Germany Mulls Far-Right Ban

Eleven years after the enormous political victory that reunited East and West Germany, there are other battles to be won here.

Much vaulted in 1989, the 'Five Year Plan' for economic parity is six years past due and now the punchline for jokes among the country's jobless. The overall unemployment rate is roughly 10 percent, but joblessness in the East is nearly double that in the West, and the labor market remains rigid. Close to $100 billion a year is spent to bring Eastern wages and productivity up to Western standards, with disappointing results. Germans are paying 2.5 percent on top of their already high taxes to help support Eastern reconstruction.

And recently, xenophobia has reared its ugly head again, causing much soul searching throughout Germany. Politicians in the German parliament are currently debating whether to ban groups like the small far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). There is evidence its supporters -- some of whom are skinheads -- are involved in violence, and critics say the group promotes neo-Nazism.

Outlawing such parties is seen as a step toward containing incidents like the blast in Düsseldorf last month that injured 10 Russian immigrants, including six Jews. Officials have called it an act of terrorism. Also in July, in the Eastern town of Wismar, five young men were arrested for killing a homeless man. Wismar has seen a number of assaults on Jews and foreigners in the last year. And in Herne, a small Western town, police detained over a dozen men who were yelling right-wing slogans in the streets.

Citing a clause in Germany's post-war constitution, the Basic Law, that bans parties and organizations that threaten democracy, many in the government -- following the lead of Bavarian state interior minister Guenther Beckstein -- have demanded the extremist parties be outlawed.

Opponents say that hard and fast sanctions outlawing such organizations would only drive them further underground.

There is no evidence that the right wing in Germany is any more active than in other European countries. Austria in particular alarmed many observers after the rightist Jörg Haider was elected to the government there. In Germany, the far right holds no official position in the national government.

The three furthest-right parties, the NPD, Republicans and the German People's Union (DVU), earned only negligible support at the polls in the 1998 elections. But considering Germany's particularly brutal history, any extremist rumblings are a cause for concern.

The ruling Social Democrats, along with coalition partners the Greens, are spearheading the debate in parliament this week. In all democracies, there is a delicate boundary between the rights of people not to be offended and the right of free speech. In the months to come, Germany will put that debate to the test.

BY CHRISTOPHER WEBER