The Rise of Neo-Nazi Far Right in Former East Germany

JupiterKid

I have a good acquaintance who is German - I used to work with her many years back in academia. She is originally from Bavaria, in her early 40s, and is married to a Slovakian chap and they have two young children.

After she moved back to Germany, she lived with her then partner near Cologne and then was offered - and took - a good position at the university in Leipzig in the former East of the country. She has told me that it has been a culture shock for her, as a German growing up in the former West to settle near Leipzig where her neighbours hold very right wing views and the undercurrent of tacit support for neo-Nazi groups and political parties is alarmingly strong.

Last year her husband was spat at in a local supermarket and told to “go home and leave here, you are not welcome as a foreigner” and they have had their rubbish bins overturned at night and their car daubed in xenophobic slogans. Also she has told me that many of her neighbours are avid anti-vaccine/Covid conspiracy theory followers. We do know that Covid vaccine uptake has been much slower in Germany than many other European countries, which I had found surprising given how organised, compliant and efficient I believe Germans to be.

It has got to the stage where she is now planning to leave Leipzig and her good job to move back West to Nordrhein-Westphalia where she had not encountered this hostility. Here is a recent story on the rise of the far right in the former East:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/east-german-state-in-crisis-after-accusations-of-neo-nazi-sympathies/

It has been known for many years now that neo-Nazi and far-right political sympathies are far, far stronger in the former East (GDR) outside of liberal, cosmopolitan Berlin - and indeed garner a disquieting level of support in some parts of the former East. 

I don’t really know the reason for that dichotomy, but I would suspect it has to to with the way the GDR was run as a totalitarian state that replaced Nazism with Communism, the presence of the Stasi secret police and informants network, the lack of former East Germans being exposed to Western cosmopolitan influences in the post-war era including non-white immigration and the subsequent drastic economic restructuring following reunification of Germany in 1990 leading to mass unemployment and growing disillusionment and therefore resentment and bewilderment at the rapid changes to their former way of life that had essentially been frozen for 45 years.

So anyone else have any ideas as to why there is a growing neo-Nazi threat in the former GDR? My German friend has seen it first hand and is leaving in order to protect her family.

One eyed Jack

I think you’ve covered it well JK, and your friend is better off.

(article in OP is a bit out of date though)

https://m.dw.com/en/germany-post-merkel-coalition-promises-progressive-agenda/a-59924301

Gatling

Can you Guess which country is actively supporting these far right groups, coincidentally groups in former east Germany

East Germany has always lagged behind West Germany in terms of economic prosperity, with a major brain drain due to people leaving the East to go West. Even with the huge amounts of investment (paid mostly by West Germans through high taxation), the East has continued to be lacking in many areas. In spite of Germany having an extremely strong economy, large parts of East Germany still haven't improved much from Soviet times, with unemployment being an issue in many Eastern districts.

Which leads to dissatisfaction, since West Germans are often dismissive of the East, and hold some bitterness in having to support the East so much. I've heard many conversations about this from German friends over the years... and that's going to come out in interactions between Germans themselves.

Neo-Nazism grows out of dissatisfaction, especially economic ones. The drain on the German economy towards migrant populations means less resources allocated to East Germans, and that feeds into the rhetoric that comes from the Far-Right politicians and activists. It doesn't help that Merkels vision of a multicultural Europe has failed so badly, and that she actually admitted to it.

So.. to keep it simple. Economics, perceptions on immigration, lack of successful integration of migrant groups, growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor (not simply the working class), and annoyance over the differences between West and East Germany.

For far too long, Western politicians have outright ignored the concerns of their electorates about immigration in favor of pushing the multiculturalism agenda. Which is why we're seeing far-right or simply right leaning parties spring up all over Europe, including in nations which had such a limited experience of them previously. That Germany (and Italy) would have such an increased support of such groups is hardly a surprise.

MarkEadie

Scumbags are going to be scumbags.

John Doe1

The modern leftist agenda of calling anyone who isn't 100% onboard the multiculturalism train a nazi has unfortunately created a reaction among disaffected people to espouse hate to a larger degree that has existed in decades. It is an issue but still nowhere near the threat of say Jihadism in the west.

[Deleted User]

From my reading of it, which may be inaccurate but it's certainly what I've picked up on, you've two problems that are convolved:

1. After WWII, East Germany (and the rest of the Eastern Bloc states) were put into somewhat of a deep freeze politically - being placed under the control of what amounted to an authoritarian state without democracy. As such, political discussion was extremely limited and denazification never happened in the way it did in West Germany. So, when it came out of that deep freeze, there was a sizeable minority who have a very uncritical view of nazi philosophies.
2. Despite everything, German Reunification is only 32 years old. We are only seeing the first adults who have grown up entirely in a united Germany really since 2012 or so and there are inevitable time lags involved in reintegrating what is effectively a midsized country that was under communist rule and quite an oppressive regime for decades. There are economic gaps, skills and education gaps, wealth gaps, built environment gaps, and all sorts of issues that are only slowly moving forward. You also had a flight of people from the East to the West which was very pronounced in the 1990s but has faded by the 2020s to the point it's no longer a major phenomenon but it's likely caused a brain drain of more liberal types into the old West Germany or into Berlin, which is more of a phenomenon in its own right.

