{"id":400,"date":"2006-09-18T23:16:20","date_gmt":"2006-09-18T13:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=400"},"modified":"2006-09-18T23:58:19","modified_gmt":"2006-09-18T13:58:19","slug":"neo-nazis-on-the-march-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=400","title":{"rendered":"Neo-Nazis on the march in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

‘Far-right party wins seats in German election’<\/a>
\nMark Landler
\nThe New York Times<\/em>
\nSeptember 17, 2006<\/p>\n

FRANKFURT A far-right party made further inroads in Germany’s economically fragile east on Sunday, winning seats in a state election in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a lonely land of farms and fishing villages that is the home constituency of Chancellor Angela Merkel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The National Democratic Party<\/strong>, which openly espouses xenophobic and neo-Nazi views, was projected to win slightly more than 7 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. That was less than analysts here had feared, but enough to clear the threshold of 5 percent for seats in the state legislature.<\/p>\n

Extreme-right parties will now be represented in three of Germany’s six eastern states – a trend that worries officials and underlines the divide between the country’s eastern and western halves. Far-right parties have negligible support in more-prosperous western Germany.<\/p>\n

“This shows the extreme right is a stable and growing force in the east, but it is not an earthquake,” said Hajo Funke<\/a><\/em>, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin<\/strong>. “It’s not a danger for our democracy.”<\/p>\n

The result, however, is a rebuke for Merkel and her conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union<\/strong>, which lost votes in Mecklenburg and fared even worse in the second of the two state legislative elections on Sunday, in Berlin. There, the popular mayor, Klaus Wowereit<\/em>, led his Social Democratic Party<\/strong> to a comfortable victory.<\/p>\n

Voters appeared to be punishing Merkel’s party, 10 months after it squeaked into power in an unwieldy “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats, who govern Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, lost ground there, too, and it was not clear whether they could salvage their coalition with the Party of Democratic Socialism<\/a><\/strong>, the former East German Communist party.<\/p>\n

Merkel, who began her political career in Mecklenburg 15 years ago, has tried to focus attention on the region, inviting President Bush in July for a visit. But the state has one of the highest unemployment rates in Germany, which makes it a breeding ground for extremism, analysts say.<\/p>\n

The National Democratic Party, which the German government once tried to ban, won seats in Saxony, a similarly depressed eastern state, in 2004. Another far-right party is represented in Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin.<\/p>\n

“The grand coalition hasn’t presented a forceful program to tackle Germany’s problems,” Funke said. “These parties take advantage of the frustration of those who have no chance of a social or economic future.”<\/p>\n

One of the few winners on Sunday was Wowereit, who was given a strong mandate as mayor of Berlin, with the choice of renewing his coalition with the Party of Democratic Socialism or forming a new one with the Greens<\/a><\/strong>, the largest vote-gainer since the last election, in 2001.<\/p>\n

The victory may foretell a greater national role for Wowereit, a 52-year-old lawyer who has become a star in Berlin. His party-going style seems to suit his late-night town, and his disclosure before the last election that he is gay only added to his appeal. On Sunday, Wowereit appeared on stage with his partner, J\u00f6rn Kubicki<\/em>, a neurosurgeon.<\/p>\n

With the departure of Social Democratic leaders like Gerhard Schr\u00f6der<\/em>, and a lack of other rising stars, Wowereit has made his ambitions plain. “I would like to have more say that I have had in the last five years, when we had to clean up the city,” he said in a recent interview with the German magazine Stern<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Whether he has done so is a matter of debate. Berlin is strangled by debt, a jobless rate of nearly 20 percent and a shrinking commercial base. Wowereit, who is known as Wowi, prefers to focus on its role as a cultural center and tourist magnet. Berlin, he said last year, is “poor but sexy” – a line that has become a tongue-in-cheek slogan for the city.<\/p>\n

His opponent, Friedbert Pfl\u00fcger<\/em>, a Christian Democratic member of Parliament, tried to portray the mayor as a lightweight. But in a city that rewards flamboyance, Pfl\u00fcger, an establishment politician originally from the western city of Hanover, never stood a chance.<\/p>\n

“Up until now, he hasn’t been a strong voice in politics on the national level,” Uwe Andersen<\/em>, a political scientist at Ruhr University<\/strong>, said of Wowereit. “He may think this result strengthens his position.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also<\/em> : antifa.de<\/a><\/strong> (German) | Deutsche Welle<\/a><\/strong> | The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Far-right party wins seats in German election’ Mark Landler The New York Times September 17, 2006 FRANKFURT A far-right party made further inroads in Germany’s economically fragile east on Sunday, winning seats in a state election in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-fascism","category-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-6s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}