FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

The growing of extreme right wing movements in Europe has been discussed already on various threads here.

I don't suppose that any changes occured during the last few days to alter the situation. The EU is trying e.g. by discussion a ban on Nazi symbols to get rid of those far-right extremists. A doubtful attempt, of nothing more happens, IMHO.

Of course, it's always a good idea to remind us about those dangerous extremists.

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There are such extremists everywhere. They appear (at least to me) to be much more a phemomenon associated with the former GDR than the FRG. Why is that? Could it be a side effect of economic competition and freedom introduced to a population still a bit sick with the failed illusions of authoritarian socialism ?

The Dresden and Hamburg bombings were among the greatest American/British excesses of the European part of WWII. We too have something to regret there.

Still it does surprise me that there isn't more of a nationalist element detectable in the mainstream politics of most European Countries. Has it all gone away with Pym Fortun and Jean LePen?

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georgeob1 wrote:

There are such extremists everywhere. They appear (at least to me) to be much more a phemomenon associated with the former GDR than the FRG. Why is that? Could it be a side effect of economic competition and freedom introduced to a population still a bit sick with the failed illusions of authoritarian socialism ?

The Dresden and Hamburg bombings were among the greatest American/British excesses of the European part of WWII. We too have something to regret there.

Still it does surprise me that there isn't more of a nationalist element detectable in the mainstream politics of most European Countries. Has it all gone away with Pym Fortun and Jean LePen?

It really doesn't only seem so, as if in the former GDR you can find more right extremists.
I believe that this is closely connetced to history: first, you live under an extrimist government. Than you get liberated and wake up under new extremists, this time from the other site. And after more than forty years under that rule, you can become a bit of desorietated, especially, but things look like if they changed to the worse. And when in this moment someone promisses you heaven on earth ...

I truely think, we've got not only enough but much to many nationalists all over Europe.
'Patriotism'/Nationalism seems to become eligible again for some.

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georgeob1 wrote:

There are such extremists everywhere. They appear (at least to me) to be much more a phemomenon associated with the former GDR than the FRG. Why is that?

My guess is that it's a combination of two things: One is that the population of East Germany had been fairly homogenous in terms of etnicity. What little foreign population there was (mostly Vietnamese guest workers) was gettoed away. Then the iron curtain fell, and East Germans suddenly had to adapt to a quickly rising number of foreigners living among them. West Germans had had decades to make the same adjustment, so it's easy for us to be cosmopolitans and shake our heads at the backwardness of some East German regions.

The second reason is that unemployment is especially high in East Germany, and high unemployment has historically been a major cause of political extremism in our country. I cannot think how the unintended side effects of artificially raising wages above market-clearing levels could be demonstrated more impressively.

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Then there is the breeding ground that the communist system constituted for xenophobic, conformist collectivism. Under communism, every citizen was under great rhetorical pressure to conform to the unity of the people, as imposed by standards formulated top-down. That may create resentment, but people start internalising it too. It was a very puritanical state at that, with little tolerance for any individualist excess or libertine behaviour, further strengthening a mentality that frowns at anything "other". And 40 years of an ideology that continually rhetorically instills suspicion and distrust at an enemy forever "outside" - be vigilant, the outsiders, our enemies, are always leering - must not have fostered much spontaneous welcoming of "the other" amongst one's midst either.

On the other hand, it works the other way too. Communism offered a guaranteed if perhaps shitty job for life. It guaranteed free if perhaps shitty health care. Well, you know the list. It guaranteed stifling conformism, but also a level of safety and stability (as long as you were discrete in your criticism of the state) that is unknown in the market economy, and even more unknown in the somewhat more raw brand that appeared in the East than what the comfortably settled West-Germans are used to. People long back for the collective guarantees of a safe, if pale life that were given back then. For those who won't go back to the ex-communists of the PDS, or who have given up through the last few years of internal squabbles and leadership struggles in that party, the nationalists are the only ones who offer the same prospect: safe in the lap of the collective nation.

