Clear and compact: a comprehensive overview of Germany’s extreme right, with practical tips for dealing with neo-Nazis
The whistle may have been blown on the National Socialist Underground terror cell, but people continue to underestimate the threat: the extreme right in Germany has become both more radicalized and more bourgeois, and the persistent debate about banning the National Democratic Party (NPD) is deflecting attention from what’s really happening. With the Autonomous Nationalists (AN), a young and extremely violent neo-Nazi current has emerged. Copying the pop-culture style of left-wing radicals and promising action, the AN is extremely popular with young people – and the right-wing music scene only adds to its appeal. More than once, AN followers have been caught preparing for terrorist attacks. At the most moderate edge of the scene, right-wing populists have grown increasingly powerful. Attempting to piggyback their Islamophobic ideas on national conservative and bourgeois positions, groups like “Pro Deutschland” (“Pro Germany”) and “Die Freiheit” (“Freedom”) are aspiring to become “the party of Sarrazin’s book.” It’s not unthinkable that the once dominant NPD might splinter between these two sides of the movement.
