Right-Wing Extremists Find Ballot-Box Success in Saxony

[Aptrgangr]

Right-Wing Extremists Find Ballot-Box Success in Saxony

The neo-Nazi party NPD now has representatives in every county council in the eastern German state of Saxony. In one town, the party even managed to win over a quarter of the vote.

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The right-extremist party NPD found ballot-box success on Sunday.

Germany's right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) has long found some measure of success (more...) in the voting booths of eastern Germany. In Sunday municipal elections in the state of Saxony, the run of success continued.
With the state's 2.9 million voters choosing new county and municipal councils, the neo-Nazi NPD pulled in some 5.1 percent of the vote across the state and looked set for representation in every county council in the state. In two counties, the NPD even came in ahead of the Social Democrats. In terms of total votes, the NPD managed to quadruple its total from 2004, moving from 41,000 votes to 160,000.
Despite the advances made by the NPD, however, the conservative Christian Democrats emerged as the victors of the weekend election, winning 39.5 percent of the vote. The Left Party, successors to the post-Communist PDS, managed 18.7 percent while support for the Social Democrats, came in at just 11.5 percent.

The vote marked the first time the NPD put up candidates in every county in the state. RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS

• \'Helplessness and Resignation\': New Bid to Ban Far-Right NPD Looks Doomed (04/01/2008)
• Letter From Berlin: Germany Seems Powerless to Outlaw Far-Right NPD (08/28/2007)
• Far Right in Eastern Germany: A German Ritual of Hand-Wringing and Helplessness (08/27/2007)
• SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of Right-Wing Extremism

But the extremist party has long been making inroads into the political establishment in Saxony. The NPD won 9.2 percent of the vote in 2004 state parliament elections and the party has eight seats in the state parliament in Dresden, just behind the 13 held by the Social Democrats. Opinion polls routinely show that support for the NPD is approaching double digits in Saxony. Far right parties also have seats in the parliaments of Brandenburg and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, both in eastern Germany.
In one small town called Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, long known as a bastion of far-right sentiment, the NPD got 25.2 percent of the vote.
cgh/ddp/dpa

NPD Advances in Eastern Germany: Right-Wing Extremists Find Ballot-Box Success in Saxony - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News




A local citizens' alliance put up blue posters urging locals to "Vote Democratically" but 25.2 percent voted for the NPD, making it the second largest party here after an independent voters' group headed by Mayor Olaf Ehrlich.

Germany\'s Far-Right Village: \'It\'s High Time People Woke Up\' - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News


First of all, the NPD is no "right-wing extremist party", secondly 5.1% of the votes is a pathetic result - but still better than nothing. It is a good sign some people dared to vote democratically afterall.

[Routasydän]

The Nazi village!

GERMANY'S FAR-RIGHT VILLAGE

'It's High Time People Woke Up'

By Philipp Wittrock in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna
Support for the far-right National Democratic Party quadrupled in local elections in the eastern state of Saxony on Sunday. In the village of Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, one in four voters chose the NPD. SPIEGEL ONLINE paid the town a visit and found that the far right has deep roots in this picturesque spot.
Olaf Ehrlich looks exhausted as he winces at the sun from the terrace of his restaurant "Zirkelstein." He folds his arms across his green polo shirt, which bears the name of his establishment, shrugs his shoulders, exhales into his moustache and says: "I never thought it would happen again."
It sounds like resignation, even though Ehrlich won't admit that he feels that way. He's the mayor of Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, a picturesque eastern German village that has just made nationwide headlines because one in four of its voters chose the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) in local elections in the state of Saxony on Sunday. (more...)
The NPD (more...) derives many of its views from Nazi ideology and Germany's domestic intelligence agency describes it as "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist".

&nbspHOTO GALLERY: THE GERMAN VILLAGE WHERE 25 PERCENT VOTE NPD

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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery &nbsp5 Photos)


Four years ago, in the last local elections, the NPD got 26 percent in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, and it has also scored well over 10 percent here in regional, federal and European elections in recent years. Only an independent voters' group which Ehrlich belongs to got slightly more support. The far-right party swept aside Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the Left Party. The Social Democrats and Greens are virtually non-existent here.
Idyllic Bastion of the Far Right
Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, population 1,600, is a bastion of the NPD which is now represented in all 10 regional councils of the state of Saxony where the local elections were held on Sunday. Across Saxony, support for the NDP quadrupled from the last local elections.
Given its voting record, the village has attracted journalists before, and this time is no exception.