And yeah, the more unemployment, the greater the sense of insecurity. If there were more and better jobs now, there wouldnt be such extreme right success in East-Germany. The extremism of resentment preys on feelings of disadvantage and jealousy. Thats why I also disagree with Thomas. If wages in the East had been dogmatically kept at "market values" - that is, at levels significantly below West-German wages, now that would have really fostered a virulent resentment. Perhaps there would have been some extra jobs for the minority now unemployed yeah, but for the still larger group of East-Germans who are still employed, it would have meant seeing how, for the very same job, you get paid 60% of what your fellow-citizen 100 miles to the West earns. As it was indeed for a while and as Thomas would have it had even longer - and I can just imagine how extremists would jump on the powerful resentment that would have created. It would also greatly have increased the alienation from "Wessi politics" - ie, every party except the ex-communists and nationalists.

There's also a question of ego involved. Nationalists offer the comfort of a collective pride and ego to those who for whatever reason had their personal pride or self-confirmation lost or damaged. Lots of those in the East after the reforms. Lots of people who had status: whether within the party or state apparatus or as professor of marxism-leninism or, much more general, as, for example, an esteemed craftsman at Carl Zeiss Jena or perhaps as miner (always a lauded and well-rewarded profession in communism) or as - etc. All folks who after '89 lost their jobs and on top of that, were told their qualifications were useless and the country didnt need people like them anymore - you can start over from the bottom, if you wish. Whole career and education and sense of accomplishment instantly down the drain. And it didnt always go subtly: West-German manager comes in, looks around, fires 60% of personnel, according to a rationale that wasnt always entirely sound and in any case wasnt understood by many of the East-German workers. SO lots of injured pride and damaged senses of self to prey on for a party who can say, no, you ARE good, you are better, you are part of a superior people, race, etc - its the Vietnamese/Turks/whoever who are at the bottom.

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nimh wrote:

Thats why I also disagree with Thomas. If wages in the East had been dogmatically kept at "market values" - that is, at levels significantly below West-German wages, now that would have really fostered a virulent resentment.

We are not going to agree on the wisdom of setting wages in free job markets, so I'll spare you my sermon. Smile

But your argument showed me that I had forgotten an important point. When Hungarians, Czechs, and Lithuanians think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now with the state they were in before 1989. They see progress. But when East Germans think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now, to a large degree, with the state West Germany is in now. Even though they are objectively better off than their Czech, Slovakian, and Polish neighbors, they see themselves continuing to fall short after 15 years of hard work. That makes it easy for them to feel frustrated, and it's probably another important reason why so many of them are drawn towards extremist politics. (And in this context, it makes little difference whether the shortfall plays out in the form of unequal wages or unequal employment.)

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Briefly able to log in from an airport can reassure posters that in French "coquet, coquette" is an adjective with no "sex object" connotation whatsoever. It can be used for buildings (well-taken-care-of), cars (comfortable, well-designed) very old people - it was the standard adjective applied to the late Queen Mother, e.g., even when she was 103 and nobody could call her sexy.

Walter - were the Dresden neo-nazis allowed to march subject to a dress code forbidding leather outfits and boots? Takes all the fun out of it, somehow - the architect Philip Johnson who used to attend their rallies on esthetic grounds would be appalled. At least they let them keep the Wagner music. I've developed sympathy for them - they're the last oppressed minority of Europe.

G OB - sorry to bother you with this note here but don't want to clutter your e-mail: please send me e-mail if there's any more info you need from me in addition to whatever was sent to you already courtesy of Blatham. Thanks!

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Thomas wrote:

your argument showed me that I had forgotten an important point. When Hungarians, Czechs, and Lithuanians think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now with the state they were in before 1989. They see progress. But when East Germans think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now, to a large degree, with the state West Germany is in now. Even though they are objectively better off than their Czech, Slovakian, and Polish neighbors, they see themselves continuing to fall short after 15 years of hard work. That makes it easy for them to feel frustrated, and it's probably another important reason why so many of them are drawn towards extremist politics.

