellow party members?

Luthardt: It wasn't really my world. When you went along to evening meetings, you saw all the shaven heads -- and a black sun or other Nazi symbols tattooed on arms. They usually just boozed or were abusive. If there's no opponent around, they just fight among themselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The grassroots aren't especially intellectual, in other words?

Luthardt: Many in the JN (Young National Socialists) and in the Kameradschaften (eds. note: loosely organized far-right groups) have an IQ close to my shoe size. Most of them are simply failures: failed pupils, people who dropped out of school or their apprenticeships, alcoholics that can't find a foothold anywhere else, thugs. But every local organization has three to five men who don't have criminal records. They're the ones sent to face the press or man information stands.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What did you hope to get from the party when you joined?

Luthardt: I wanted to do something for Germany, I wasn't interest in a Greater Germany. And suddenly everyone was saying we'll take back Silesia and then we'll give the communists a thrashing.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How does the party finance itself?

Luthardt: Through music events among other things, they get money from ticket sales. And then of course through the Festival of Peoples, that generated just under €17,000 in 2007.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But you have to subtract the money the bands get from that amount.

Luthardt: No. Usually one tells the authorities that the bands get paid. But in reality they just get their expenses back and a receipt for a supposedly paid fee. But that is donated back to the party. And the party can write the donation off their taxes.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why do the bands forego the money they are due?

Luthardt: Out of conviction. It happens in the party too. Whenever I went to Berlin on a training course, we got our transport costs paid but then handed the money back to the party in the form of donations. It's the same pattern.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How are the donations laundered -- apart from the falsified receipts?

Luthardt: Take the donations from South America…

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Donations from South America?

Luthardt: Yes, payments from nationalist Germans who haven't been living in Germany for a while. They make donations to small companies, for example, which in turn redirect the money to the party. Voigt's (eds. note: NPD chairman Udo Voigt) power base partly consists of money men from South America -- and Jürgen Rieger (eds. note: Voigt's deputy) has excellent contacts there.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In the media, NPD officials portray themselves as right-wing democrats and try to avoid unconstitutional statements. How radical is the party really?

Luthardt: The aim is the restoration of the Reich in which a new SA (eds. note: the paramilitary arm of the Nazi party) takes revenge on anyone who disagrees with them.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does that also apply to the moderate wing?

Luthardt: There is no moderate wing. The few isolated moderates there are have no say. The media training courses at party headquarters are very effective. The members know how they must sell themselves. It starts with the instruction that any meeting with outsiders must be held in innocuous offices. That applies to everyone apart from the chairman. He deliberately poses behind a massive desk with party flags in the party headquarters. The Jena party headquarters deserves its name "Brown House." No journalist has ever been in there.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would they see?

Luthardt: A load of SS pictures in the cellar. And there's a room with weapons.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the claim that the NPD isn't interested in the "Third Reich" is just for self-protection.

Luthardt: It's pure tactics. The idea is to atttract those who haven't yet understood that the party isn't right-wing radical, it's much more radical than that. It's about showing a respectable image in public. That's why the party leadership prefers members who have totally normal haircuts and clothes. They can be sent to man the information stands.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Isn't there a danger that the neo-Nazi activists will be put off if the party presents too harmless an image?

Luthardt: No, because everyone knows it's just tactics. The leaflets, the placards, the opposition to Hartz IV (eds. note: unpopular low unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed) -- there's no substance behind that. No one knows what alternative there could be to Hartz IV. Let's kick out all the foreigners, then the Germans will have jobs again, that's the basic concept the NPD talks about. They only refer to freight trains when no one from outside is listening.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The freight trains of the Third Reich?

Luthardt: The ones in which they want to put political opponents, the Jews and the foreigners once they've taken over the country again. Internally there's very plain speaking. And the singing of the Horst Wessel song (eds. note: the anthem of the Nazi party) is also very popular. No wonder that the Kameradschaften groups are willing to bite their tongues in public.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But relations with the Kameradschaften aren't always easy.

Luthardt: Absolutely not. The Free Nationalists don't like to be dictated to and are skeptical about parties. But most of them still let themselves be used by the NPD. They're the useful idiots of the party, comparable to the role the SA had for the Nazis. I always tell them: just look at the history of the SA, that's just what will happen to you when they're in power.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: When did you notice that the internal communications of the party are so different from the way it shows itself to the outside world?

Luthardt: Very soon after I joined the board. It's not hard if you see how people greet each other with their arm outstretched.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How come the activists refrain from such unconstitutional activities in public?

