May 23, 2006
WENT TO THE WORLD CUP AND A PUTSCH BROKE OUT:
Neo-Nazi Violence on the Rise in Germany (SPIEGEL Staff, 5/23/06, Der Spiegel)
It's hardly the issue that Germany wanted to see in the headlines during the last few weeks before the World Cup kicks off in Munich on June 9. But stories on neo-Nazi violence, suddenly, are everywhere. On Monday, new figures showing a rise in right-wing violence in 2005 poured fuel on the fire.Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2006 11:37 AMGerman Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said on Monday he was very worried about the steep rise in far-right crime and appealed to Germans never to look the other way when they see someone being attacked. "There mustn't be any no-go areas in Germany," he told a news conference at which he presented the 2005 report of the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesverfassungsschutz.
The minute I read this I thought, "I bet this is in the former East Germany," and the article confirms this.
West Germany had extensive de-Nazification and it worked. The people there know what happened and accepted responsibility for it. East Germany did not have that. The Communists never bothered to educate about the Holocaust or create a dialogue about it because their standard line was that Fascism was a product of capitalism and therefore all the good little Marxists in East Germany didn't have to study it.
It is not surprising that the culture in the East lacks the stigma and cultural values that would prevent the infection of Neo-Nazism like the West has.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at May 23, 2006 12:35 PMHose them down with Budweiser and solve two problems at the same time.
Posted by: John at May 23, 2006 12:37 PM