The simple reality of it is it will probably take another generation or maybe more for everything about the DDR and the gaps to completely disappear. The process was remarkably smooth considering how big a deal it was, but German Reunification was far from just a case of flipping a light switch and the DDR suddenly being exactly like every other part of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

On top of all of that, you've got a rise of far right nationalism across parts of Eastern Europe and I would suspect that a lot of that is also due to that same 'deep freeze' effect. They are very new democracies with only a few decades behind them and they're forming in an environment of online paranoia and general rise of extreme nationalism in bubbles around the world, including very influential places like US and (if you're in Eastern Europe) Russia.

I think, given the circumstances, those former Eastern Bloc states have done remarkably well and have achieved a hell of a lot in terms of their journey back to democracy and Western European style normality and a lot of that has been supported through EU membership, but I think sometimes we also perhaps expect sailing to be a lot smoother than it can be in reality given the very tight time scale. It's very easy to forget how recent their democracies are.

snowstorm445

As a poster above has already highlighted, East Germany has been an economic and unemployment blackspot ever since reunification. The drain from East to West that began during the Cold War has never really ended. I imagine the gap between East and West isn't as wide as it once was but the economic disparity definitely keeps it alive.

I suspect a lot of it might have to do with the legacy of East Germany itself. The process whereby West Germany really confronted its Nazi past was very slow (plenty of former Nazis ended up in positions of power in the new state with little more than a slap on the wrist) but especially from the 60s and 70s onwards there was a real self-examination among West Germans about the behaviour of their parents and grandparents. It definitely took a generation or two but that sense of guilt and contrition about their past that Germans are "famous" for is something which only emerged gradually (and often involved famous historic gestures among Western leaders to highlight it).

East Germany was a communist state and so it always had a self-satisfied image of itself as an opponent of the Nazis that had nothing to apologise for. Never mind the fact that they were just as keen as the West to incorporate/reeducate former Nazis wherever they could for their own benefit. They even took over Nazis concentration camp facilities for a period of time - there's a very grandiose memorial built by the DDR regime at the centre of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, conveniently overlooking the fact that they kept running the facility for another 5 or 6 years after liberation. I get the sense that East Germans have never had to undergo that same level of self-examination that the West experienced. And with that lack of awareness plus their economic desperation, variations of Nazism or far-right thinking can have a wide appeal.

Interestingly East Germany to this day is far less religious than West Germany is, even thirty years after reunification. I'm not saying that's a factor here but religious types in the West would definitely have been drawn to the CDU and similar parties (who to this day still have a strong religious factor that they like to reference from time to time), would there be that same appeal to non-religious conservative types in East Germany?

[Deleted User]

When you consider you'd a period from 1949 to 1990 in East Germany where political discussion was really not possible it's not all that surprising. It was an oppressive state, complete with a highly intrusive secret police force, heavy censorship and a dislike of any kind of discussion, so it's hardly a shock that there was little or no room for self-criticism or discussion of the past in any kind of robust way, at least outside of whatever top-down state dogma was at the time.

You've also got a couple of generations who undoubtedly felt quite hard done, having been basically handed over to spend decades as a puppet state of the USSR, with all the economic, social and other disadvantages and lack of basic liberty that came with that and Germany had it worse in some ways by having this mirror image, a highly prosperous version of itself, sitting over the other side of the Berlin Wall / inter-German Border.

I've heard that also feeds into an anger at the establishment by some far right sympathisers as they seem to blame so called liberal elites on absolutely everything.

There's a lot going on in German reunification that I think tends to get swept aside somewhat in how we tend to want to see it has having been entirely smooth.

Annasopra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118542176#Comment_118542176

Probably Russia. Dolores Cahill here has a lot of links to them too.

foxsake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118543796#Comment_118543796

oh noe, the russians :rolleyes:

but silence while the CCP culturally and politically influence the west but that's grand cos they're a great bunch of lads.

foxsake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058230106/the-rise-of-neo-nazi-far-right-in-former-east-germany

anti vaxxers , you say? the sky is truly falling down .

