Bans on Nazis won't work
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
LESS THAN two weeks after 300,000 people marched against racism, three Turkish people, two women and a young girl, were murdered on 23 November by Nazi thugs when their flats were burnt down in Moelln in northern Germany.
In response the German government banned the tiny Nazi Nationalist Front, and warned of tougher action against far-right groups.
The murders came on the same weekend as street fighting between Nazis and left wing protestors in Berlin and East Germany, which resulted in one person being stabbed to death.
The flats in which the three Turkish women were in one of several buildings throughout the city set on fire by the Nazis.
Since the burning down of an immigrant hostel in Rostock in August, far from stopping, attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers have increased. Virtually every night there is news of more attacks throughout Germany.
The Nazis are beginning to build a mass base amongst youth, especially in the East. But bans won't stop them, because legal action won't deal with the root causes of the Nazi surge.
Worse, bans, and the statement by Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters in favour of depriving far-rightists of their vote and civil liberties, threaten repressive laws which will be used against the left and the workers movement.
Already the police are aiming their main fire at squatters and 'left extremists'.
The social basis of racism is the vast growth of unemployment in the ex-GDR, and the rise in unemployment and insecurity throughout the country. At the same time, the leaders of both major political parties, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, have capitulated to racist arguments, agreeing to immigrants and asylum seekers are the 'problem'.
Germany of course does have migrants from war and economic catastrophe in the eastern bloc pressing on its borders. It is predictable that racist groups would attempt to use this to build support.
But the wanton destruction of the industries of the former GDR, to the benefit of West German capital, and the 25 per cent unemployment this has caused, gives the Nazis the ability to build a mass base.
Fighting fascism means building mass labour movement action against the Nazis, and winning the argument against racism. It will be exceedingly difficult to do that without making a political fight against unemployment, the destruction of social welfare services and the other effects of the crisis in the ex-GDR.
Self-defence against racist attacks and building groups to guard immigrant hostels is of course a vital necessity, and something which the whole of the German far left supports.
But in the German far left, 'autonomist' semi-anarchist groups have a big weight. But their line of simple street fights with the fascists won't win the fight for an alternative programme in the labour movement.
● Dutch nazi skinheads have confessed to beating to death a 53-year old German man in Wuppertal because they believed he was a Jew. After a row in a restaurant in which he called them Nazi pigs, they beat him to death, doused his body with alcohol and set fire to him, before dumping his body on the Dutch-German border near Venlo.