ROBERT WISTRICH
15
alone, there were over two thousand racist attacks (nearly double the
previous year), over six hundred cases of arson, and seventeen deaths
caused by neo-Nazi skinheads in Germany. Their message of hate is re–
layed through a skinhead music scene (a pattern pioneered by racist rock
bands in Britain) and computer games as well as racist literature. The
denial of the Holocaust is a consistent feature of their propaganda, as it
is of equivalent nco-Nazi groups in Britain, France, Italy, and other
European countries. The light penalties given by German courts for their
criminal activities and the relative passivity of the government and police
(somewhat corrected in recent months) suggests more than an echo of
Weimar. The ill-fated Republic was notoriously blind in the right eye,
when it came
to
responding to extremist violence from the right.
Historical analogies can be misleading, but many Germans themselves
draw the parallel with late Weimar conditions. These parallels are even
more striking when we look at Russia where a devastated economy, na–
tional humiliation, and a crisis of identity make some version of fascism a
growing temptation. Similarly, in what was formerly East Germany,
which knew only Nazi and Communist dictatorship between 1933 and
1989, the prognosis is not encouraging.
Not only have the so-called "Ossies" been living in an ideological
vacuum since 1989, but they have seen their industrial base and collective
self-esteem progressively eroded. But the fact is that there are even more
organized neo-Nazis in Western Germany, which until recently never
had it so good. Hitler's great-grandchildren (if that is who they are) are
no less the products of an economic miracle shaped by the Bonn
Republic than the misfits of Communist totalitarianism. Moreover, at its
core the resurgence of nationalist xenophobia, with its echoes of a
genocidal past, is much more than simply a German problem.
We are dealing here with a general European and perhaps even a
planetary malaise, involving a fundamental breakdown in moral and soci–
etal values. The ghosts of Europe's past will not be exorcised by the
facile search for scapegoats in the present nor by futile exercises in nor–
malizing the collective traumas of history. The search for roots and for a
secure national identity can often be liberating experiences - especially in
the service of freedom from tyranny, oppression, and humiliation. But
even the noblest patriotic sentiments are liable to become the "last
refuge of the scoundrel" unless they are also balanced by an elementary
respect for dignity, solidarity, and universal human rights.
