All eyes on Germany

Editorial

A division emerged among the Jewish community in Germany recently over an expression of disagreement by a senior member of the Central Council of Jews with a proposal to outlaw the National Democratic Party (NPD), which is accused of being neo-Nazi. The umbrella organization of Jewish residents in Germany is emphatically on record calling for the party to be outlawed. But the organization’s secretary general has expressed a personal opinion that he is opposed to the ban.

“One cannot prohibit [neo-Nazi] ideas, you can only fight them,” Stephan J. Kramer told a German newspaper, adding that efforts to ban the party would fail.

The party, which is estimated to have 6,000 members, has never succeeded in electing anyone at the federal level but is represented in some regional parliaments. While allegedly associated with a neo-Nazi terror organization called the National Socialist Underground, which has murdered a German police officer and several members of ethnic minority communities, the ties between the organizations are apparently amorphous enough to have so far prevented the application of Germany’s stringent anti-Nazi laws to outlaw the party.

On the one hand, Kramer is probably correct. Banning such an organization raises the potential that it will become – if such a thing is possible – more radicalized and dangerously under the radar. It is probably more effective and feasible to battle the ideas of an above-ground entity than some amorphous underground movement. That being said, the fact that, as a registered political party, the NPD receives about 1.3 million euros in government funding, is concerning.

Whether or not to ban the party is a hot topic in Germany right now. At a time when neo-Nazi organizations and parties are rising in prominence in places like Greece and Hungary, it is ironic and something of a silver lining to recognize that Germany is the European country that can probably best be trusted to deal appropriately with far-right extremism. While many European countries have attempted to bury or diminish their role as collaborators or facilitators during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation, Germany itself has experienced an almost unprecedented inner exploration since the fall of the Third Reich. Though clearly not without flaws or fault, Germany, of all the European countries where rising right-wing extremism is a problem, is probably the one country best equipped and prepared to address it.

Whether to ban the party is, ultimately, for Germans to decide. Certainly no other country has undergone the self-examination about fascism that Germany has. Other European countries should be paying attention to how Germany approaches this challenge.

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