Dark vision of a future Germany

Michael Johansen

The Western Star

Their numbers were startling and their silence unnerving.

Figuring out just how many somber, quiet marchers were winding their way through the streets and over the bridges of Dresden three days after the 63rd anniversary of the wartime firebombing of this city in which around 3,500 [sic - off by at least 10x] people died was not easy. I tallied the first 100, give or take two or three, and then counted off blocks of a hundred until I reached 1,000. That point was about halfway down the procession to where a van mounted with loudspeakers was broadcasting mournful music, which I initially assumed to be at the halfway point of the whole march. I was wrong. After the van another thousand passed, then another and another and another until I finally lost count. My calculated guess is that there were at least 6,000 and possibly many more.

The marchers – men, women and children, most of them wearing black – had come from all over Germany for the event. The flags, banners and signs they carried proclaimed them to belong to various organizations with names like the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, the Mecklenburg Action Front, and the National Party of Germany, among others. However, those who came to Dresden not to participate in the march, but to oppose it, had only two names for the people in the streets: fascists and neo-Nazis.

If these numbers are an accurate indication, then fascism is once again on the rise in Germany, fueled by such things as high unemployment, especially in the east, and a pernicious concern over the failure of immigrant communities, particularly Turks and other Muslims, to integrate into German society. In 2005, when neo-Nazi groups were first accused of 'hijacking' what was supposed to have been a non-political memorial to Dresden's many war dead — using the event to further their extremist goals and to recruit new members to their cause — observers counted less than 3,500 of them.

The movement seems to have benefited greatly from that first successful hijacking and it has repeated its success ever since with more people showing up each year. The anniversary of the Dresden bombing could have been tailor-made for their purposes. It allows neo-Nazis to dress up the German people as victims of vicious Allied agression and themselves as pacifists, of a sort, with the vow that it should never happen again.

However, even though many moderate Germans feel the resurgence will mean the far right National Party will soon start winning a significant number of seats in the federal parliament, the chances that Germany will once again become a fascist police state and go on to threaten the world with war are slim to non-existent. The real danger is to Germany itself. Even as right-extremism grows, so does its counterpart on the left. The moderate middle may be in the first stages of losing its coherence and moral authority. For many there is already no middle ground and no way to bridge the gap through friendship or discussion.

In the weeks before the Dresden march left wing groups and parties called for supporters to gather in the historic city — not to reason with or try to persuade their right wing compatriots to adopt more moderate stances, but simply to oppose them in any way they could, including violently. What maintained the peace during the hours' long march were the many hundreds of police vans and police officers that formed solid walls to keep the thousands of fascists and thousands of anti-fascists more than a stone's throw apart from each other.

If what happened in Dresden on Feb. 16, 2008 is a picture of the Germany of the future it is a dark picture indeed.

Michael Johansen is a resident of North West River, Labrador

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