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Neo-Nazism

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The terms Neo-Nazism and Neo-Fascism refer to any social or political movement that revive Nazism or Fascism, respectively, and postdate the Second World War.

The Neo-Nazi movement is identified by devotion to Adolf Hitler, the national insignia of Germany during National-Socialism (e.g. the swastika), and other features specific to Germany from the period 1933 to 1945. These usually include anti-Semitism, racism, and/or xenophobia. These groups often draw membership from people who blame their society's problems on non-white immigrants and a presumed Jewish conspiracy. Some Neo-Nazi groups espouse violence, and for this reason they are a source of concern to law enforcement. Many Neo-Nazi groups also espouse Holocaust denial or Historical revisionism.

Several people have contributed significantly to the revival of Nazism. These include Colin Jordan, George Lincoln Rockwell, William Pierce, Savitri Devi, and David Myatt.

Neo-Nazism in Germany

In Germany immediately after World War II, Allied forces and the new German governments attempted to prevent the creation of new Nazi movements through a process known as denazification. With this and the total defeat of the Nazi regime, there was little overt neo-Nazi activity in Europe until the 1960s. Some former Nazis retained their ideology and racist beliefs, however, and passed them down to new generations.

In the 1990s, after German reunification, Neo-Nazi groups succeeded in gaining more followers, mostly among teenagers in Eastern Germany. The activities of these groups resulted in several violent attacks on foreigners and creating a hostile atmosphere for foreigners in some towns. The violence manifested itself especially in attempts to burn down the homes for people in search of asylum in Germany.

  • Attacks on accommodation for refugees: Hoyerswerda (17. - 22. 9. 1991), Rostock-Lichtenhagen` (23. - 27. 8. 1992), Schwedt, Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt, Elsterwerda (Oct 1991)
  • Arson attack on the house of a Turkish family in Solingen (29.5.1993), two women and three girls murdered, seven people severely injured. Remark: Although four suspects were sentenced to 10-15 years, the judgment was controversial because not all doubts about their responsibility for the attempt could be cleared up. Three of these persons had connections to a collaborator of the German secret service "Verfassungsschutz".
  • Murder of three Turkish girls in an arson attack in Mölln (23. 1 l. 1992), nine more people injured.

("Arson attack" is a translation of the German word Brandanschlag, which implies throwing Molotov cocktails into houses (fire-bombing), and attempts to burn a house down.)

These events preceded demonstrations (Lichterketten) with hundreds of thousands of participants against right-extremist violence in many German cities.

The official German statistics for the year 1990 record 178 right-extremist motivated crimes of violence (Gewalttaten), in 1991 849 and in 1992 1,485, with a significant concentration in the eastern Bundesländer (1999: 2,19 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in the eastern Bundesländer and 0,68 in the western ones). After 1992 the numbers went down. Because the strong public opinion and media coverage concerning Neo-Nazi ideologies is extremely negative, organized attempts of those groups get ended quickly by local authorities when they reach a certain size.

At the moment (2002) a trial is under way before the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the highest court in Germany, about the prohibition of the NPD, considered a right-extremist party. In the course of the trial it was discovered that some high-ranking party members who should appear as witnesses worked as undercover agents for the secret services, the Verfassungsschutz. The trial turned into a major political scandal, was first temporarily suspended and finally rejected by the court because of the unclear influence of agents in the actions and image of the NPD.

Nazi iconography remains to this day heavily restricted in Germany. As German law forbids the production of Nazi devotionalia, such items come mostly (illegally) from the USA and northern European countries. Current Neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on hosting in the USA and Canada, and use euphemisms for Nazi ideas and symbols -- for example, the swastika may be referred to as a sun disc, sun wheel, hooked cross, wolf's cross, wolf's hook, black sun, or dark star.

Many of the ideas of Germanic cultural pride and distrust of outsiders continue to be spread under the umbrella of a Folkish "spiritual movement" variously known as Odalism, Odinism, or heathenism.

Neo-Fascism in Italy

Organizations that have been described as 'Neo-Fascist' and/or 'Neo-Nazi' include;

Neo-Nazism in the USA

In the USA, broad freedom of speech allows political organizations great latitude in expressing Nazi, racist or anti-Semitic ideology. Several White supremacist or white separatist groups share large parts of their ideology with Nazism.

Organizations that describe themselves as being 'Neo-Fascist' and/or 'Neo-Nazi' or do not object to the label include;

Organizations which have been described as Neo-Fascist or Neo-Nazi, but that strongly object to the label include:

Neo-Nazism in the UK

The following British organizations have been described as neo-Nazi:

Neo-Nazism in Russia

Russia may seem like an unlikely place for a flowering of neo-Nazi movements due to the extant memories of the devastation that was wrought on the nation by the Nazi German invaders during World War II. Nevertheless, the post-Soviet era has seen the rise of a variety of extremist nationalist political movements, some of them paramilitary organizations of openly neo-Fascist or neo-Nazi persuasion. These organizations are characterized by extreme xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and an active interest in overthrowing the government and taking power by force. As of 2004, the Russian neo-Nazis constitute one of the greatest potential threats to the political and social stability in Russia. Whereas Vladimir Putin's government seems to keep them in check, if the economic and social conditions in the country will deteriorate significantly in the future, an attempted neo-Nazi rebellion can well be on the horizon.