Luthardt: The foot soldiers are under strict instructions never to talk to the press. And it's pretty rare that any of them opens their mouths. If it does happens, they're quickly summoned for a talking to. The officials have all been trained to deal with that.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: They get taught how to behave in public?

Luthardt: That's one of the focuses. There are internal documents which clearly state how everyone should behave. Anything to do with the Third Reich is especially sensitive. So people are taught how to respond to questions such as 'What do you say about the Holocaust?' The first sentence has to suffice, otherwise there's a danger of contradicting oneself if follow-up questions are asked.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did you find the training courses convincing?

Luthardt: If you're on the moderate side of the party, it's a shock. It does make you think about whether you're in the right party.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who runs these courses?

Luthardt: Thomas Salomon. And he's 100 percent convinced about what he says. He's one of the leading thinkers, together with Jürgen Gansel and Holger Apfel from Saxony.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What kind of politics do these gentlemen dream of?

Luthardt: Of the German Reich. They're totally convinced that they'll win an election one day and that things will really get going. Everyone can imagine what would happen then.

Interview conducted by Christoph Ruf, author of a recently published book on the NPD

Spiegel Online

On Dresden Anniversary, Massive Protest Against Neo-Nazi March

Thousands turned out in central Dresden to protest a march by far-right supporters on the 64th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the city. Police clashed with left-wing protestors, who threw stones and bottles.

Organizers of the alliance that formed as a counterweight to the neo-Nazi march through the eastern German city said around 11,000 people participated at several demonstrations. Police put that number at just under 10,000.

They were protesting a "mourning march" held by members of the extreme-right in the capital of the state of Saxony. For a decade, anti-immigrant and skinhead groups have marked the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden by Allied air raids, which took place Feb. 13-15, 1945, at the end of World War Two.

Many of the groups marching were affiliated with the National Democratic Party (NPD), a far-right political party which entered the Saxony state assembly in 2004.

This year’s event was organized by a group known as the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, supported by the NPD. The far-right marchers totaled around 6,000, according to police, about a thousand more than gathered in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing.

Many in the far-right scene call the widespread destruction in Dresden a "Holocaust," and attempt to paint Germany as a victim of the war. The firebombing killed an estimated 25,000 people, mostly civilians, and wiped out the city center.

Eyewitnesses on Saturday said several hundred leftists who objected to the far-right procession tried to attack neo-Nazi participants, hurling bottles at the police cordon and damaging parked cars. Witnesses said several people were injured, although police have not confirmed this.

Clashes between left-wing and far-right groups are common on the anniversary. This year, police forces numbered around 4,000, some brought in from neighboring states.

Commemoration

Separately, thousands of pacifists took part in processions to both denounce the neo-Nazi threat and remember the city's dead.

On Saturday morning, peace services were held in churches and a synagogue. Afterwards, thousands of Dresden residents went to a central square, the site where numerous victims of the bombing were burned to death. Also participating in the commemorations were politicians from Dresden and Saxony as well as representatives from the United States and Great Britain.

Many mainstream Germans say that the huge loss of life must be remembered as a warning against war.

On Friday, the bell of the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, rang out in their memory. The church, one of the symbols of Dresden, collapsed two days after the raids. It remained a pile of rubble for decades until US and British donors helped pay to rebuild it in a gesture of reconciliation. It reopened in 2006.

Deutsche Welle

Germany sees rise in far-right attacks

Three hundred people recently demonstrated against far-right violence in Passau

The German government is to devise a strategy for curbing the surge of neo-Nazism as far-right offences have increased 30 per cent in 2008

The increase was announced following the attack on the chief of police in the town of Passau in Bavaria, who was stabbed in front of his home by a suspected neo-Nazi.

According to the German Ministry of Interior, the first ten months of 2008 saw up to 12,000 incidents perpetrated by far-Right offenders, including violent attacks, which is a 30 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2007. It is believed the actual numbers are much higher, as many race hate offences are not registered as such.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, condemned the development, calling for more civil courage and saying that the far-Right offences were an attack on all Germans.

But Mrs Merkel is facing pressure from politicians across the spectrum for a ban of the National Democratic Party or NPD, the largest of the country's legally registered far-Right political groups that has often been accused of neo-Nazi links.

Previous attempts to ban the NPD were rejected as unconstitutional by the country's highest court, but an increasing number of politicians are considering another attempt in 2009 due to the drastic increase of far-Right related crimes. MPs have called for a special "democracy summit" to devise a strategy for fighting the rise of neo-Nazism.

In a separate development, an academic study found that over 20 per cent of all Germans are prejudiced against foreigners, while in the impoverished areas of former East Germany one in three citizens are xenophobic.

Telegraph