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Most residents say they are fed up with the attention and hastily add they are also sick of the NPD. "I lived through the war so I certainly don't vote for something like that," said an elderly woman struggling up the main street with her walking stick. A hundred meters down the street is the village store, which is also a combined bakery, butcher and post office. The young woman behind the counter gives a welcoming smile which turns into a frown as soon as the NPD is mentioned. "I'm not saying anything," she says.
A grey-haired man standing at his garden fence isn't much more forthcoming. "Tomorrow the papers will just say we're all right-wing extremists, we've seen that before," he says.
A hiker walking through the village jokes: "We haven't seen a Nazi yet." And as he walks off he turns round and says: "It's a bad business."
Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna, tucked in the hills of the Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) region near Germany's border with the Czech Republic, lives off tourism.
There are signs everywhere pointing to bed-and-breakfasts and holiday apartments that hug the slope on either side of the street. The risk of being labelled a Nazi village can only be bad for business. But the tourists are still coming here. Many of the pretty houses have "No Vacancy" notices up.
The NPD's Popular Plumber
NPD member Mario Viehrig doesn't have any trouble filling his holiday apartments, says Ehrlich. Viehrig, a computer scientist born in 1964, has represented the NPD in the local council since 2004. He attended one village fete wearing a T-shirt with the words "Fit For The Reich" emblazoned on the front.
Viehrig and his NPD comrade Michael Jacobi, a plumber, are firmly rooted in the community. Jacobi is well-liked in the village. "He's probably installed the heating of 80 percent of people here," said Ehrlich.
A second later a van drives past with "Jacobi Heating Installation" on the side. Ehrlich waves. The driver isn't Jacobi. "It's a bit difficult in the village," Ehrlich explains. He said an elderly woman recently said to him: "If I don't vote for him he may not come and repair my boiler."

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The NPD is at the heart of the community in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna. A few tired slogans against price hikes, growing poverty and the "madness" of pay increases for members of parliament in Berlin are all that it takes to give the party a sizeable and reliable voter base, says Petra Schickert of KBS, an organization that advises local communities on how to combat racism. The NPD scores well in most communities of Saxon Switzerland, and it's no longer the case that people just vote for the party to vent their protest at the performance of the mainstream parties, says Schickert.
Getting core NPD voters to switch their allegiance back to democratic parties is virtually hopeless, Schickert adds. The aim has to be to mobilize people who haven't been voting at all. Sunday's turnout in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna was just 50 percent.
Schickert's organization has invested a lot of time in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna over the last two years. "We had the impression we were much better positioned there now," she says with an air of surprise at the NPD's strong showing.
Chanting 'Sieg Heil'
The office helped to reopen the village's youth club in February. It had been closed since 2002 because far-right skinheads had held parties and concerts there which regularly culminated in "Sieg Heil" chants. "We want to deprive the NPD of new membership," says Schickert, adding that she hopes the club doesn't get taken over by the far-right scene again. One young man recently reported that skinheads had already been looking around it.
Schickert's office supports a local citizen's alliance against the far-right, but the group isn't getting much support in the village.
The people of Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna will be voting again next year in a village council election. Based on Sunday's result, Ehrlich's Free Voters alliance is just 1.6 points ahead of the NPD, raising the prospect that the village may become the first in Germany to elect an NPD mayor.
Olaf Ehrlich says he will throw in the towel if the far-right ever does as well again as it did on Sunday. "Do you have any idea what I'm going though here?" he says. "It's high time people woke up. They really must."

[Menydh]

It's already made it into the German wikipedia:

Politik [Bearbeiten]

Die NPD konnte bei den Wahlen zum Landtag Sachsens 2004 mit 23,1 % hier ihr bestes Ergebnis erzielen. Zur Bundestagswahl 2005 war es mit 14,4 % immer noch ein überdurchschnittliches Ergebnis.

Bei den Bürgermeisterwahlen 2006 war im Vorfeld befürchtet worden, dass ein NPD-Kandidat sehr gute Chancen hätte. Mittels eines Bürgerentscheids auf Initiative der NPD war am 12. März 2006 eine Gemeindefusion gestoppt worden, die die Neuwahl verhindert hätte. Bei reger Wahlbeteiligung votierten 93 Prozent der 1380 Einwohner von Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna für eine Selbständigkeit der Gemeinde. Bei den Wahlen am 23. April setzte sich jedoch mit Olaf Ehrlich ein unabhängiger Kandidat durch, der sich zuvor deutlich von der NPD distanziert hatte.[2] Die NPD selbst hatte für die Wahlen keinen Kandidaten nominiert, da sie eine Blockade des Ortes befürchtete.[3]

Bei der Kreistagswahl am 8. Juni 2008 stimmten 25,2 Prozent für die NPD. Damit erreichte die Partei bessere Ergebnisse als die CDU (21,7 %), die Linke (15,6 %), FDP (4,2 %), SPD (3,7 %) und Grüne (2,8 %). Nur noch die Freien Wähler hatten ein knapp besseres Ergebnis (26,8 %).

Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna – Wikipedia

[Phlegethon]

Such results are strictly a Saxon phenomenon, though. In the whole western part of Germany with a firmly established party structure the results are still around 1% of the vote, despite the majority of party members living there and over 40 years of experience.

[Menydh]

Other considerations taken aside, the results hint to that the focus should be put on local/municipal elections rather than general/country-wide elections where the bi-polarization makes a significant entry virtually impossible.

[Phlegethon]

Municipal unfortunately includes 400 citizen villages as well as metropoles like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne and the Ruhr region. And if you out into consideration that even wehre the NPD scores well over ten percent of the vote they still have problems with finding candidates (not even qualified candidates, just folks willing to be put on the ballot) you can see that this is an uphill battle, especially as it involves a lot of money the party does not have on any organizational levels.