[D66] Political conspiracy and the resurgence of fascism in Germany

[A.OUT]

wsws.org:

Spectre of the 1930s
Sound the alarm! Political conspiracy and the resurgence of fascism in 
Germany
14 February 2020

Last week’s decision of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Free 
Democratic Party (FDP) in the federal state of Thuringia to collaborate 
with the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 
selection of a governor exposes the filthy state of German politics. 
Seventy-five years after the collapse of the Third Reich, a party led by 
apologists for Hitler and out-and-out Nazis is accepted by the ruling 
elite as a legitimate political partner.

The rise of the political right in Germany during the past decade has 
been among the least covered stories in the international media. But in 
the aftermath of the events in Thuringia, even the New York Times has 
come to recognize that the resurgence of German fascism as a significant 
political force cannot be ignored. In an article in its edition of 
February 7, the Times wrote:

     Sometimes, it takes an earthquake to reveal what’s below the surface.

     In the eastern German state of Thuringia this week a regional 
election displayed the disastrous state of Germany’s political 
center—and how far the country now stands from the anti-fascist 
consensus it proclaims to maintain.

     The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first, short-lived experience of 
democracy until it was abolished by the Nazis, has become a popular 
reference point in the current Germany.

The Times acknowledged that the collaboration of the CDU and FDP with 
the AfD “broke a taboo that has been in place in German politics since 
the end of the Nazi era. Mr. Kemmerich [of the FDP] became the first 
high-ranking German politician since World War II to be elected by 
relying on votes from a far-right party.”

The decision of the CDU and FDP to collaborate with the AfD, the Times 
continued,

     is especially worrying in Thuringia, where the FDP is not only the 
second strongest party in the regional parliament, but also more extreme 
than in any other state. The AfD’s boss there, Björn Höcke, is the 
leader of a hard-line movement inside the party known as “Der 
Flügel”—The Wing. In a 2018 book, he warned of the “coming death of the 
nation through population replacement.” Last year, a court ruled that he 
could legally be termed a fascist.

The Times concluded:

     For the far right, this week has been an outstanding success. AfD’s 
leaders have long predicted—and hoped for – a convergence between 
centrist and conservative parties. On Wednesday, when shaking hands to 
congratulate the newly elected Thuringia governor, Mr. Höcke smiled. The 
scene reminded many Germans of a famous picture from 1933 in which Adolf 
Hitler greets Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s president at the time.

     Germany in 2020 is not Germany in 1933. But German politics have 
shifted in recent years in a disturbing way. Centrists and the far right 
share talking points on immigration. They share what they perceive as a 
common enemy in the left. And now, for the first time in decades, they 
even share a governor.

Readers of the Times, having previously read or heard almost nothing in 
the media about the existence of a serious neo-Nazi revival in Germany, 
might be led to believe that the events in Thuringia are a sudden and 
unforeseen development.

This is far from the case. The events confirm the persistent warnings of 
the German Trotskyists of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), 
published in numerous articles posted on the World Socialist Web Site. 
The political manoeuvring in Thuringia—the very state that played a 
major role in the growth of Hitlerism—is the outcome of a political 
conspiracy involving all the main parties of the German political 
establishment, unfolding for more than five years, to actively encourage 
and legitimize the growth of a neo-Nazi political movement.

The use of the word “conspiracy” in explaining the rise of the AfD is 
entirely appropriate. The major difference between the AfD and the Nazis 
of the 1920s and 1930s is that this modern-day fascistic organization is 
not based on a mass movement. Arising out of a split with the CDU and 
FDP at the beginning of 2013, a large proportion of AfD members have 
been recruited directly from the state apparatus—above all from the 
military, judiciary and police. Most of their personnel were previously 
members of another establishment party. For example:

     AfD Honorary Chairman Alexander Gauland, who glorifies the 
Wehrmacht and describes Hitler and the Nazis as merely “bird shit in 
over 1,000 years of successful German history,” was a high-ranking CDU 
functionary for 40 years.

     Guido Reil, who is a leading AfD deputy in the European Parliament, 
is a member of the IG BCE industrial trade union and was a member of the 
Social Democratic Party (SPD) for 26 years before joining the AfD in 2016.

     Georg Pazderski, Chairman of AfD Berlin, is a former army officer 
who served in NATO headquarters, including the United States Central 
Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and with the Allied Joint 
Force Command Lisbon.

In its efforts to promote the growth of the AfD, the ruling class has 
been confronted with one fundamental problem. The fascists are hated by 
the overwhelming majority of the population.

When the AfD entered the Bundestag (federal parliament) in September 
2017 with only 12.6 percent of the votes, there were spontaneous mass 
protests throughout the country. After the fascist riots in Chemnitz in 
September 2018, in which the AfD played a central role, hundreds of 
thousands took to the streets. In Berlin alone, a quarter of a million 
people demonstrated on October 13, 2018. Spontaneous mass protests 
against racism and fascist violence also took place after the terrorist 
attack on the synagogue in Halle last October and most recently 
following Kemmerich’s election in Thuringia.

In the face of massive popular hostility, the elevation of the AfD into 
positions of power has depended upon the complicity of the major 
parties. The decisive mechanism for leveraging the influence of the AfD 
has been the Grand Coalition federal government of the Christian 
Democrats and Social Democrats.

After the 2017 elections, all parties in the Bundestag spent more than 
six months behind closed doors working out the framework for a new 
government. In the process, far-reaching agreements were reached, 
particularly regarding the comprehensive remilitarisation of Germany, 
massive attacks on social and democratic rights, and systematic 
cooperation with the AfD.

