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   Vol.64/No.49            December 25, 2000 
 
 
German rulers move to outlaw fascist party
 
BY CARL-ERIK ISACSSON  
STOCKHOLM, Sweden--The fascist German National Democratic Party (NPD) organized a march of nearly 2,000 people through central Berlin November 25 to protest government plans to outlaw the party. They tried to portray themselves as victims of government repression, carrying placards such as "arguments instead of bans." Originally the ultrarightists had planned to march through the Brandenburg Gate, once used for processions by Nazi soldiers. But city officials, pressured by mounting antifascist sentiments in the German capital, rerouted the march. This was the second march by fascists in Berlin in just a month.

The NPD march was escorted by police forces in riot gear that outnumbered the marchers who were mainly young men, with many skinheads participating.

Counterdemonstrations of some 3,000 people were held at the same time, including one at Berlin's City hall, which was backed by government politicians, labor unions, and the capital's Jewish community.

At Alexanderplatz, hundreds of antifascists blocked the way and refused to move, stopping the police-escorted fascist march. The police then broke up the march and put participants on trains out of the city.

As fascist violence has escalated this year in Germany, the social democratic coalition government is trying to take advantage of the political polarization to crack down on democratic rights. Their main move so far has been to ban the NPD. After a recommendation by 14 of 16 ministers for domestic affairs in the state governments in Germany, the upper house of parliament (Bundesrat) demanded the German constitutional court ban the NPD. The government hopes the lower house of parliament (Bundestag) will also back the demand.

On Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass, on November 9, a march of 200,000 in central Berlin commemorated the victims of the Nazi pogrom of Jews in Germany on that day in 1938. The march was backed by unions, political parties, churches, the Jewish community, and others.

Political space for the fascists in Germany has opened up more lately as Friedrich Merz, the leader of the parliamentary group of the conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), sparked a debate on "German lead culture" when he said that Muslims have to accept that women are seen as equals in Germany and that immigrants should not be allowed to build parallel communities with "other" norms and values than "German" ones.

The CDU/CSU minister of domestic affairs in Bavaria, Günther Beckstein, said in mid-November that "there should not be any minarets in Bavarian villages." Edmund Stoiber, a CDU/CSU head of government in the state, said, "The multicultural society is hard, fast, cruel, and has very little loyalty."

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metal workers union in Södertälje, Sweden.  
 
 
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