German authorities have revealed that a Neonazi terror cell murdered at least 10 people, eight of whom were Turkish small businessmen, one a Greek small business man and one police woman.
Two Neonazis killed themselves when police closed in on them. A woman accomplice is under arrest. Leftwing critics allege that identity papers showed that the men and the woman were connected to German domestic intelligence, who covered for them.
Germans now want to see the right-wing extremist party NPD banned. But new figures reveal just how hard that would be. German intelligence has 130 informants in the party.
German security authorities made a series of mistakes in their investigation into the terrorist cell, repeatedly failing to apprehend one member years ago even though they knew his whereabouts. The German public has been largely blind to the threat from the right.
False suspicions against the victims destroyed the lives of their relatives.
Below is an analysis by the Cologne anti-fascist group, Antifaschistische Koordination Köln & Umland (AKKU), published by linksunten.indymedia.
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For years left and antifascist initiatives have warned in Germany of racist violence perpetrated by Neonazis. Even so, the series of racist murders by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) recently discovered throws a shocking spotlight on the extent of racist violence in Germany and how it is played down.
The murders and assassinations of the NSU happened in a societal climate of exclusions, discriminations and everyday racist violence.
Since 1989 not only 182 racist-driven murders were perpetrated in Germany, representing just the tip of an iceberg, there also flourished a general policy of special laws, expulsions from the country and so-called integration debates.
While studies of the “German condition” confirm year after year that group-targeting misanthropy is an inherent part of the “societal centre”, spokespeople of German repression agencies boast about their closed-borders policy at Europe’s external frontiers and gloat about “Fortress Europe”.
The response needed to this racist frenzy has to be more than words of regret, what is needed is unconditional solidarity with all victims of racism.
In a general climate of racism, police authorities have declared the victims of fascist violence to be the perpetrators of it.
Racist stereotypes “located” crimes in circles of the “Anatolian Mafia”, “illegal gambling” and “protection blackmail”.
After an NSU nail bomb attack in Cologne, the police post near the crime scene spread police defamation of the victims. They prematurely ruled out a rightwing background in their investigation.
The case shows that as long as silence remains about the social determinants of racism, neither the fascist murders nor the everyday acts of racist violence will be cleared up.
After the Neonazi background of the killings was revealed, media coverage of the cooperation between repression apparatus and Nazi groups puts it down to “mishaps” or “failure”. Politics keeps doing same old same old.
It’s all been filed away even before a single NSU murder or attack has been completely investigated.
The entanglements of the intelligence agencies in the fascist terrorism have so far been only reluctantly looked at. Many files that might have thrown light into the darkness have already been destroyed.
The only consequence from this series of failures, bad luck and mishaps remains a call for bigger powers for the secret services and more possibilities for criminalising political movements.
Missing files are symptomatic for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (domestic intelligence). That’s borne out by that agency’s history. Like other institutions of the then West Germany, Nazis had a large role in building it. But to this day there’s refusal to work through that past. That would beed access to the historical documents. But the archives of this agency remain closed.
Still topical are cases of state intelligence agencies trivialising fascist violence, classifying perpetrators as weirdos and intentionally ignoring their connections to fascist organisations. And so nothing gets cleared up, and a brown thread keeps woven into the history of the Federal Republic.
But those in responsibility not only strew roses on the path of fascist violence. They also fight those forces in society that stand in the way of racism and fascism. Linking to the theoretical concept of “extremism”, state funding to antifascist and antiracist initiatives is being reduced and engagement for a society of solidarity criminalised.
The extremism doctrine of the Federal Republic of Germany wants to see the political spectrum as a horseshoe. According to that, the presumably negative extremes are on the fringes of society.
The so-called democratic centre is to be perceived as the only positive and politically legitimate reference point. Under the label of “extremism” fascist annihilation ideology is equated with left efforts for a good life and racism and anti-Semitism are trivialised as fringe phenomena of bourgeois society. The state-claimed monopoly on political will formation that hides behind the extremism doctrine has the function always to wash clean the waistcoat of bourgeois society.
So, one will have to do everything oneself: Fight fascism and racism! Disband the intelligence services!
