Thomas Klikauer: Nazism Enters the Reichstag with the AfD

The German elections two days ago saw the extreme right-wing Alternative fuer Deutschland gain 12 per cent of the votes, and has become Germany’s third largest political party behind the Christian Democrats, Germany’s equivalent to the Conservative party, and the Social Democrats, their equivalent of Labour. The party’s militantly xenophobic with a deep hatred of Muslims. Thomas Klikauer today published a very frightening analysis of the party and its history in Counterpunch. He states categorically that they’re Nazis, backing up this claim with a chilling amount of supporting evidence. Some of which is absolutely horrifying, such as a speech made by one of these modern stormtroopers in which he announced that they would ‘build a subway to Auschwitz’.

Klikauer states that the Alternative fuer Deutschland has all the racism, stupidity and anti-intellectualism of the original Nazis. Their nickname across the Nordsee is the Alternative for the Dumb, here in the American meaning of ‘stupid’. He argues that the party has its roots in Germany’s failure to denazify after the War. When the Cold War began c. 1950, the arrest and prosecution of Nazi officials and collaborators ceased, and many were recruited by the allies into senior positions in politics, the judiciary and civil service. He also makes the point that like the old Nazis, whose rise was assisted by the Hugenberg press, a compliant media has also helped the AfD. All the main TV stations in Germany invited their members on to speak, asking them about immigration. This was the first time a neo-Nazi party had been invited onto the media, just as this is the first time since the War that Nazis, in the guise of the AfD, have entered the German parliament. Many Germans have been shocked by the fawning treatment given them by the media, and one person commented that the first part of a 100-minute debate on them looked like an advert for them instead.

He also links the party’s rise to an upsurge in racist and political violence. Between 1990 and 2013, 184 people were killed in right-wing attacks. The victims were Turkish Germans, Muslims, the homeless, punks, and refugees, amongst others.

The part was founded in 2013 by Bernd Lucke, a nationalistic capitalist, in Klikauer’s phrase, as a more rightwing party than the Christian Democrats. However, more extreme right-wing elements soon entered and took it over in a process that included the election of Frauke Petry as its leader in 2015. From 2014 onwards it has had its representatives in several of the governments of Germany’s constituent laender. it is bitterly opposed to abortion, racist, ultra-nationalist, fiercely xenophobic and embraces the Nazi past. Petry herself wishes to reintroduce the volkisch ideology of the Nazis, along with Reichsburgerschaft: racial citizenship. Alice Weidel, one of the party’s chief activists, has denounced Merkel and her cabinet as ‘pigs’ and ‘puppets of the winners of World War II’, and claiming that Germany was not ‘sovereign’. Klikauer doesn’t mention it, but this is very much like the Nazis’ denunciation of the chief parties of Weimar coalition – the Catholic Centre Party, the Social Democrats and the two Liberal Parties as the ‘November criminals’ following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. Klikauer states that Pegida is the AfD’s modern equivalent of the old Nazis’ SS and SA. The head of the party’s youth wing, Markus Frohnmaier has connections to the German Defence League. He also made a speech saying that the AfD ‘would clean Germany out’, which he states is very much the language of the Nazis.

Like the American Nazis in Charlottesville, the stormtroopers of the AfD believe that there is a Jewish plot to replace Europeans with peoples from outside the continent, mainly the Middle East. The AfD author Wolfgang Gedeon blames the world’s evils on the Jews, America, Zionism, Muslims, gays and the left. One of the other leading figures in the AfD, Stephan Brandner, declared that Angela Merkel should be locked up, just like Trump raised the same chant against Hillary Clinton. And like Trump, he claimed that the Antifa are the modern equivalents of the SA.

Frank Magnitz, one of the party’s people in Bremen, put up a picture on a net with a red button and group of praying Muslims, saying, ‘If you could push a button and wipe out all Islam, you’d do it. Yes!’ The genocidal language and ideology as the Nazis. The party’s second-in-command, Alexander Gauland, said at a neo-Nazi meeting at Kyfferhausen, another Nazi pilgrimage site, that he was extremely proud of German soldiers in the First and Second World War. Klikauer makes sees this as an affirmation of the Holocaust, as the Wehrmacht was involved in the Final Solution, along with the rest of the German security apparatus.

Like Nazis everywhere, they also deny the Holocaust. Bjorn Hocke has described Germany’s Holocaust Memorial as ‘a memorial of shame’, while Wilhelm von Gottberg, an outright Holocaust denier, was an electoral candidate in Anhalt-Saxony. The party’s supporters also shout the old Nazi slogans of ‘Germany Awake’ and ‘Whatever it takes for Germany’, both of which are illegal.

He also notes the party’s connections to big business. The Alternatives are funded by the Movenpick ice cream company, and the ‘Swiss Goal Corporation’. It is also funded by the billionaire August von Finck, who bought the company name Degussa. Degussa was the company that delivered the Zyklon B to Auscwitz, and then extracted the gold teeth from the bodies of the murdered Jews. Finck’s father was also responsible for the removal of Jews from Germany’s banks under the Third Reich. Von Finck has supported a number of right-wing parties, as has Beatrix von Storch, who used to run a ‘citizen’s’ movement against the German welfare state.