That is absolutely true. I saw this brilliant cartoon in a Dutch newspaper one day (quite some years ago already): it showed a fat German BMW towing along behind it an East German man or family in an old Trabant. He/they could be seen lamenting, "oh poor us, how slow we go, oh what awful poverty, the humiliation of it all" - just as they were passing by a horse-drawn cart that said "Poland" ... ;-)

So, a good point re: the East-German mind state. In as far as it explains the appeal of extremist politics, however, I dont know if its relevant. After all, many countries of Central / Eastern Europe have seen much worse in terms of extremist politics. In East-Germany, its been limited to the occasional 5% or 10% in state elections. Compare Slovakia with the populist, anti-Western, anti-minority Meciar government that governed through much of the nineties, buttressed by the extreme-right Slovak National Party as well as the extreme-left Slovak Workers Association. Or the upsurge of fascism (I think we can leave out euphemisms in this case) in Romania with its virulent Greater Romania Party and Party of Romanian National Unity, the latter of which also actually got into government when postcommunist populist Iliescu's needed exreme-right and extreme-left support to get a majority. Or the Hungarian Justice and Life Party that got over 5% nationally in '98. Or take Latvia - well, etc.

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nimh wrote:

Then there is the breeding ground that the communist system constituted for xenophobic, conformist collectivism. [..] And 40 years of an ideology that continually rhetorically instills suspicion and distrust at an enemy forever "outside" - be vigilant, the outsiders, our enemies, are always leering - must not have fostered much spontaneous welcoming of "the other" amongst one's midst either.

My pet (admittedly wholly speculative) theory is that the neonazis probably draw much support from the children of former communists (the rank and file, I mean). We know the NPD and DVU enjoy their strongest support among the youngest voters. Its not much of a stretch to suggest that - well, say - bear with me:

Your pa was a regular communist: no hotshot but something of a believer, anyway. Just a minor apparatchik or factory foreman or something. Then comes 1989, and he's fired and sent into involuntary early retirement on all too modest unemployment benefits and told he's no good anymore, his generation given up. Disillusioned and disgruntled, he sits out his days in his provincial town watching TV and scolding at what he sees, all the nonsense, the arrogant Wessis, the growing crime and disorder that "would never have happened in the old days". The old man has kept his distaste for the West and its brazen capitalism and, yes, multiculturalism, but after the total implosion of anything GDR-related, has no actual idealist resource of his own anymore. Out of old-time loyalty he votes, without enthusiasm, for the ex-communists of the PDS, and otherwise merely limits himself to cantankerous grumbling.

Imagine you're his son. Angry at where you ended up, copying your dad's resentment at the outside, Wessi new-era world, but without credible positive anchor to grab on to. And here's the skins, a tightly-knit, uniform community, all folks like you, white and from the provincial town, all angry also, and offering the absolute, ethnic solidarity of far-right comrades.

Like I said, its a pet theory. But I wouldnt be surprised.

I was reminded of what I wrote earlier today, about how the far-right rhetorics builds forth easily on the old GDR rhetorics, by this piece in the Guardian today. Note the speech of NPD-leader Apfel. Note that, barring the one word ("Dresden"), it could have been any firebrand far-left anti-war leader's:

Quote:

Addressing the rally, the NPD's leader in the Saxon parliament, Holger Apfel, launched an attack on what he called the "gangster politics of the British and Americans".

He said: "They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and - tomorrow possibly - Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America."

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In the New York Review of books is a fine essay showing the tensions between USA and Europe:

Europe vs. America

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Interesting article -- thanks Walter! However, it eludes me how someone who works at NYU in Greenwich Village can write with such disdain about American coffee. No doubt Mr. Judt ought to leave his office more often, take a walk outside, and let one of those charming little restaurants in the Village seduce him. I, for one, envy him for this opportunity.