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118542176#Comment_118542176

Seems a bit too obvious but I'd have to say the modern spiritual leaders of the international Nazi set, Russia.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118543796#Comment_118543796

People will say it's conspiracy , but after the invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine 7 years ago, Moscow hosted the largest Far right conference seen any where, these groups are anarchists who want to pull down governments because they hate immigrants , the LGBT community , foreign investment,and see themselves as the chosen ones who will fix all of this ,

Russia supports groups in Germany ,the Balkans and Serbia , Moldova , Georgia who are all happy to demand nato be disbanded ,the EU broke up which allines with Putins goals the return of the Soviet union pre fall of Berlin wall.

20silkcut

The East German army kept the same uniforms and military traditions of the Wehrmacht and employed many of Hitlers former generals. Saw a video of them doing a drill from the 1970’s and it was almost identical to the type of drills in Nazi propaganda news reels from the 1930’s.

And which nation has been protecting far right groups for decades? Yup. The US. There have been such groups in the US, protected under their freedom of speech laws, drumming up support, and gaining funding. You really think those groups were just going to stay in the US, and not provide funding to similar groups in Europe?

Anyway, for a rather long time, the far right were the boogeyman for the socialist leaning parties, allowing them to place all manner of blame on them, while distracting people from their own errors.

Far right groups in Europe have gained support in Europe due to a few issues. Mass Immigration/Multiculturalism, unemployment and the spread of American culture which seeks to place everyone into two political/social groupings. Left/Right. As opposed to the way most Europeans traditionally saw issues, in that they stayed in the center and moved left/right on individual issues. We've had decades of people being pushed into the left/right by opponents of these issues for so long that it's going to affect the way people think. There's a lot of moderates who have been pushed into the far right camps, because mainstream politics have ignored their concerns for so long.

Talking about conspiracies is another deflection. If we really want to deal with the problem of far right groups, then we need to deal with the concerns that people have. Rather than dismissing those concerns as being unreasonable just because someone has decided to generalise/categorise their interests into the groups that represent the most extreme of views.

A major problem with politics in Europe is that many of the political parties don't truly represent the people anymore (if they ever did). They represent the corporations or the wealthy. There are few parties which represent the desires of a significant part of the electorate, and most of those parties haven't (until recently) had much power to shape change. As such, people will turn to the extremist parties, hoping that change can be implemented just enough to make things better, but that the more extreme views will be reined in before being implemented. At this stage. there is so much frustration in Europe, that many people are willing to take the risk of supporting the far right parties, because of what's being happening for the last three decades, and the expectation that it will continue without their objections.

Lastly, in spite of some here to paint alt/far right parties as being all neo-nazi style parties, they're not. Some are far more moderate in their views, and aren't interested in any kind of racial purity. The emergence of the far right groups comes as a reaction to decades of ineptitude by mainstream parties in dealing with social problems.. and the placement of foreign needs ahead of the needs of native groups. There are serious social/cultural problems in Europe, and few of the mainstream parties ever acknowledge them, except to continue past policies that do nothing but defer them on to the next election.

generic_throwaway

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118543515#Comment_118543515

Just to clarify:

Your position is that certain left wing people calling people Nazis has made those people embrace fascist attitudes?

Fattybojangles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544141#Comment_118544141

That is just not true if you want to see where Nazi generals ended up after the war look at NATO and the west German army.

20silkcut

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544347#Comment_118544347

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenz_M%C3%BCller

Fattybojangles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544369#Comment_118544369

Yes he changed sides in 1944 something Adolf Heusinger amongst many others never did. Almost all judges in West Germany were also former Nazis alos its madness to accuse the DDR of taking in former Nazis when West Germany was ran top to bottom by high ranking former Nazis.

TomTomTim

So anyone else have any ideas as to why there is a growing neo-Nazi threat in the former GDR? My German friend has seen it first hand and is leaving in order to protect her family.

Why ask questions you don't want the answer for? People have warned about stuff like this since 2014/2015, yet the left have stuck their fingers in their ears, and pretend that their actions had nothing to do with the reactions we are seeing now. This is only the start too, groups as such will be far more prominent all throughout Europe in the future. By then the left will have no sway, they'll be sitting on the sidelines, watching other groups fight for power, on the fertile ground that they've created.

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544272#Comment_118544272

Ridiculous isn't it? Sociological nonsense

Labeling theory posits that self-identity and the behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them. It is associated with the concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping. Labeling theory holds that deviance is not inherent in an act, but instead focuses on the tendency of majorities to negatively label minorities or those seen as deviant from standard cultural norms.[1] The theory was prominent during the 1960s and 1970s, and some modified versions of the theory have developed and are still currently popular. Stigma is defined as a powerfully negative label that changes a person's self-concept and social identity.[2]

ancapailldorcha

I don't want to just repeat what other posters have said but I think inequality is the main issue. Several countries have been quite diverse for decades but it's only post-2008 financial crash that we've seen the far right really gain traction. Blaming foreigners and ethnic minorities is the oldest trick in the nationalist playbook and it's been trotted out yet again for the simple fact that it works.