He notes the work of BuzzFeed’s Marcus Engert in analyzing the extreme right-wing views of 396 of the Alternatives’ candidates, and the fears of a German academic, Hajo Funke, that the modern German parliament is incapable of dealing with this threat. The article briefly touches on the recruitment of former members of the Nazis party by the authorities during the Cold War. These include Hans Globke, the architect of the German race laws, who became a minister under Germany’s first post-War president, Konrad Adenauer; Georg Kiesinger, who served as chancellor from 1966-9, and who was slapped by the great anti-Nazi, Beate Klarsfeld. Other Nazis include Hans Filbinger, the Christian Democrat premier of Baden-Wurttemberg from 1966 to 1978, and Carl Carstens, the German president from 1979-1984.

Klikauer’s article concludes

Since 24th September 2017, Germany has Nazis in its parliament. Contrary to the 1960s, these days Germany has not yet seen another Beate Klarsfeld who will tell the AfD’s anti-Semites, racists, and Holocaust deniers that their politics will not go unchallenged. Today, Nazism is much more widespread compared to the 1960s. Today, we have many young and still a few old Nazis joining forces in an unprecedented way. In the 1960s, old Nazis never had a chance to form their own party and to be elected. In the year 2017, AfD Nazis have already fulfilled some of their ideological missions: honouring the Nazi Wehrmacht, denying the Holocaust, and fighting against democracy and the left.

Being furnished with parliamentarian status will only encourage Germany’s new Nazis. Like in 1933, they will not moderate themselves. If history is anything to go by, the gravest danger for Germany, the left and ultimately Europe and the world comes not only from the new Nazis. It comes also from a conservative coalition government that includes the new Nazis (AfD). By 1933 Hitler’s Nazi party was already in decline in electoral polling. His Nazis actually came to power through a conservative coalition government making Hitler Reichskanzler (chancellor). It was German conservatism that made Hitler possible. In 2017, one might hope that German conservatism has learned its historic lesson.

It isn’t hard to see from this that the notorious ’70s terrorist group, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or to give them their official name, the Rote Armee Fraktion, had a point. They too felt that Germany had never denazified, and were enraged that so many of them had not been prosecuted for their crimes, but instead settled down into very comfortable lives in the new Germany. And so they rose up in arms and carried out a wave of assassinations and bombings.

And Red Ken also devoted a chapter or two in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour, to discussing and condemning the recruitment of Nazis during the Cold War, including those responsible for the Holocaust and pogroms against the Jews. Livingstone clearly and unequivocally condemned all forms of racism in the book, including anti-Semitism, and prejudice and discrimination against Blacks and the Irish. Yet last year he was smeared as an anti-Semite by the Blairites and Israel lobby within Labour, because he stood up for Naz Shah and said, quite rightly, that Hitler supported sending Jews to Israel. Which Hitler did for a time.

Meanwhile, those responsible for the smears, the Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, have defended genuine anti-Semites, like the Hungarian premier Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party, because they support Israel. As Tony Greenstein has pointed out, the Zionists have shown themselves repeatedly willing to ally themselves with real Nazis against Diaspora Jews, in the hope that their victory will result in more Jews emigrating or fleeing to Israel. Thus we’ve had Richard Spencer, the head of the Alt-Right, and Andrew Anglin, the head of the Nazi website the Daily Stormer, appearing on Israeli TV. And Sebastian Gorka, another Trump aide, who’s been active amongst the Hungarian extreme right and who sports a medal commemorating Admiral Horthy, the Hungarian dictator, who collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust, was invited to a big conference of Israel’s military establishment.

The AfD aren’t unique to Germany. You can see the same type of genocidal rhetoric and images on American and British anti-Islamic ‘counterjihad’ websites. There’s one showing a gigantic blast crater centred in Saudi Arabia, which annihilates most of the countries in the region as far as Egypt in the West. This has the caption ‘Problem Solved’. And the victory of the extreme right in one country will encourage its activists elsewhere in the West.

We have to help and assist our friends and partners in Germany and elsewhere tackle the AfD and the rest of the Nazis, just as we have to tackle the racists, anti-Semites and Islamophobes in Britain, like Britain First, National Action, the BNP, London Forum and the Traditional Britain Group, as well as the Anglo-American Alt right, whose British members include Paul Joseph Watson, Carl Benjamin, AKA Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yiannopolis and Katie Hopkins.

And to do it properly we need people like Ken Livingstone and the others like him, who are prepared to talk frankly about real anti-Semitism, western imperialism and racism, and stand for Jews and the other ethnic minorities threatened by these thugs, who wish to remain in Britain and the other countries in which they were born, or to which the fled to escape genocide in their countries of origin.

