Jesus fucking Christ (no, don't take that litterally or you'll suffer from drain bamage soon)!
Stop that "OMG the NPD is unconstitutional" bullshit.
I'm German, I'm left-winged and I am horribly pissed off by the whining about the legality of the NPD and the whole Anti-Semitism debate.
We are not a democracy, we are a representative federal republican "democracy". We don't decide about politics, we have parties we can elect to decide about it. That's the difference. So stop calling it a democracy and call it a republic because that's what it is (although it is based on a democracy and democratic ideals).
We are also a "Rechtsstaat" as we hear so often, which means that we have laws and fundamental rights which regulate most things and which you have to obey or face the consequences.
One of our constitutional rights is freedom of opinion. Another couple of rights allow us to express these opinions as long as we don't try to promote violent extremism and riots (which we call "Volksverhetzung" -- no matter that the term is used VERY loosely by our wannabe left-wing at the moment).
Because of these laws we have political parties. In order to prevent another Third Reich (where one minority took over the government) we have a 5% restriction for political parties. This border prevents minority parties from getting any political power.
In a sudden moment of insanity and mindless anti-governmental protest enough people voted for the radical oppositional party NPD and gave them their representative political power for the next couple of years.
Even though the NPD made it into the federal parliaments of two states they are a minority. They are less important than the two seats of the left-winged PDS in the national parliament -- although by nature they tend to be a lot noisier.
Will this cause another Third Reich? No, we're far from that. The Third Reich did not happen because of a sound minority but because of an international disaster called "The Great War" back then and the butt-fucked state of the nation at that point. It was further caused by an incredibly screwed up legal system which allowed everybody into the parliament.
Do we have any legal basis to descriminate political parties supporting unconstitutional ideas? Hardly so. Maybe one day a better and healthier system than we have today will arise and I'd rather want that to happen by the people's vote than by violent riots and civil wars.
The moment we discriminate any political ideology by changing the constitution we destroy the fundamental ideas the constitution is based on and that is freedom and society. Hate to say so, but banning fascist ideology is a fascist thing to do.
The constitutional way to do it is to make fascist ideology less appealing and that won't work if people don't trust the current, "non-fascist" system.
Does that mean fascist movements should be re-legalized? No way. Our constitution is based on freedom but part of that freedom is to be free from personal attacks -- may they be based on ethnicity, religion, gender or simply looks. People who openly promote discrimination violate the constitutional rights of those they discriminate. Even if they're discrimianting members of a right-winged political party.
It's paradox to the simple mind, but in order for everyone to live in freedom within a society they have to obey rules and these rules are there to protect their freedom, nothing else.
If you go and say that a certain political party must be banned and can't find any point at which they violated the constitution or derived laws, you're screwed. And that's what's true for most recent attempts. Why? Maybe the NPD leadership consists of smarter people, who knows?
Yes, anti-semitism is bad, but it's hardly worse than any other discrimination, otherwise you're discriminating non-semites too (besides, most anti-semites don't have anything against semites in particular, they just hate Jews for some reason or another).
If you're homosexual and get beaten up by a gang of neo-nazis it's as worse as if you're getting beaten up for being an Israeli or believing in Judaism.
I happen to only know of one Jew (as in "someone believing in Judaism) I met and she was a stupid bitch. It'd be retarded to draw the conclusion that I'm anti-semite just as it'd be retarded to draw the conclusion that everyone who prays to what-do-they-call-him-again is a stupid dog.
This isn't a free country if I can't think bad of someone without taking their religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual preferences into account first.
Besides, who is the racist here anyway? If I can be called anti-semite for being against Judaists (or any Judaist in particular) just as I can be called anti-semite for being against Israel (or any Israeli in particular), then that's not exactly helping the entire "not all Jews are Israelis" and "not all Israelis are Jewish" thing.
No big surprise the official representatives of Jewish people (or whatever they are called then) get so worked up all the time if they have two categories to take offense from.
As for the whole responsibility thing. I haven't killed a single person in my entire life, nor have I knowingly discriminated anyone. I haven't caused any harm to anyone as far as I know (unless someone gets a heart-attack while reading this in which case I honestly apologize -- hatemail to my inbox, please) and I haven't sent anyone to a labor camp or death camp or any place unfavorable.
I can't possibly be made responsible for the history of my nation and I didn't inherit any guilt because the entire thing with inheriting guilt was declared illegal sometime in the middle ages as far as I know.
I'm German, yes, and I speak the German language and have no reason not to do so. If anyone takes offense from me talking German they got a mental problem and have obviously an urgent need for visiting a psychiatrist.
I have learned from my past generations' mistakes and remain skeptical of politicians, especially when they make promises or try to justify unjustifiable things. I know that every human is human and that the differences within members of our species are too small to declare any group of people a particular subspecies and also don't have a problem with "interbreeding".
Therefore I have no reason to feel responsible for what my grandparents, their relatives or anyone living at their time have done, just as I don't feel responsible for anything done by anybody else outside my reach. I support the idea of solidarity and thus encourage people to help out those who are less fortunate but I don't support the idea of retroactive guilt inherited by nationality and thus don't think I should be asked to give anything to anyone by inherited responsibility.
As for the whole holocaust thing -- yeah, big tragedy and all that, but it's not all that unique except for its dimensions, which were the result of the technological advance rather than the vileness of the people. Discrimination and dehumanisation aren't new, nor are ethnic cleansings and although we have been creative in the past that whole issue wasn't very.
We should do what we can to prevent another such thing from occuring, but prevention doesn't and can't mean thought policing.
Most neo-nazis don't have any particular reason to hate Jews, negroids, Asians or kittens, they just happen to be handy scapegoats and everybody likes having a scapegoat -- especially if they have some hardly convincing justification to treat them worse than a red-haired stepchild (oops! another discrimination).
Neo-nazis are neo-nazis for a variety of mixes of reasons, but usually disillusion, poverty, weak social skills, lack of perspecitve and lack of education are big motivations for changing your mind about peace and quiet.
After all disillusionment was a major reason for people to "make the major parties pay" by voting for the right-most opposition.
</rant>
