Germany’s Long Hot Neo-Nazi Summer Continues

Back in May, Germany’s domestic intelligence service issued a report that echoed a previous warning by America’s Department of Homeland Security. The allied agencies shared a concern: an increase in threatened and actual violence emanating from the far-right fringes of their respective democracies.

The summer of 2009 has more than justified these warnings. Here in the States, there have been two fatal shootings by members of far-right groups or movements, as well as a general rising mood of violence accompanying the national debate over, of all things, health care policy. In Germany, the summer has seen a rise in violent crime and organizing efforts by proto-fascist groups like the black-clad street group, the Autonomous Nationalists.

But it wasn’t street thugs who made a cameo in what was by far the most dramatic act of far-right violence in Germany this summer. In July, a supporter of the National Democratic Party stabbed a pregnant Egyptian woman to death in a Dresden courtroom. Before the fatal attack, the assailant had loudly declared his loyalty to the NPD and promised that its rise to power would solve the country’s problems. The Saxony-based party holds seats in two state parliaments and is currently canvassing for next month’s federal elections scheduled for September 27.

Like their fellow neo-Nazi parties around the world, the NPD has a peculiar way of canvassing; one that sometimes involves beating people of color in public. On Monday, three NPD members assaulted a 46-year-old non-white British national in front of his family in Hamburg. According to a report in the Times of London:

“Police said that the 46-year-old man was with his wife and four-year-old son at a bakery stall when the men approached him and handed him a flyer for the National Democratic Party. When the man ripped the pamphlet up his attackers pushed him against a glass window and one man punched him while another sprayed pepper spray in his eyes. Three suspects, who have not been named, have been arrested and are being investigated on suspicion of causing bodily harm.”

“News of the attack came on the same day that German prosecutors brought charges against a man accused of hanging a blood-drenched pig’s head and a banner denying the Holocaust at a Jewish cemetery in the city of Erfurt.”

The Hamburg assault hopefully caps a month of German headlines involving the NPD. In early August, a senior party official attempted to establish a “youth camp” in a rural hotel in Lower Saxony. The property was raided and quickly shut down by authorities, but the brazen flouting of German law heartened neo-Nazis around the country. Party activists then began the systematic harassment of a Christian Democratic candidate, Zeca Schall, who emigrated to Germany from Angola in 1988. According to Spiegel Online:

“The NPD released a press statement suggesting they would like to hold “direct talks” with Zeca Schall, a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. In the statement, the NPD also said they would like to “encourage” Schall … to return to his homeland and start a new life there. They said that a local should be doing his job. Schall is responsible for issues of integration — that is, issues involving immigration and multi-culturalism — for the CDU in Thuringia. As a result of the NPD’s statement and what were construed as barely veiled threats, local police have been posted near Schall’s house in his hometown of Hildburghausen.”

With some polls suggesting the NPD will make gains in September’s election, Zeca Schall may not be the only German sleeping poorly in the coming months.