The rightists feed on resentment against the established political parties, while targeting certain sections of the population for the social problems generated by capitalism--immigrants, gays, physically disabled people, and workers who are homeless, among others.

Meanwhile, capitalist politicians are proposing to crack down on rightist and racist attacks with measures that would curb democratic rights.

A group of fascists killed an African immigrant, Alberto Adriano, in the town of Dessau, in eastern Germany, on June 11.

On July 27 a shrapnel bomb detonated outside the commuter railway station in the western city of Düsseldorf, wounding nine immigrants returning home from their daily German-language class. The nine were originally from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Russia; six of them were Jews.

In the eastern town of Eisenach, two African immigrants were attacked by a group of nazi skinheads shouting Sieg Heil.

Two Jewish cemeteries were desecrated in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate and an explosive device was found outside a Jewish family's home in Bavaria August 6. The number of Jews in Germany has grown over the past decade through immigration from the former Soviet Union, from 29,000 at the beginning of the 1990s to 85,000 today. Düsseldorf has become a center for this immigration, with 5,100 recently arriving there from Russia.

The attacks have not gone unanswered. In response to the Düsseldorf bombing, more than 2,000 people took to the streets of the city to protest chauvinist violence.

While the big-business media associates the rightist and racist violence with the crisis in eastern Germany, attributing it to the high unemployment there, the facts indicate that fascist-like groups have also organized substantially in the western part of the country, where some of the recent attacks have taken place.

In eastern Germany, the government has liquidated antiquated industrial and other enterprises. While it has been unable to reimpose capitalist social relations in the former East Germany, and in fact has been forced to pump huge amounts of funds as social transfer payments, conditions there are marked by disproportionately high unemployment and social dislocation.

But the social crisis and political polarization are not limited to the eastern region. Despite the economic boom that capitalists and many in the middle classes are currently enjoying in Germany, working people face an increasingly uncertain future, and the country's rulers have launched attacks on workers' hard-won social gains.

Unemployment, which reached double-digit figures nationwide in 1997, has gone down somewhat, but it remains at 7.7 percent in the west and 17.4 percent in the east.  
 
Government actions embolden rightists
Meanwhile, the Social Democrats and Greens won approval in parliament for nearly $30 billion in tax cuts, the lion's share going to corporations. The tax restructuring is expected to encourage corporate mergers, accompanied by downsizing and layoffs. The government is now preparing to launch an assault on workers' pensions.

The social crisis has spawned an array of rightist outfits, who thrive on the fear of the future that millions in Germany feel today. Ultrarightist groups such as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) raise the banner of "Jobs for Germans first!" seeking to scapegoat immigrants for the persistent unemployment.

"If there are attacks on foreigners in Germany, that is of course a sorry tale, but it is the responsibility of the established parties who continue to allow uncontrolled flows of foreigners--now with a green card--while they are not in a position to guarantee the right of all Germans to work," stated NPD leader Udo Voigt in early August.

The fascist-minded NPD leader was referring to a recent government "green card" initiative to offer work permits to 20,000 computer specialists and other professionals from abroad. Many of them will come from Russia, eastern Europe, and Asia. This is part of the Schröder government's effort to attract new investment.

Despite the rightists' demagogy, the government in Berlin has carried out increasing attacks on the rights of immigrants in recent years, restricting asylum laws and deporting immigrant workers from Germany. In fact, these reactionary actions by the ruling parties have emboldened the fascist-minded groups to take German nationalist demagogy even further.

To cover up the government's position, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party blamed a "silent majority" for abetting the rightist assaults by not speaking out against them.

In line with this stance of blaming working people for the consequences of the employers' own system, liberals and other groups have gone on a campaign to lecture people about being "tolerant." Schröder's spokesperson, Uwe-Karsten Heye, announced after a meeting with Paul Spiegel, leader of the Central Council of German Jews, that an advertising campaign would begin next month in which famous German personalities would exhort the nation to show "zero tolerance" for racists.  
 
Threat to democratic rights
At the same time, the Schröder administration has taken advantage of the wave of ultrarightist attacks to call for reinforcing the cops. "We need the full force of the police" to confront "extremism," the Social Democratic chancellor declared.

Other proposals by capitalist politicians include the creation of special courts for so-called hate crimes, a measure that if enacted can be used by the authorities to go after militant workers, antiracist fighters, and others deemed "hateful" by the rulers.

Many bourgeois politicians are now proposing that the NPD be banned. That group is the best-organized far-right party in the east. The other two prominent rightist parties are the Republicans and the German People's Union (DVU), who are stronger in the west.

On August 12 Ernst Uhrlaub, the government official in charge of the secret service, called for the NPD to be banned.

So far, top government officials have been reluctant to propose a ban because it is likely to be overturned by the constitutional court, which would be a political defeat for the government.

Nonetheless, the minister for home affairs in the federal government and the ministers of home affairs in the state governments have announced they are considering a ban, and may apply for one in the constitutional court by October.

Meanwhile, in Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe, the local authorities banned two demonstrations by fascists who had applied to march August 17 to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, the deputy of Adolf Hitler.  
 
Ban would give bosses weapon
A government ban on rightist groups is a threat to working people. It would give the employers, their government, and the police additional powers to use against the working-class movement and others who really will wage a fight against the fascists, and would simply help the fascists pose demagogically as victims of repression.

As Berlin has become bolder in attacks both on workers at home and in its foreign policy, it has been more favorable to efforts to prettify the ruling class's own history, and in particular to shake off the hypocritical version of history imposed by the imperialist victors who defeated the German rulers in World War II.

A sign of this shift was the awarding of the prestigious Konrad Adenauer Prize for literature to the historian Ernst Nolte by the Deutschland Foundation, a conservative, mainstream group. Past recipients include former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Nolte has argued that Hitler's anti-Semitic policies had a "rational core" and that Nazism was in essence a response to "Bolshevism."

In accepting the prize Nolte said, "We should leave behind the view that the opposite of National Socialist goals is always good and right." He added that because Nazism was the strongest of all counterforces "to Bolshevism, a movement with wide Jewish support," Hitler may have had "rational" reasons for attacking the Jews.

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metalworkers union in Södertälje, Sweden.