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Neo-Nazi movement growing in Europe (28 August 2001)
The Nando Times
BURT HERMAN, Associated Press
BERLIN (August 28, 2001 1:51 p.m. EDT) - Despite politicians urging
tolerance,
nationwide ad campaigns and increased police vigilance, Germany's neo-Nazi
"skinheads" are maintaining their pace of attacks against foreigners and
minorities.
Especially distressing in Germany because of its Nazi legacy, the movement
is spreading across Europe through the Internet, hate-filled music and open
borders. Those fighting the problem hope this month's World Conference
Against
Racism can strengthen cooperation in law enforcement and between civil
rights
groups to treat the right-wing infection.
"The international linkage between the (extreme-right) groups is growing,"
said Bent Sorensen of the European Monitoring Center on Racism and
Xenophobia,
a European Union agency based in Vienna, Austria.
Germany remains the flashpoint for extreme-right activity in Europe, with
its high rate of violent hate crimes and 10,000 skinheads, Sorensen said.
Europe's other main area of concern is Sweden with 2,000 skinheads - and
as the center of production for the continent's hate music.
Far-right parties that represent many of the skinheads' anti-immigrant
ideals
are also joining mainstream governments, as in Austria with Joerg Haider's
Freedom Party and most recently in Italy - where Italian Premier Silvio
Berlusconi formed his Cabinet this summer including the once-fascist
National
Alliance and the often xenophobic Northern League.
"Every government in Europe has taken more extreme measures against refugees
and of course it's legitimizing racism," said Tony Robson, a researcher
with Searchlight, an international anti-racist group based in Britain. "At
the street level, that translates to more racial violence."
In Germany earlier this month, the Interior Ministry warned that numbers
of right-wing crimes remained unacceptably high so far this year: 430
violent
crimes through the end of June out of 2,212 hate crimes that targeted
people,
mostly foreigners and Jews. The total number of right-wing offenses
including
other crimes such as vandalism was 7,729.
The numbers were similar to the same period for the year before, but because
of a change in the way the counting was done, the ministry said that meant
the crime rate was actually higher.
The president of parliament, Wolfgang Thierse, said when he traveled through
eastern Germany earlier this year that neo-Nazis posted his schedule on
the Internet so they could follow him. At one open discussion, a local
neo-Nazi
leader openly confronted him.
"The extreme-right is more self-confident, more offensive and better
organized
than ever," Thierse said in a recent interview with Die Zeit weekly.
Nazi propaganda is banned in Germany, but skinheads have also expanded their
reach to avoid the law.
Production for most of the continent's hate music
- filled with openly racist lyrics or Naazisssss' glorification - is centered
in Scandinavia, made in Sweden and distributed from Finland, according to
Danish neo-Nazi watch group Demos. The lyrics are in various languages,
mostly German and English.
The Internet has made communication and spreading propaganda easier for
skinheads, but music has become an increasing means to recruit new
right-wingers,
Sorensen said.
It's also part of increasing commercialization among skinhead groups, who
are selling the music and other merchandise to earn money and further spread
their message of hate. No figures are available on the amount involved in
right-wing business - selling Nazi-era flags, jackboots or T-shirts with
racist slogans - but the Monitoring Center says more than 1.7 million hate
music CDs have been sold in Europe since 1995.
"As racism is very much related to feelings, the music can create both
feelings
and especially attract young people. It's a worrying development," Sorensen
said.
The quicker spread of ideas has led to racism even springing up in areas
that barely have any minorities - such as increasing violence against the
small number of blacks in Moscow by skinheads copying their racist role
models from the West, said Mina Sodman, who works with the Russian human
rights group Memorial.
"Since borders were opened, there has been much more contact between
anti-fascist
movements - but also fascist movements," she said.
Open borders also are enabling skinheads to meet their counterparts from
other countries more easily.
When Germany's extreme-right National Democratic Party wanted to stage a
paramilitary training camp with like-minded movements across Europe, they
went to Poland to join skinhead comrades from Britain, Romania and the Czech
Republic.
"The collapse of communism created a kind of vacuum which is being filled
with all sorts of ideas. Unfortunately some of them are not really
compatible
with democratic values," said Rafal Pankowski, a board member of Nigdy
Wiecej,
or Never Again, a Polish anti-hate group.
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