Thursday, December 06, 2007

“German Neo-Nazi Poll is Misleading”

I reported earlier today on the Transatlantic Conservative post about a German public opinion poll that seemed to show an increasing tolerance among the German public for the neo-Nazi party NPD.

A reader from Germany just wrote me with a caveat that the poll may not be what it seems:

I live in Germany, and the interpretation of the n-tv poll is pretty wide of the mark. Several TV stations here have daily call-in polls that are actually money makers. They are in no way representative.

They appear on the TV text. I check them out rather frequently, and it is obvious that interest groups some times call in just to skew the results. In short, it’s fun to look at the question of the day just to see whether any group is willing to pay good money to make its position look popular.

As to the NPD ban itself, this has been a topic for years. One side says ban them, but the politicians usually argue that as the NPD the members can more easily be kept under observation. A ban would drive them underground, and the government would have to start all over to learn about the leaders, members, and networks.
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There is a neo-Nazi problem here, but it does not affect 49% of the population. In the East, there are many places where the economy is pretty bad since reunification. The NPD actively recruits there.

On the other hand, there is a town in the East where neo-Nazis tried to buy a vacant hotel to use as a conference center. The citizens worked very hard to block the sale, and I believe they eventually raised money to buy it themselves. The neo-Nazis did not win that one.

I am personally more worried about radical leftists, who idealize the GDR and wish for a return of its security or who remember the glory days of RAF terrorism. These are the folks who sympathized with the PLO and still love Che.

They win more sympathy among the people because they know how to use problems like unemployment and globalization to propagate their utopian fantasies. They won’t get a majority, but they can mess up coalition building and hamstring a government by seizing on populist themes.


Anonymous said...

Let me make this clear:

This poll has been going on 24 hours and now represents a sample of some 2400 people. Opinion polls usually work with a representative one thousand!

Over the entire day the percentage of roughly 55% to 45% has hardly changed. I cannot follow the reasoning of your German reader.

Also, I never said that neo nazis represented a greater danger than the left. The left is definitely the problem.

Let me repeat that I find these poll percentages highly significant and that they would have been unthinkable several years ago. They are significant insofar as thry show that the rift between the ruling (and publishing) left and the vox populi is becoming deeper. Significantly deeper!

Anonymous said...

Let me also add, that your German reader is mistaken, when he says that this is a commercial money-making "call-in poll".

Although ntv is primarily a tv station, the poll in question is accessible through the ntv website here: and certainly not a commercial money maker.

Official polls as of August 23rd, 2007, confirm that one in eight Germans would consider voting for a neo nazi party. That percentage is at 25% among the jobless and at 21% among "workers". These figures can be verified here:

My personal impression is that the past 4 months have seen a substantial increase of these numbers.

Again, I do consider the unelected EU politicians, the Left and the dhimmi media a far greater and much more pressing danger.

Mr. Smarterthanyou said...

I wonder just how far right of Joe Leiberman a German politician has to be to be considered neo-nazi.

Whiskey said...

Der Spiegel had an article on this. It said that as women left for the West, where pretty women can always make their way as secretaries and the like, but non-white collar high-demand professionals are simply not wanted, the men who were left joined the NPD.

In some places, there were only 30 young women for every 100 young men. Not a good ratio or one promoting social stability.

My dissenting voice is who will form the street army that uses violence strategically to accomplish ends? Will it be the autonomer? Largely no, because they cannot offer means to the ends young men without women want -- which is women (through economic advancement). The hard-left disdain for any status/power/wealth of young white men means they cannot get most of them. While the NPD certainly CAN and very likely WILL.

Both the NSDAP and the Communists (and even the SPD come to think) had street armies but the NSDAP had the most men, and the most dangerous, because they found economic advantages and advancement. Whereas the other street militias did not.

The unemployed men and particularly young men in East Germany without women will flock to whoever promises to solve their problem. I personally expect Germany to simply export their problem to other places: Sweden, Belgium, etc. Weak places with weak governments where these young men are someone else's problem. China is essentially talking at least of doing the same (sending their young men to Africa).

Douglas V. Gibbs said...

doesn't surprise me, though, that the left is seen as the probable cause, though indirectly, of such

Esther said...

The same can be said of a Dutch poll where about 79% said on an internet poll that they don't support the anti-Wilders movement.

Henrik R Clausen said...

If there's any increase in the sympathy for extremists, it's because the real politicians are not doing their job properly. Here in Denmark we have done a bit better than others, and the result is that neo-Nazi and White Pride groups are genuinely benign.

That said, it's time to turn my attention to more serious problems than these fringe groups.

Noone's gonna bring back the Nazi regime, regardless of a couple street brawls. Anyone in doubt simply check up history - the idea has been so throughoutly discredited that we'd rather commit collective suicide than reimplement these sick ideas. Now, if only the Germans would be more assertive in rejecting other totalitarian ideologies...

Epaminondas said...

Yeah and it follows a recent poll about how many (?) feel there were good things about the nazis.

That's a fact,jack.

And it has NOTHING to do with anything.

Just file it