Berlin Mulls New Bid to Outlaw NPD

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Berlin Mulls New Bid to Outlaw NPD

Spiegel
November 13, 2006

To the dismay of Germany's mainstream parties, the far-right NPD party has done well in the three years since a bid to have it outlawed failed. Now a second attempt is being considered, but it's doubtful whether the country will succeed in ridding itself of the fiercely anti-immigrant party.

Delegates of the German far-right NPD political party
arrive for a national party congress in Berlin

Germany's Social Democrats are considering a second attempt to ban the far-right National Democratic Party three years after a previous bid failed because the government bungled its case at the Federal Constitutional Court.

Franz Müntefering, labor minister and vice-chancellor, told German television: "If the NPD can be banned, which needs to be checked, then I'm definitely for it." He said Germany also needed to work harder to discourage people from following the party in the first place.

Müntefering's Social Democrats are already looking at possible changes in the law to help build a case against the anti-immigrant NPD which has been voted into two eastern state parliaments in the last two years.

The NPD could not immediately be reached for comment. The party wants to evict foreigners, uses red, black and white banners that resemble those used in Hitler's Third Reich, and this year declared solidarity with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after he questioned the Holocaust and said Israel should be wiped off the map.

Following recent election wins the NPD's next big goal is to get into the federal parliament, the Bundestag, in the 2009 general election. Having the far right back in the Reichstag parliament building in the heart of Berlin would be a triumph for the NPD and deliver a stinging blow to Germany's image abroad.

The previous German government, backed by both houses of parliament, had sought to outlaw the party for allegedly stoking xenophobia. But the Federal Constitutional Court threw out the case because it contained testimony and speeches from NPD members who had received money from the domestic intelligence agency for passing on information about the party. The court ruled that evidence from paid informants was tainted.

The bungle embarrassed the government of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and was widely viewed as having strengthened the NPD, which went on to win enough votes to enter the state parliaments of Saxony in 2004 and Mecklenburg West-Pomerania last September, boosted by discontent with mainstream partners in the economically depressed east of the country.

Doubts about ban

Any ban is controversial even among mainstream parties where many believe a new case would be doomed to fail and would in any case make Germany's far-right scene harder to monitor by driving it underground.

Breaking off links between the domestic intelligence and informants in the NPD, which may be necessary to improve the chances of a ban, would rob authorities of access to information about the party, said Bavaria's Interior Minister Günther Beckstein. "What would we say when the court asked us what current information we have and we no longer had access to the inner circles?"

A number of other regional interior ministers agreed that outing their informants in the NPD would make it harder to combat Germany's far right.

The debate coincided with the NPD's first party conference in Berlin, which it calls the "Reich capital," at the weekend and follows the publication of a survey last week which indicated that xenophobic and far-right views were firmly anchored across German society.

One NPD policy proposal presented at the conference was headlined "The country needs German children" and said the "classic family" should remain the true bedrock of German society.

It proposes paying €500 for each German child and scrapping child benefits for immigrants. One campaign poster used by the party shows a group of Muslim women wearing headscarves and hauling large plastic bags through a German street under the slogan: "Have a Good Trip Home."

The conference ended with the 500 delegates and guests singing all three verses of the German national anthem, including the first and second verses which are no longer part of the official anthem and which start with the words: "Deutschland Über Alles" and "Deutsche Frauen, Deutsche Treue, deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang" (German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song).

The conference was overshadowed by financial trouble which could turn into a greater threat than any discussions about a new ban. Federal authorities are demanding the repayment of €863,000 in state funds paid out to the NPD in 1998 and 1999 because of irregularities in the way it accounted for private donations.

"We're going to have to tighten our belts," party chairman Udo Voigt told the conference, adding that there would be staff cutbacks. Unless the NPD finds wealthy backers it will have trouble funding its battle to enter the Reichstag in 2009. Wealthy publisher Gerhard Frey, head of an allied far-right party, the Deutsche Volksunion or "German People's Party", declined to comment on whether he would come to the NPD's rescue.


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Also, of interest for its relation with this article, this earlier article in the same publication: "Far-Right Views Established Across German Society".

Notice the picture purposedly attached to the article. It is ill-willed but, how real or unreal is it among some political and para-political groups, not to speak of websites and forums? Draw your own conclusions.