Hartz IV:
Nazis hijack protests against welfare cuts
From Antifaschistisches Infoblatt and Antifa Net in
Berlin
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people are taking to the
streets every Monday evening to protest against government plans to cut
welfare benefits. The demonstrators are angry at the Social Democrats'
Hartz IV law, which will slash unemployment benefits, the Agenda 2010 plan
to dismantle the welfare state, and their tax and pensions reforms. But
militant nazis and other right-wing extremist groups are trying to hijack
the campaign, as they did with the Iraq war demonstrations, and have
enjoyed partial success because of the politically diffuse character of
the protests.
The extreme right in regions such as eastern
Mecklenburg-Vorpommem has faced little opposition over many years and is
able to present itself as a "radical solution". There the nazis, under the
banner of National and Social Action Alliance of Central Germany, paste up
their posters on public sites without any interference from the local
authorities.
So it is hardly amazing that in Ueckermunde, a town of 30,000 people close
to the Polish border, over 300 nazis marched against both Hartz IV and the
town's asylum-seekers' hostel on 5 September.
Originally the right-wing extremist citizens'
initiative, "Live better and safer in Ueckermunde" had wanted to
demonstrate against plans to provide refugee accommodation, after
collecting around 2,000 signatures opposing it. After the town council
announced that the proposal had been scrapped, the nazis of the Pomeranian
Action Front (PAF) used the march to celebrate a "partial victory" and to
rage against immigrants and refugees. Their banners and leaflets, however,
were exclusively targeted against the unemployment benefit cuts.
Ueckermunde boasts three nazi Kameradschaften. The Aryan
Warriors go around in black T-shirts with Celtic Crosses on the sleeve,
"Vandal" beards and black sunglasses. The National Germanic League (NGB)
sports neat side-parting haircuts and white T-shirts, and the PAF comes in
white shirts. All three groups marched together, with the PAF's flag
bearers and drummers, joined by the Stralsund branch of the
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), led by the NPD county
councillor Michael Andrejewski.
The nazis have had a similar impact in Kothen in Sachsen-Anhalt, which as
been known as a right-wing extremist stronghold for many years. There the
area organisation of the fascist Republikaner (REP) has taken charge of
the protests against Hartz IV, led by Gunnar Pollin, 43, who likes to
present himself as a "non-party person". At a demonstration at the end of
July, REP members and members of the Kothen Kameradschaft carried the lead
banner with the slogan, taken from the words of Kaiser Wilhelm II, "I no
longer know of any parties, I know only of Germans - against Hartz IV".
More than 500 people chose to march behind this banner.
Immediately afterwards, the REP and politically unorganised residents of
the town set up a "Citizens' Committee Against Rip-Offs" and called for
more demonstrations. It was another week before the DGB trade union
federation, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the churches
formed a "network for democracy and tolerance". They then proposed that
they and the fascist-led citizens' committee hold joint marches, setting
party political and "extremist" insignia aside, a move endorsed by the
Social Democratic Party's group leader on the town council.
 Nazi
banner calls for work for millions, not profit for millionaires
Elsewhere, a lack of interest by protest organisers in
going on the offensive against the fascists has de facto left them with a
platform. In Magdeburg, where the local Kameradschaft headed a
demonstration without any active opposition, a precedent was set that
enabled the Kameradschaft, together with right-wing hooligans, to
establish itself as an integral part of the demonstrations and dish out
its propaganda unimpeded.
The majority of other participants reacted to the nazis with apparent
indifference. Although anti-fascists tried to prevent the nazis from
taking part, the police countered by placing the nazis in the front of the
demonstration.
In nearby Schonebeck, this indifference was justified by a DGB official
who, after preventing anti-fascists from trying to exclude the nazis from
the demonstration, remarked that marches against Hartz IV should be "open
to everybody".
In Weissenfels, also in Sachsen-Anhalt, Andreas Karl, the NPD's regional
chairman and county councillor, made a speech, surrounded by skinhead
bodyguards, immediately after the district chairman of the trade union
ver.di. Karl did not introduce himself as an NPD officer, preferring to
describe himself as a "self-employed master roofer".
Fortunately, other examples from Dessau, Halle and Dresden show that the
nazis are not having it all their own way. Determined action by
anti-fascists in these cities has kept the nazis away from demonstrations
and the DGB and others have made it clear in leaflets that the nazis and
their racist, nationalistic and antisemitic slogans are not wanted.
Many people in eastern Germany are going onto the
streets to demand that their living standards should match those of
western Germany, as well as voicing horror that they might be reduced to
Polish levels. Legitimate social angst and grievances have become mixed
with nationalist and racist resentment. This leads to calls, sometimes
even from trade unions, for "national solidarity" and turns the focal
point of demonstrations onto the supposed needs of male German workers, so
excluding women, youth and immigrants.
