The Far Right in Germany

The NPD: How the Past May Affect the Future

Thomas Bowers

15.05.2012

POLS 390D- The Radical Right- Mudde

Introduction

Germany as a nation has been and is continued to be associated with right extremism and far right politics, mainly due to its Nazi history. The trauma of planned extermination, the catastrophes of the Second World War and the guilt that followed have continued to play an integral role in the way Germany has shaped its democracy today; one that is reactionary and innovative, rather than modelled off other democracies. They have also shaped the “German mindset” seen today in Germany: one that is generally very tolerant of those who are non-Germans (immigrants, foreign workers, Muslims, and Jews). The determination in Germany to prevent a second Third Reich from emerging within has made the political environment such that far right parties have found it increasingly difficult to find success, but that does not mean that such parties do not exist there. In the past, far right parties have seen very limited success or have even been banned, but the future always holds the potentials for such parties to emerge victorious, as what has been seen in Greece with the recent victory of Golden Dawn into the government by receiving 7% of the national vote, or the relative success of France’s Front National receiving 18% of the national vote in the April 2012 election.

The National Democratic Party of Germany, the NPD, is Germany’s most prominent far-right party. The party was founded in 1964 in Hannover with Friedrich Thielen at the party’s helm. The NPD was the successor to the Sozialistiche Reichspartei (SRP), who in 1952 was banned due to its association with the former Nazi Party of the German Third Reich. Today, the NPD is led by Holger Apfel, an MP of the German state of Saxony, who replaced Udo Voigt in 2011. The party currently has about 28,000 registered supporters. Out of the roughly 84 million people that constitute the population of...