bwfleabanner28a.jpg

« Much ado about the nothing | Main | Live8 »

June 06, 2005

Village fascism

Spiegel reports a rise in use of Nazi imagery in German youth cultures. High rates of unemployment and an apparent refusal of authorities to take seriously concerns about economic and social integration of ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union would appear to account for much of this alarming response to "a circumstance that no one seems to be taking seriously ... -- no one but right-wing extremists."

Right-wing extremists tend to do most of their recruiting in rural areas. Augsburg street worker Heiko Helbig dubs the phenomenon "village fascism." One of the reasons that rural areas have become such fertile ground for right-wingers is the lack of activities for young people. Those who aren't members of athletic leagues have become easy prey for neo-Nazi recruiters. During youth meetings, Helbig sometimes discovers seemingly harmless boys carrying pamphlets of songs that were popular in the Nazi army, or Wehrmacht.

Other street workers say that the extreme right-wing NPD party sponsors trips to demonstrations in Dresden for high-school students -- bus ride, lunch and beer free of charge. "The Right," says Nürnberg youth advisor Detlef Menske, "seems to have discovered the key." In fact, Nazi culture has become so omnipresent in the daily lives of some young people that they use Adolf Hitler's voice as their cell phone ring tone and Nazi symbols as their screen savers.

I suppose it is normal that any suggestion of resurgent Nazi imagery in Germany should be alarming. That said, I think it is terribly difficult to assess the extent of these things through the lens of a media that in Germany as everywhere else must know that this sort of stuff sells newspapers. I have written here about the Heritage Front, an home-grown Canadian neo-Nazi organization which thankfully seems to have collapsed. It was very much alive in the early 1990s and engaged in pitched battles in the streets of downtown Ottawa and Toronto. At the time nobody in the mainstream media was interested as the Front's targets were social groups who enjoyed the quiet hostility of our sleepy suburban capital city. Well before the Heritage Front came on the scene we all had to step carefully in Ottawa's ByWard Market whenever we got word those white-lace Montreal skinheads had turned up to fight the local red-lace crew. If Spiegel is being alarmist this reaction is far preferable to pretending nothing is happening or imagining away the underlying problems that lend Nazi imagery its power.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 6, 2005 10:00 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ghostofaflea.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3862

Comments

One of the better ways to defuse the situation is to ensure that more outlets for healthy nationalism are allowed in today's Germany. Most Germans seem to have this almost visceral uptightness and embarrassment -- if not even fear -- about all but the mildest expressions of patriotism. Understandable, certainly -- but a recipe for trouble with youth, since it leaves their natural desire to be proud of their country to be expressed in destructive ways.

Posted by: Varenius [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 6, 2005 06:18 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in. Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?