Not surprisingly amid rising unemployment, demands for work feature
strongly. This demand is not explicit and is based on the crude but still
deeply rooted belief in eastern Germany that a human being's worth is
almost wholly linked to his or her work. In this way social Darwinist
arguments are used to attack those who do not fit the picture, such as
single mothers and the disabled. The undercurrent is "those who don't
work, don't eat".
The NPD and the Kameradschaften try to plug into this work fixation by
demanding "work for Germans first", a slogan of those who most certainly
do not want a society based on equal rights and social justice for all.
Demands for decisive action by "the state" also feature. These act as a
substitute for an attack on the whole logic of the government's onslaught
against welfare rights and social provision. Again, the door is left open
to nazis touting ideas of "German socialism".
The political situation in eastern Germany today is
characterised by material fears of a plunge into poverty, feeding off
frustrations accumulated over the past decade.
For many east Germans the 1990s was a period in which their social,
cultural and psychological identity and environment were almost entirely
erased.
After 14 years, it is evident that reunification has not succeeded in
creating real social integration and that west German dominated
institutions have not been able to offer the changes people expect. It is
not an exaggeration to say that large numbers of east Germans feel as if
their identity is going through a washing machine spin cycle, with all the
certainties to which they were accustomed before 1989 tossed around
violently. The danger is that some of the distinct authoritarian aspects -
the drive for homogeneity and insistence on total adaptation to socially
normative behaviour - that characterised the so-called socialist regime in
eastern Germany will now be absorbed into the protest movement because
they have never really been challenged.
It is no accident that a main slogan on many of the demonstrations is "we
are the people". The same slogan was the centrepiece of the nationalist
mobilisations in Leipzig in November 1989 and rang in a wave of racist
pogroms at the beginning of the 1990s.
For many taking part in the current demonstrations, this
slogan is simply a revived expression of frustrated opposition to
everything they are unable to change. However, organisers of the protests,
unthinkingly in some cases and knowingly in others, have taken up and run
with this "spontaneous" slogan. They have not paused to consider its
socially exclusive character and the way it leaves out immigrants but, at
the same time, facilitates the acceptance of fascists as legitimate
participants in the social movement against Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's
reforms.
Anti-fascists must ensure that the nazis are excluded from the protest
movement. This has been achieved where social initiatives and the trade
unions - as well as the PDS - are self-confidently organised and have
taken a principled anti-fascist position. But where trade union
organisation is minimal and civil structures are wedded to the notion that
"everything must be open to all", it is the anti-fascists and the left who
are seen as disruptive, wanting to split the movement because of their
efforts to keep the nazis out.
This was made clear at a meeting of organisers of the
Monday demonstrations in Berlin on 28 August. Delegates from Magdeburg who
were criticised for their accommodation with the nazis took it as an
insult, denounced "leftists" as the real trouble-makers and threatened to
walk out. Instead of using this situation to draw a sharp line between
those who want the fascists out of the protests and those who are happy to
have them in, representatives of the unions, the anti-globalisation
movement "attac" and political parties persuaded the Magdeburg delegates
to stay - and quickly changed the subject.
The growing vote for the NPD in elections, including winning more than 60
council seats in Saxony in June and 12 seats in the Saxon regional
parliament on 19 September, shows that the racist message is gaining wide
resonance. Worse, it pushes the mainstream parties to the right. This
makes the work of anti-fascists all the more difficult and increasingly
confronts them with regional differences.
In the big cities of both western and eastern Germany,
it is easy to influence the trade unions, the left parties and the
churches into adopting clear anti-racist and anti-fascist positions and to
persuade them that, even under Germany's right of assembly law, nobody is
forced to accept nazis alongside them. However, in small towns and rural
communities where nazis have had a foothold for some time, challenging
them is more difficult. It will be a longer process, dependent on gaining
a foothold in the community, shaming those who tolerate the nazis and
carrying out serious media work to expose their real aims.
Europe's biggest nazi event:
Hess marchers
grow bolder
Europe's biggest nazi event with more than 4,600 fascists
marching through the small Bavarian town of Wunsiedel. The mainly German
marchers were joined by nazis from the USA, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Great
Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary, Russia, Austria, Spain, Italy and Croatia...
Nazis brauchen Zeichen:
Zeichen des
Hasses
Nazis brauchen Symbole, Tätowierungen, Parolen, Hierarchien,
Bosse, Unterwerfung...
NPD breakthrough in Saxony:
Nazi parties
turn popular resentment into votes
The vote for the fascists in eastern Germany's biggest
state was a shock for the mainstream Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social
Democrats (SPD)...
Searchlight 2004
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03-11-2004 |