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New rules on passenger rights taking effect today in the European Union will require airlines to compensate travellers for cancellations, delays, and denial of seats, even when the cause is an event normally considered outside the control of the airline, like bad weather conditions. The new legislation, the strictest in the world, places the burden of proof on airlines if they wish to avoid payment. European air carriers have agreed to abide by the legislation, but are challenging certain portions in the European Court of Justice, though a decision isn't expected there for several months.

If you are interested, there's aTHREAD about this topic in the 'Legal' category.

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thomas wrote : " But your argument showed me that I had forgotten an important point. When Hungarians, Czechs, and Lithuanians think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now with the state they were in before 1989. They see progress. But when East Germans think of their newly free society, they compare the state they are in now, to a large degree, with the state West Germany is in now. "

since there is just one german country, does it make sense to still refer to 'east-germany' and 'west-germany' as if they are two separate countries ? the re-unification took place more than ten years ago; so i can understand that people living in the eastern provinces(laender) are wondering when the real re-unification will take place.

in canada we have a somewhat similar situation. the provinces of nova-scotia and newfoundland/labrador (and also new brunswick) have been considered 'have-not' provinces for quite some time, and have been entitled to 'equalization payments' from the 'have' provinces(mainly ontario and alberta). these payments were made from the federal governments funds essentially powered by contributions from the 'have' provinces. now an interesting twist has arisen. nova scotia and newfoundland/labrador are getting quite a bit of money from royalty payments levied an corporations drilling for oil and gas offshore these provinces. these two provinces have managed to convince the federal government that they should be entitled to both the full oil and gas revenues while continuing to receive undiminished equalization payments. of course, the other provinces are screaming bloody murder, and the (minority/liberal) federal government will have a hard time satisfying all the players. the ink on the agreement was not yet dry before the premier of ontario started making noises in the legislature demanding 'ontario's fair share' . the premiers of nova scotia and newfoundland/labrador claim in the meantime that their provinces have been impoverished for such a long time that surely they should now be entitled to a somewhat richer harvest. it'll be interesting to see how this will play out (and i'm not just an uninterested bystander but a taxpayer). hbg

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Re right wing parties:

Quote:

Abstract

Source:

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hamburger wrote:

since there is just one german country, does it make sense to still refer to 'east-germany' and 'west-germany' as if they are two separate countries ? the re-unification took place more than ten years ago; so i can understand that people living in the eastern provinces(laender) are wondering when the real re-unification will take place.

Oh, it absolutely makes sense to make the distinction. After all, southern and northern Germany have been re-united since 1871, and Bavarians still call the Northerners Saupreißn (loosely translated: Prussian pigs). In fact, I would never talk to a Prussian like Walter if it wasn't over the internet, and much less with a ... Hamburger. Wink

Your story about have-not provinces sounds familiar. I think similar things happened when Bavaria went from net-taker status to net-giver status in our transfer system, the Länderfinanzausgleich. (Our state government here in Munich, which received generous transfers after World War II, is now one of the stingiest opponents of transfers to the east.)

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I'm no Prussian at all but from the Duchy of Westphalia (belonged to Cologne).

Though, however, I would talk to an Bavarian 'live', it would end in a monologue: they neither speak nor can understand German.

So it's okay for both of us here.

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(thomas : 'saupreissn' reminds me of may 1945. in 1944 our hamburg school had been transferred to a little place called 'kubitzen' in bavaria; but it turned out that when the war ended we were actually in czechoslovakia since kubitzen had been incorporated into the reich in 1939 and was now no longer part of germany. anyway, the u.s. authorities told our teachers to get us out in a hurry because the territory would be turned over to the soviet army. so on 6 may 1945 we marched off towards germany and we were lodged with farmers in the area around straubing. since we were always hungry, we set out to visit the farmers to ask for food. the usual question was : "are you prussians ?" (i don't think the farmers asked us boys if we were 'saupreissn' ). of course our answer was always an honest : " no, we are hamburgers !" and the result was usually that the farmer would ask his wife to give us a good meal. felt a little sorry for any boys that might have turned out to be prussians ! we sure came back to hamburg well fed and with good memories about the bavarians. it's kind of interesting how such a terrible event as the war and its aftermath can bring back such pleasant memories. whenever i have attended one of our class-reunions - the last one in 1993 - we still talk about all the happy experiences we had in bavaria. hbg)