We've also imported quite a toxic neoliberal political culture from the US where any sort of left leaning solutions are demonised as communism in certain countries like here in the UK. Ed Miliband, for instance, proposed a cap on energy bills which was denounced and censured in the red tops as socialism. A few years later, Theresa May is widely lauded for bringing in the same thing. It makes a weird degree of sense in a country like the US with its history of laissez-faire government, colossal military budgets and McCarthyism. Importing that culture to Europe was a mistake with the long and bloody history of religious and ethnic conflict.

I don't really have a solution. It'd be nice if corporations were brought to heel and taxed like the rest of us, housing was properly recognised as a serious problem and maybe more investment for education for adults who need or want to change careers.

20silkcut

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544423#Comment_118544423

He was not the only one.

The adoption of Nazi military attire and traditions in the East German army was bizarre and led from the top.

generic_throwaway

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544517#Comment_118544517

That's interesting - but the weird thing is that the folks who are most appalled by foreigners being in the country are the folks who are furthest away and have least exposure to them. I'd imagine that 'West Germany' is far more cosmopolitan (read: foreigner infested) than 'East Germany' today. Yet it's the folks in the East of Germany who are angry about the presence of people of non-German origin. We see the same in the UK - the people angry about foreigners are people in homogenous leafy rural villages, not the people in the cities who actually live and work with them.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544749#Comment_118544749

I was looking at a potential move to Germany at one stage. Still might but I identified Heidelberg in Baden-Wurttemberg or Munich in Bavaria as my best options. Somewhere like Dresden in Saxony would not appeal at all.

In the UK, the middle class types being concerned with immigration is one thing but much more common IMO is xenophobia in post-industrial cities like Derby and Sunderland. Successive neoliberal governments encompassing all three of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives just let them rot so they became hotbeds for the far right and ethnic nationalism.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544749#Comment_118544749

A lot of Germany's more traditional industries (labor intensive) are based in East Germany, and so, there's less demand for workers to be highly skilled, as that's what the West is better known for. Immigrants coming into Germany are often going to be low-skilled, and so, will move to East Germany because that's where the work is for them. Also, there are a greater degree of social supports in the East, due to location (rather than ethnicity), which would make it attractive for some people who want to avail of the economic supports available, and the lower costs of living (naturally the West is more expensive a place to live).

And no, the people most appalled by foreigners aren't going to be those with the least exposure to them. Fact of the matter is that immigration populations are well distributed throughout both the West and the East due to the extended periods whereby Germany was a highly desired region for immigrants to head to.

Also, I lived near Frankfurt for a year (in the west), and trust me, many Germans were incredibly bitter/angry over the presence of the Turks in the city, and surrounding region. Exposure to migrant groups is not all roses and happy experiences. Many of the migrant groups have brought their own problems with them, which further encourages the dislike of foreigners by some/many. You've tried to show the natives as being unreasonable in their dislike of foreign groups, but there's been a lot of negatives associated with foreign groups in Europe, especially in terms of violent crime, human trafficking, and abuse. Sure, some of the opinions are baseless, and grounded in xenophobia, but in other cases, it reflects the behavior of foreign groups while in-country.

cannonballTaffyOjones

Yawn

a yes ... the mythical "far right" ....

cannonballTaffyOjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544784#Comment_118544784

Comedy Gold !! :D :D

Brussels Sprout

So anyone else have any ideas as to why there is a growing neo-Nazi threat in the former GDR? My German friend has seen it first hand and is leaving in order to protect her family.

• Relative poverty & underdevelopment - the former Eastern States rank at the bottom of GDP/capita in the country. This makes fertile ground for resentment to build up and for anti-establishment movements to gather momentum
• Lack of Trust in the state - the Eastern states lived under totalitarian rule for 45 years where people learned not to trust the word of the government or the official media. This endemic culture of distrust made them primed for anti-establishment messaging in this age of disinformation. It's no coincidence, for example, that all of the ex Warsaw Pact countries have far lower uptake of Covid vaccines than in western Europe. Even here in Ireland the communities of people from Eastern Europe have the lowest rates of vaccination.
• Ignorance & unfamiliarity - the former Eastern states have very few foreign born residents in comparison with the rest of the country. If most of your experiences of foreigners in your country are via negative videos and stories of them spread via social media, then you're less likely to have a favourable opinion of them then if you are interacting with them in real life, on a regular basis.
• Far-right politicians fanning the flames - Demagogues have always been found success pitching easy answers to complex problems and blaming "the other". The AfD have been very successful in the East even while losing support in the rest of the country.

generic_throwaway

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118544830#Comment_118544830

Have you been in a coma for the last decade?