German Left Party Under Surveillance While Nazis Run Free

For years the National Socialist Underground was traveling around Germany and murdering immigrants and the occasional police officer but the German domestic intelligence agency was using taxpayer resources to spy on the freely elected representatives of the Left Party (die LINKE):

Germany's opposition far-left Left Party is under more intense surveillance from domestic intelligence than previously thought, SPIEGEL has learned. Information from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) reveals that 27 Left Party parliamentarians are being observed -- more than one-third of the party's 76-strong parliamentary group.

The BfV is reportedly watching not just radical party members, but also a number of more moderate members, including almost all of the Left Party's leading figures in parliament. Among the targets are leader Gregor Gysi, deputy chairwoman Sahra Wagenknecht, and members of the party's parliamentary committee Dietmar Bartsch and Jan Korte.

Of course the Left Party is a danger to German democracy, since the party espouses such extremist views as the immediate withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan and a national minimum income - both positions supported by an overwhelming majority of Germans. 

Meanwhile, as Mely Kiyak writes in a terrific rant in the Frankfurter Rundschau, the neo-Nazis and their allies in the media such as Thilo Sarrazin and Udo Ulfkotte are living the high life in Germany, "like God in France": 

Kein Kopf ist gerollt, keine Republik erschüttert, nie übernahm ein Minister Verantwortung für Mordopfer von rechter Gewalt, keine Rücktritte. Kein Umdenken, kein Umschreiben der Schulbücher, keine Gesetzesänderung. Die Umerziehung des deutschen Volkes, das sich wie zu besten Nazizeiten als genetisch homogenes Volk begreift und Angst vor seiner Abschaffung hat, ist misslungen. Köstlicher Zustand, dieses Nazi-Sein! Ein bisschen scheinheiliges Gedenkminüteln im Parlament, hin und wieder ein Kerzenmarsch, ansonsten, freies Land für freie Nazis.

(No heads have rolled, no republic has been shaken, no minister ever took responsibility for the murdered victims of right-wing violence, no resignations. No re-thinking, no re-writing of text books, no changes in the law. The reeducation of the German people - who, just as in the Nazi era think of themselves as a genetically homogeneous people and are terrified of being eliminated - has failed. It's a grand time to be a Nazi! A little sanctimonious hand-wringing in the parliament and now and then a candlelight march but otherwise - a free country for free Nazis.)

Comments

[James]

That's life! as Frank Sinatra has sung.

[michijo]

I have only encountered this kind of perversity in Germany myself. In fact, I am not sure who is a liberal in Europe. As far as I know, all political parties, whether liberal, conservative, or socialist, essential want to drive their competition to hate.

I left Europe when I realized that outside of the USA, all nations were in competition, and I had to represent the USA in the competition regardless of my background or treatment in the USA. Its all a world cup game out there.

[dz alexander]

An amusing bit on the aftermath --

Drinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Geoff Roberts 20 July 2012

There are now two boards of inquiry looking into how three neo-Nazis could have travelled around Germany and killed ten people before the security services (16 branches in total, not counting special police units whose job is to keep an eye on right-wing groups) tracked them down last November.
[...]
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/07/20/camus123/drinker-tailor-soldier-spy/