Germany: After Hoyerswerdar
01 January 1991
Germany: After Hoyerswerdar
artdoc August=1992
CARF 8, May/June 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]
"After Hoyerswerdar: the new political consensus in German"
Regional elections saw the neo-nazi Republikaner Party gain
11% of the vote in Baden-Wirtemberg and the DVU obtain 6% in
Schleswig-Holstein. On 24 May, the Republikaner will test its
strength again in local elections, where a new nationalist
party, `Die Nationalen', which has revisionist historian David
Irving's support, is standing. CARF's correspondent in Germany
argues that therehas been a fundamental shift to the right in German politics,
with even some sections of the Left now joining the Right's
ranks.
1991 was not only the year of the burning of refugee hostels
all over Germany, but also of a new alliance between a
conservative government and most parts of the opposition,
inside and outside the parliament.
In September, while the racist mobs in Hoyerswerda were still
celebrating their`victory'- they had `freed a German town from
bogus foreigners'- the politicians came out with statements
blaming the abuse of Germany's `liberal' asylum law for the
rise of violence and neo-fascism.
They used Hoyerswerda to argue for a change to the
constitution, which currently guarantees the right of every
refugee to enter Germany and apply for asylum. The large num-
ber of so-called `economic refugees', represented as such a
threat, particularly to former East Germany with its high
unemployment, was again seen as a major national problem.
Waning concern
If you had expected a broad coalition of church, welfare and
human rights organisations, trade unions, Greens and Social
Democrats to oppose that view, you were to be disappointed.
Numerous `Be friendly to foreigners' campaigns, some supported
by the state, may have been launched, but, at the same time,
refugees fleeing from places of racist terror were being sent
back by the immigration police - only to be attacked again.
Eight months later, the constant attacks on refugees,
immigrants and foreign students have not stopped. The media
are no longer interested. Apart from a small number of anti--
racist and anti-fascist activists and some groups in the PDS
(the successor to the Communist Party in the GDR) - who are
blamed for polarising the situation, rather than waiting for
the fascists to `disappear' - the German Left has decided to
make its peace with the German state.
The Greens, who used to be the only West German party in the
1980s whose programme included `the right for every refugee to
stay in Germany' and who were part of the struggles against
deportations, voted at their 1991 party conference to give up
their former policy. They claim that the increasing conflicts
between the German population and more and more foreigners
coming to live in Germany show the need for `new' political
solutions. Instead of using their resources to support the
anti-racist movement, the Greens promote a reactionary
immigration law - with quotas to be set by the state according
to the needs of private capital for cheap labour - as a
progressive step towards a peaceful multi-cultural German
society.
A new consensus
A large number of trade unionists go along with the idea. The
new political consensus between the ruling conservative party
and the liberals, the opposition social democrats and the
Greens is that something must be done about the burden of an
increasing number of asylum-seekers.
While some Green politicians still oppose a constitutional
change, Bjorn Engholm, the social democrat candidate who might
replace Chancellor Kohl after the 1994 general elections, made
the policy of his party quite clear. In interviews, he has
admitted openly that he will not defend the German asylum law
if a European-wide solution can be achieved. That there is
nothing left of a liberal asylum law anyway - since the
leading parties decided in January on a<