Report.
THe German state is agonising over whether to to ban the national democratic party which has been associated with a string of racist murders emanating from the town of Zwickau. Three quarters of the public favour a ban. Meanwhile neo nazi groups applied for permission to stage a march against a leftwing youth centre in the westphalian city of Bielefeld. The authorities are bound by law to permit peaceful demonstrations by legal organisations, But the strength of opposition feeling was such that virtually all public mass organisations, parties, unions, churches etc called for a mass mobilisation.
On Christmas Eve, only seventy, mostly overweight, young men turned up to carry the black flags of the neo nazis. They were met by six and a half thousand counter demonstrators. The nazis were stoned and fired on with flare guns. The police escorted them to the railway station and put them safely on their trains.
Virtually every attempt by neonazis in Germany is met with similar resistance on a mass scale. Ad hoc committees have turned into permanent antifa organisations. In this regional state run by the SPD and Greens with Linke support, there is now government finance available for supporting antifascist activities with fulltime organisers, setting up bridges between the democratic mass organisations, carrying out educational work amongst school students.
A state prohibition of the NPD would in addition be a blow to the right, depriving them of the millions of euros of tax money accruing from their share of the vote in elections. Relying on state measures alone as we have learned is not something which the labour movement can trust. Often repression is directed at both right and left protests. So while accepting any state repression of the right should be welcomed, the mobilisation of the rank and file in direct action such as in Bielefeld should be maintained.
W.
On Christmas Eve, only seventy, mostly overweight, young men turned up to carry the black flags of the neo nazis. They were met by six and a half thousand counter demonstrators. The nazis were stoned and fired on with flare guns. The police escorted them to the railway station and put them safely on their trains.
Virtually every attempt by neonazis in Germany is met with similar resistance on a mass scale. Ad hoc committees have turned into permanent antifa organisations. In this regional state run by the SPD and Greens with Linke support, there is now government finance available for supporting antifascist activities with fulltime organisers, setting up bridges between the democratic mass organisations, carrying out educational work amongst school students.
A state prohibition of the NPD would in addition be a blow to the right, depriving them of the millions of euros of tax money accruing from their share of the vote in elections. Relying on state measures alone as we have learned is not something which the labour movement can trust. Often repression is directed at both right and left protests. So while accepting any state repression of the right should be welcomed, the mobilisation of the rank and file in direct action such as in Bielefeld should be maintained.
W.
No comments:
Post a Comment