Roughly one in twenty 15-year-old German males is a member of a neo-Nazi group, a higher proportion than are involved in mainstream politics, according to a study released on Tuesday. Anti-semitic crimes are reportedly also on the rise, leaving many politicians worrysome about a potential resurgence of right-wing extremism. The Nazi flag: One in 20 15-year-old males in Germany is part of a neo-Nazi group, a survey has shown Many politicians fear a resurgence of right-wing extremism as unemployment creeps higher in Germany, which is facing its deepest recession since World War Two. Government figures have shown anti-Semitic crimes rose at the end of last year. "It is shocking that right-wing groups have more success recruiting male youths than the established political parties,“ said Christian Pfeiffer, author of the report issued by Lower Saxony’s criminal research instute. Pfeiffer said fewer than 2 percent of young men were active in mainstream politics, compared to the 5 percent involved in far-right groups. The study, conducted in 2007 and 2008, also revealed that neo Nazi-symbols -- in either rock music, stickers or special clothing -- were used by one in 10 of the youths surveyed. The swastika and other Nazi symbols are banned in Germany. The highest proportion of neo-Nazis was in former communist eastern Germany, where almost one in eight youths were in such groups. More than 14 percent of those questioned were described as racist, and anti-Semitism was rife. More than 14 percent of those asked were inclined to brush off the Holocaust as "not awful“ while a similar number tended to believe that Jews, through their behaviour, were not entirely blameless for their persecution. Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s interior minister, said at the presentation of the state-sponsored report he would push for the creation of more sports clubs in regions with social problems. Late last year, a violent attack on Bavarian police chief Alois Mannichl, who had taken a stand against far-right supporters, stoked a debate over the rise of neo-Nazis. Earlier this month, an EU agency reported that peaks in anti-Semitism in Europe tracked tensions in the Middle East.
GERMAN TEENS
One in twenty boys a member of neo-Nazi group
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Sunday, 22 March 2009
March 18, 2009, 13:57
Picture: akg
Re: Britannia Radio: German teens: One in twenty boys a member of neo-Nazi group
Of particular interest to me at the moment, as I'm now reading a book entitled "Hitler's Willing Executioners", by a Jewish author, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, who is, or was at time of first publication (1997) Associate Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard.
His thesis is most interesting and extremely convincing, so far, for me. He contends that although most commentators and social historians have regarded the rise of the extreme form antisemitism took during the Third Reich, as an inexplicable aberration of a "few" fanatical Nazis, in practice antisemitism is a strand of belief that has been an integral part of the German people's worldview since way back. It never went away, but from time to time it did (and does still) go underground, ie it wasn't much talked of or apparently deeply felt by the population at large. But it has always been there, and just awaits the appropriate combination of social and political unrest to reawaken it in all its malevolent fury.
That, of course, if you accept his premise, explains exactly how Hitler was able to proceed with exterminations on a massive scale without any public protest to speak of. It also explains how Germans who were not members of the SS, who held in fact no particular official government position, were not members of the armed forces, were available and willing to cooperate in many aspects of "The Final Solution"....why would they protest? Getting rid of the Jews (a "final solution to the Jewish problem" in Germany had been spoken of in just those terms in the two previous centuries) was a very long-term, on-going consideration, but nothing "final" was done about it, because nobody had yet figured out how it could be done. Initially depriving the Jews of full citizenship and participation as German Jews in the polity of the state, then forbidding them to own certain types of businesses, then floating the possibility of simply deporting them from Germany en mass, and even sometimes the suggestion that they should be eliminated altogether as a polluting factor in any society - although some of these were tried, they reached their apogee with the advent of Hitler and the Third Reich.
During the rise of the Nazis and Hitler, the required combination of social factors existed - unemployment, instability of currency, roaring inflation, insecurity etc., coupled of course with the very deep-seated resentment of the German people of the savagely punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
But Goldhagen cites numerous examples of attempts during the 1800s and 1900s by German "liberal" politicians to "liberalise" to some degree conditions for the Jews - ie remove some of the many restrictive laws which prevented them from playing a fuller part in and therefore from feeling alienated from German society. All these attempts, even where restrictions had been lifted, foundered and the status quo was restored, as social pressures impelled even the "liberal" politicians to reverse their attempts to include the Jews more fully into German society.
I recall some very dismissive remarks made by Kaiser Wilhelm both before and during WWI, regarding Jews in general. But Goldhagen's thesis, it seems to me, which inevitably and naturally focuses on Germany's fundamentally antisemitic outlook, can or could be applied to a greater or lesser degree right across Europe (as indeed he acknowledges in passing), and that not excluding Great Britain (you will recall mentioning to me some time ago the persecution of the Jews in this country in the Middle Ages, and we have both mentioned the rise of antisemitism here during the 1930s).
Goldhagen believes that this continous and generally unconsidered and uncritical condemnation of the Jews is a direct result of the "Christianity" that was for so many centuries the dominant religion right across Europe...and before you explode in protest, xxxxxx p, what he says about the behaviour of the "Church" is simply fact, and fully justified in light of the reality that the "Church" to which he refers was (and is) a wordly institution. Remember The Crusades?
We WILL make you become Christians at swordpoint...?
I cannot disagree - so far - with what he says, and he wrote the book because he wanted to show just how integral a part antisemitism was/is of the German worldview. What you have just sent me confirms this, and certainly we know that it is unlikely to fade away, considering the dire economic times which are only now beginning to make their consequences felt.
Let me know what you think? I can lend you the book (when I've finished it!) if you are interested. I picked it up for a song at a charity shop.
Love
xxxxxxxxxxx j
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