At the end of November 2017, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier 
invited the then AfD cochairs Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel to a 
joint meeting at his official residence, Bellevue Palace. The meeting is 
documented in pictures from the Federal Press Office. When the Grand 
Coalition came to power in March 2018, it adopted large portions of the 
policies of the extreme right and swiftly integrated the AfD into the 
political system.

The SPD played a key role in this process. As a consequence of the SPD’s 
decision to rule jointly with the CDU, the AfD—though it had received 
the support of one-eighth of all voters—became the official opposition 
party. This vastly increased the parliamentary and media presence of the 
AfD. Gauland and Co. have been able to spread their fascist filth in the 
media at the beginning of every Bundestag session and during prime time. 
Notorious right-wing extremists have been hoisted to the top of 
important parliamentary committees with the support of the SPD.

Accommodating the AfD, the justification of Nazism and the fight against 
the socialist left—two core issues of the AfD—are an essential component 
of the Grand Coalition’s arsenal. In 2018, the government-mandated 
report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution 
[Verfassungsschutz], as Germany’s secret service is called, cited the 
SGP as an “object of surveillance” on the grounds of its intransigent 
opposition to the AfD and imperialist militarism and its advocacy of an 
anti-capitalist socialist program.

The AfD and “The Wing” are sympathetically referenced by the 
Verfassungsschutz as “victims” of alleged “left-wing extremists”. It is 
a matter of public record that right-wing terrorist networks extend far 
into the army, police and secret services. They maintain death lists 
with tens of thousands of targets. Their activities are largely ignored 
by the German state even after the murder of prominent CDU politician 
Walter Lübcke on June 2, 2019. It is widely suspected that Lübcke was 
murdered because of his criticisms of the AfD. Within a few weeks, 
reporting on the assassination of a high-ranking politician was dropped 
by the media.

The politically spineless Left Party [ Die Linke ]—which hangs on to the 
coattails of the SPD—is reacting to developments in Thuringia with yet 
another cowardly shift to the right. It is not only courting the CDU, 
but also indicating that it is prepared to collaborate with the AfD.

There is another critical element in the rise of the AfD and the 
deliberate legitimization of neofascist politics in Germany. In order to 
overcome the resistance of the population to the revival of militarism 
and authoritarianism, there is an effort among German academics to 
create a new historical narrative based on ferocious anti-Marxism, the 
trivialization of Nazi crimes, and the rehabilitation of Hitler.

The central role in this insidious process has been played by the 
administration of Humboldt University in Berlin, which has provided 
unstinting institutional support for Professor Jörg Baberowski, the head 
of its Department of East European Studies. Baberowski is notorious for 
his lying claims that “Hitler was not vicious” and that the Führer did 
not want to know anything about Auschwitz and the mass extermination of 
the Jews.

The university’s president, Sabine Kunst, a former functionary of the 
SPD, has declared that criticism of Baberowski is “unacceptable.” Even 
after Baberowski, who conducts himself in the manner of a Nazi 
gauleiter, physically attacked a left-wing student at the university—an 
event captured on video and viewed on YouTube more than 20,000 times 
(see video)—Kunst refused to permit criticism of Baberowski.

With the support he has received from Humboldt University, Baberowski 
has become an increasingly prominent political figure. He is scheduled 
to deliver a major speech at a public event commemorating the 
seventy-fifth anniversary of the collapse of the Third Reich. He will, 
with high-level political support, utilize the opportunity to deliver an 
anti-communist tirade.

The political situation in Germany demands the attention of the 
European, American and international working class. In the light of 
history, it is impossible to adopt a complacent attitude toward the 
resurgence of neo-Nazism in Germany.

However, there is a fundamental and profound difference between the 
situation that exists today and that of the 1930s. Fascism is by no 
means a mass movement in Germany. There exists among masses of German 
workers, students, artists and intellectuals an intense hatred of the 
Nazi past and all those who trivialize its crimes. All over Germany, 
there are memorials that recall the crimes of the Nazis and honour the 
memory of its millions of victims. The horrors of the Third Reich are 
deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of the German people.

At the same time, the intellectual and political traditions of Marxism 
are rooted profoundly in the culture of the country, despite all the 
efforts of the official parties, corrupt media and academic mandarins to 
eradicate them. One can be certain that the bicentenary of Friedrich 
Engels’ birth in November 1820 will be warmly commemorated throughout 
Germany.

But the very absence of mass support accentuates one striking and 
dangerous similarity to the political process that led to the victory of 
the Nazis in 1933, and that is the element of conspiratorial activity 
within the political establishment to strengthen the extreme right. This 
process—and its reactionary consequences—have been exposed by the events 
in Thuringia.

The only party that consistently fights against the growth of the AfD 
and the return of fascism and militarism in Germany and internationally 
is the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei. Its warnings have been 
confirmed. As SGP leader Christoph Vandreier wrote in his invaluable 
exposure of the political conspiracy underlying the rise of the AfD:

The AfD has neither a mass base of support nor combat-ready units like 
Hitler’s SA storm troopers) which recruited its members among uprooted 
war veterans, socially ruined members of the petty bourgeoisie, and 
despairing unemployed workers. The AfD’s strength arises exclusively out 
of the support it receives from political parties, the media, the 
government, and the state apparatus.

As is the case throughout the world, a process of political 
radicalization is underway in Germany. The events in Thuringia, which 
have shocked the public, will accelerate this process. But its timely 
and politically conscious development requires the building of the 
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and the International Committee of the 
Fourth International as a revolutionary party of the German and 
international working class.

David North and Johannes Stern