Social roots

The dismantling of the Soviet economic system during the early 1990s caused an economic and social meltdown of epochal proportions, one often described as far exceeding the devastation USA has experienced during the Great Depression. There was a great deal of popular discontent with the widespread unemployment and poverty, as well as the widely perceived humiliation with the end of the Cold War that was generally seen as constituting an unconditional surrender to the nation's enemies. This discontent found its main outlet in the major political parties that stood in opposition to the Yeltsin's government (1991-1998), Communist Party of the Russian Federation (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Rossijskoj Federacii, KPRF) which generally advocated a return to the Soviet economic policies, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (Liberal'no Demokraticheskaya Partiya Rossii, LDPR) led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a xenophobic and chauvinist movement without a clear agenda beyond the opposition to the "democrats", i.e. the ruling political factions allied to Yeltsin. However, soon enough it became clear that neither of these parties were capable of accomplishing any serious changes in the national policy, and indeed soon they came to be widely seen as having had "sold out" to the "anti-people regime" (anti-narodny rezhim, a label widely used by the Communists to refer to Yeltsin's government).

Consequently, a number of extremist paramilitary organizations of the neo-Nazi persuasion were able to tap into the wellspring of discontent and despair among those who saw no future for themselves under the established conditions, particularly among the marginalized, lesser educated, and habitually unemployed youth. Of the three major age groups, the youth, adults, and the retired elderly, it was the youth who in a sense had been hit the hardest. The elderly suffered greatly due to inadequate, or often unpaid, pensions (social security benefits), but they found effective political representation in the Communists, and generally their concerns were addressed sooner or later through better budget allocation. The adults, though often suffering financially and psychologically, such as due to a breadwinner's loss of work, still were generally able to find some employment and get by. Moreover, an established value system generally inoculated most from the message of the extremists. The youth generally had no such protections. A lot more should be said here.

Ideology

Russian neo-Nazi organizations generally defined themselves as standing outside of the political process, disdaining the electoral system and advocating the overthrow of the government by force. Their ideological programs centered on Russian national identity, defending the Russians against what they perceived as a takeover of the country by people from ethnic minorities, notably Jews and migrants from the Caucasus region. Cleansing the nation by killing or expelling the non-Russians was a generally accepted goal, claimed to be a way to solve pretty much all of the woes facing the country. Their ideology became epitomized in the short slogan "Russia for the Russians", a catchphrase adopted more widely by less extremist factions later on. They did not generally have discernable economic programs, quite unlike the German NSDAP.

The neo-Nazis did openly admire and imitate the German Nazis and Hitler. Mein Kampf stood high on their reading list. The most prominent organization, Russian National Union (Russkoe Nacional'noe Edinstvo) led by Aleksandr Barkashov, adopted a three ray swastika as its emblem (the Nazi swastika can be thought of consisting of two "rays", i.e. the _|- (Z) shaped segments). Some others preferred the original version. In order to harmonize Hitler's notion of the Germanic master race with the Russian national feeling, the doctrine was updated to include all Aryans or Indo-Europeans, both Germanic and Slavic. The definition explicitly excluded Jews and the people from the Caucasus (widely seen as alien and "black" because of a slightly darker skin color). On a more practical level, the neo-Nazis considered the Russians as a special and chosen nation, while looking down on others, including the non-Russian Slavic peoples.

Activities

The neo-Nazis made it an explicit goal to take over the country by force, and they did put in serious effort into preparing for this. The paramilitary organizations operating under guise of sports clubs organized training for their members in squad tactics and weapons handling. Weapons were stockpiled, generally illegally (due to very restrictive Russian gun laws). Reputedly, many were interested in martial arts and unarmed combat, and did a good job organizing realistic hand-to-hand combat classes. Despite these extensive preparations, quite incredible by the standards of a Western nation, the neo-Nazis have not yet carried out any well-known attacks or otherwise come out into the open. Their most notable actions so far was the participation in the armed defense of the building of the Duma (Russian parliament) against the government forces during the standoff between Yeltsin and the Communist dominated parliament in 1993, which Yeltsin won. The neo-Nazis did generate considerable anxiety because of their potential for pogroms against people they do not like and indeed of actual power seizure. No such things have so far materialized, although rumors of impending pogroms did circulate widely in the early 1990s.

The Russian police and security establishment has generally turned a blind eye to the activities of the neo-Nazis. In the country where the law enforcement is essentially unaccountable to anybody, shutting down such openly treasonous and illegal activities would not have been hard were there political will to do so. The failure of the government to do so suggests that the officials are either apathetic, sympathetic to the movement, or intending to use it for their own purposes. The latter seems particularly likely for the higher level officials of the FSB (a successor to the Soviet KGB), some of whom may view the neo-Nazi paramilitary groups as a potential tool in a future struggle for power, whether as storm-troopers of a revolution or as an easy to unleash threat to the constitutional order that may require and justify imposition of state of emergency and military rule.

Neo-Nazism in Scandinavia

The following Scandinavian movements, parties and associations have been described as neo-Nazi:

Neo-Nazism in other countries

In many European countries there are laws that prevent the expression of Nazi, racist or anti-Semitic ideology, thus no political party of significant importance will describe itself as being neo-nazi.

Organizations that have been described as 'Neo-Fascist' and/or 'Neo-Nazi' include the following.

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