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LOL Walter

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Meanwhile, last week in Denmark ... <sighs>. I guess things can always still be worse, or more hateful.

[translated from Dutch newspaper article in Het Parool]

Quote:

Danes reward strict Rasmussen
Right-wing PM re-elected thanks to approach* to immigrants

Wednesday 9 February

The Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen is not a modest man. During the brief election campaign he asserted that "European leaders like Tony Blair" could take his example when it came to his strict policy against migrants.

Under Rasmussen's leadership Denmark did indeed introduce such drastic limitations that the UN complained about it. But many Danes are grateful to the PM for wanting to spare Denmark the fate of other West-European countries that grapple daily with the problems of the multicultural society.

The results of the parliamentary elections of yesterday will have increased Rasmussen's self-confidence. His centre-right coalition has expanded its majority in the parliament of 179 seats with one seat.

Rasmussens Liberals, the Conservatives and the far-right People's Party, which is not in government itself but upon whose support the government relies for its parliamentary majority, together now get 95 seats.

The Liberals lost four seats but remain, with 52 seats, the largest party of the country. The People's Party of the populist Pia Kjarsgaard remained the third party of the country with twelve percent of the votes. Turnout was 84,4 percent.

The Social-Democrats of opposition leader Mogens Lykketoft suffered their heaviest election defeat since 1973. They lost five of their 52 seats. Lykkesoft resigned.

The economic growth and the decreasing unemployment, too, worked to Rasmussen's advantage. He called early elections three weeks ago and spoke of 'perfect conditions'.

Rasmussens alliance with the far right People's Party is a thorn in the flesh for many Danes. The People's Party had ever more trouble under Rasmussen to profile itself as truly right-wing, because the PM himself already tackled the foreigners as hard as he did. Indignation was caused by the People's Party subsequent suggestion to deport not just criminal foreigners, but their parents too.

According to the government, 93% of the asylum-seekers that were allowed into Denmark is unemployed. Less than ten percent of the applications for asylum are granted. Around 12,000 Danes have left for Sweden because their partner did not get permission to come live in Denmark.

Denmark was recently criticized by Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees. His annoyance was over Rasmussens decision that Denmark would automatically refuse illiterate or elderly refugees.

Rasmussen ignored the protest however. He also did not grant requests to make applications for family reunification easier and automatically allow foreigners to marry with a partner from their country of origin.

Young people under 24 do not get permission to marry someone from their own country in any case. Couples furthermore have to prove to deeply love Denmark and have about eight thousand euro at their disposal, that has to be stored in a Danish bank account for seven years. Demands that heavily test the love for Denmark.

[..]

*the word used is "aanpak", which is somewhere between "approach to" and "clampdown on"

Note, the article is a bit hypocritical on one or two counts in that it indignantly reports the Danish immigration policies but neglects to compare them with ours. Ours are not quite that bad yet, but still the UNHCR complained about those as well. Furthermore, foreigners in Holland aren't automatically allowed to choose their partner either; they have to earn at least 120% (last I saw) of the minimum wage, have a steady work contract (year-contract or longer), and according to the newest law the partner has to pass a test in Dutch language and culture that (s)he has to arrange him/herself at his/her own costs in his/her own country before (s)he is even allowed to come here. And here, its youngsters under 21 I think who aren't allowed to marry someone from their country of origin (if its not an EU country), in any case.

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Read similar last week, here, too.
"Godnat" I only can say

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