Spamfish on Modern American ‘Inverted Totalitarianism’

There’s a very interesting piece of political philosophy over at Spamfish’s site, Oprichnik Rising. Entitled ‘Inverted Totalitarianism’, it discusses the political philosopher, Sheldon Wolin’s, characterisation of modern American as an ‘illiberal democracy’, managed through policies and special lobbying groups, with the relationship between the government and corporations forming an inverted, mirror image to those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. It begins

Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin to describe the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin believes that the United States is increasingly turning into an illiberal democracy, and he uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” to illustrate the similarities and differences between the United States governmental system and totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.[

Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy

Wolin believes that the United States (which he refers to using the proper noun “Superpower”, to emphasize the current position of the United States as the only superpower) has been increasingly taking on totalitarian tendencies as a result of the transformations that it underwent during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers, and during the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Spamfish’s article is at http://spamfish23.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/inverted-totalitarianism/.

It’s well worth reading and I think Wolin’s central idea is largely correct. My only criticism is that in many ways the parallels between the Nazi ‘co-ordination’ of industry and the contemporary influence of private industry on government policy and organisation is actually much closer. Others on the Left have described the modern, Conservative co-option of industrialist and big corporations as ‘Corporativism without the working class’. In Fascist Italy, a corporation was a giant industrial organisation formed to represent the interest of that industry in the Fascist state. There were 12 of these corporations, whose representatives sat in an Industrial Chamber as part of new, Fascist Italian parliament. Each Corporation contained a representative from the unions and the employers’ organisation for that industry, as well as a member of the Fascist party, to represent ‘the people’. In Nazi Germany the middle class organisations, such as the guild and handicraft organisation, which had been campaigning for the greater representation of their interests in the Nazi state, were forcibly incorporated into the Reich Corporation of German Handicraft and the Reich Corporation of German Trade. These formed a kind of compulsory cartel under the leadership of the Nazi party.

There were also short-lived attempts to establish the same kind of corporativist structurre in Nazi German. Attempts to reorganise and align German big business in line with Nazi ideology and policy was countered by the leaders of those industries through their close relationship with Hitler himself, and the support other leading Nazis such as Schacht, Hugenberg, Schmitt and Goring. Following a meeting with fifty leading industrials and bank directors, including Krupp, Thyssen, von Siemens, Stinnes, springorum, Bosch, Vogler and von Stauss, and the heads of the state departments for economic policy and Nazi’s own economic policy advisors, an agreement was made to establish a permanent General Council of the Economy. Heavy industry had a very strong presence in this. Some German industrial leaders were already strongly sympathetic to the Nazis and a corporatist reorganisation of the industrial and social structure. Fritz Thyssen had had contact with Hitler since 1923 and supplied financial support to the Nazis. In collaboration with the advocates of the corporatist state in the NSDAP regional staff, he had set up Institute for Corporatist Organisation in Dusseldorf. Despite this, the party soon rejected such corporativist organisations, and Thyssen’s Institute was forcibly dissolved in 1935. In 1934 the Reich Association of Industry was replaced with the Reich Group Industry. Its leaders and those of the other business associations and chambers were appointed by the state.

The Influence of Private Industry on the Nazi Industrial Organisations

Other Nazi economic organisations were founded as private industries. The Economic Research Association, which was branch of the Reich ministry of Economics, was established in 1934 as private limited company. This was particularly concerned with the construction of fuel depots in strategically important areas. This, and similar departments, were largely untouched by the demands of the state bureaucracy The Nazi state did not attack the principle of private capitalist industry. The state economic planning apparatus curtailed company director’s freedom to manage their own firms, nevertheless the Nazi state tried to operate with the minimum of bureaucracy. In so doing, it allowed the state’s organs of administration and control to be strongly influenced by experts and representatives of private industry. The result of this was, according to historian Martin Broszat, a type of economic leader, who was half state official, and half private businessman.

Nazi Economic Organisation Close to Thatcherite and Reaganite ‘Public-Private Partnerships and PFI

This seems to challenge Wolin’s theory somewhat. Both the Fascist and Nazi states certainly attempted to use the state’s corporativist institutions to control private industry. The above examples from the Nazi regime also shows how private industry attempted to influence Nazi policy, which was frequently carried out through state organisations founded as private companies. The parallels between the Nazis’ policies in this area, and those of Mrs. Thatcher’s and subsequent administrations are particularly striking. Under these administrations, representatives of industry have entered government, and they and their thinktanks and special advisors have formulated government policy. They have also set up private corporations to carry out public policy. An example of this is the Urban Development Corporations Mrs Thatcher set up to circumvent local authorities’ influence and control over the process of urban regeneration. The core of these policies were ‘Public-Private Partnership’ between private industry and the state, and the use of the Private Finance Initiative and government subsidies to support private industry. The Tories’ proposed privatisation of the courts, and the outsourcing of welfare administration to private companies, can also be seen as another example of private industry acting as a government bureaucracy or department similar to Nazi policies in this area.