Alongside the internationally better known National-Democratic Party of Germany or “NPD,” the German People’s Union (DVU) is one of the two main German political parties of the so-called “extreme Right.” As discussed in my earlier PJM report here, in German usage this expression is, in effect, just a euphemism for neo-Nazi currents and organizations. Both the NPD and the DVU are officially classified as “right-wing extremist” organizations by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the so-called Office for the Protection of the Constitution or “Verfassungsschutz.” A statement published by the DVU on Wednesday, however, makes clear just how misleading it is to describe Germany’s contemporary Nazi groups as “right-wing.”
The topic of the DVU statement [German link] is the “Al-Quds Day” demonstration that was held on Saturday in Berlin. The statement reads as follows:
Just as we are following with sympathy the development of friendly relations between Venezuela, Russia and Iran, we also see ourselves as standing in solidarity with the victims of Zionist occupation in Palestine.
Zionism is, moreover, a problem of worldwide dimensions, which affects the lives of all peoples. The coming together internationally, shoulder to shoulder, of all patriots is therefore more than appropriate.
For us it is a matter near to ours hearts to draw attention to the Jerusalem Day demonstration this upcoming Sunday in Berlin and to call [on our supporters] to join in the demonstration in a dignified manner.
A “right-wing” movement that approves of Hugo Chavez’s Marxist regime in Caracas and its developing ties with Russia and the Iran of the Islamic Revolution?!
The DVU statement is followed by the official announcement of the Berlin “Al-Quds Day” demonstration by the sponsoring organization, the Quds Association [Quds AG]. The announcement appears under the words: “In the Name of the All-Merciful.” The first paragraph begins as follows (capitalization and bolding in the original):
There are different designations for the PROBLEM of our global community: “international finance capital,” “imperialism,” (in Arabic) “Istikbar,” “the Great Satan and his allies,” “globalized power,” etc. One can call it what one wants. The foundations of the PROBLEM are to be found in the USA, England and Israel. For over 60 years, the Palestinian people has been made to feel this constellation of power more intensively than anyone else. The brutality practiced by the Israeli military regime for the last three years in the largest open air prison in the world, the Gaza Strip, makes clear what the global community can expect from the ideology of Zionist domination in the 21st century. Unqualified loyalty to Zionism has become the glue holding together the EU and thereby the Zionists are seeking step by step to get control over the EU structures.
The announcement goes on then to call on demonstrators to “do something against the warmongers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon” and against “the oppression and exploitation of many nations.”
One of these nations appears indeed to be Germany. Thus we read further on:
There is an economic assault of international finance capital on the Federal Republic of Germany occurring, whereby a large part of the population is being gradually pushed into poverty. Hand in hand, we must build an acceptable resistance to globalized injustice.
Apart from the religious invocation of the “All-Merciful,” the essentially “leftist” tenor of the above is unmistakable. It is, moreover, hardly surprising that Nazis would endorse such an appeal. Railing against the evils of “finance capital” — or, in the original, “Jewish finance capital” — has, after all, been a traditional staple of Nazi discourse. The essential continuity between the principal “enemies of humanity” identified by the Quds AG – the USA, England, and Israel/“Zionists” — and those targeted by Nazi propaganda is equally obvious. (Even the reduction of Great Britain just to “England” is a classically Nazi touch.)
In any case, the DVU’s expressions of sympathy for the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez and its support for the “Al-Quds Day” demonstration raise an obvious question for the officials of Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Instead of insisting upon a “right-wing extremist” designation that only breeds confusion, why not simply call a Nazi … a Nazi?
(For some related articles, see my earlier PJM report “German Neo-Nazis View Islamists as Allies” and Jan Langehein’s “Germany’s Other Anti-Globalists: Neo-Nazis Against the G-8” on World Politics Review. Hat-tip to Thomas von der Osten-Sacken and the German-language Wadiblog.)
Join the conversation as a VIP Member