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The tragedy in Halle, in which two people were murdered this week, is the latest in a long series of violent acts by far-right individuals or groups in a country, Germany, and a region , the East of the country, where the extreme right seems to progress in the minds and urns.
Stupor in Germany where a shooting near a Turkish restaurant and a Jewish cemetery killed two people Wednesday in the small town of Halle in the east of the country. The author of the killing is a 27-year-old, marginal and lonely, who denies the reality of the Holocaust. In the video he broadcast live, he was heard insulting Jews. Already in June, the blood had flowed into the country: a CDU elected Walter Lübcke , Prefect of Kassel, known for his pro-migrant positions, was assassinated by a neo-Nazi.
In parallel with this violence, the far right is progressing in the polls: in early September, the party Alternative für Deutschland (Afd) won 28 % of the vote in local elections in Saxony , the region where Halle is located.
Germany, which was thought to have been vaccinated against extremist danger in view of its past, is it facing the return of a particularly violent extreme right, especially in the East?
Stigmas of the Wall
The shock of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the industrial fracking that followed are often cited as a reason for a strong dissatisfaction that would have fueled a resurgence of extremism. After reunification, a number of industries moved to the west, for example. However, differences in unemployment rates are now quite low between East and West, remind the specialists of the country: to 3.1% for all of Germany last August.
For Patrick Moreau, researcher at the Dynam Laboratory of the University of Strasbourg and author of " The Other Germany - The awakening of the far right " (Vendémiaire, 2017), the AfD won the favor of a protest electorate, rather little ideologized, which challenges primarily the established parties.
More than the economic reasons often put forward, we must see an " identity claim " in this discontent: the " Ossies ", the East Germans, do not feel at all represented by the current German elites, all stemming from the West of the country. After reunification, they "had the impression of being integrated into another state, to be dispossessed ," says Nele Wissman, a research associate at Ifri. That the AfD scores well among young people means that this feeling has even passed to the next generation, who did not know the Wall . " " It's more about something felt than real ," she continues. In the East, AfD leaders, all of them from the West, have a sense of mistrust of established parties and the idea that reunification has failed. "
All observers also point out that the far right has in fact never completely disappeared in Germany on both sides of the Iron Curtain. There was thus a rather active Nenonazi scene in the GDR in the 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, but minority and obviously little publicized. Because during the forty-five years of life of the former GDR, the East Germans lived with a myth close enough to the "resistanceism" dear to General de Gaulle in France: according to the communist ideology in force, the A people composed of peasants and workers had resisted the Nazi ideology. Officially, only "capitalist" elites had collaborated with Hitler, explains Emmanuel Droit, professor of contemporary history at Sciences Po Strasbourg.
If the visit of a concentration camp, usually Buchenwald or Sachsenhausen was obligatory for the small East Germans during their secular socialist baptism, it was accompanied by a description of the Second World War which the Jews had completely were dismissed as victims for the benefit of the Communists, presented as the only fighters opposed to Hitler. " Generations of East Germans grew up with the idea that they were the " good Germans " , their country having been denazified , explains Emmanuel Droit. After the fall of the Berlin Walls, this fantasy antifascist of the GDR was simply forgotten. "
Fear of the fantasized foreigner
For its part, since 1945, the FRG, was built on a rather similar myth, continues Emmanuel Droit, the " heroic account " of an anti-fascist state, which historians even call " happy democracy ". The two great world catastrophes were supposed to be a lesson and Germany thought it was safe against any return of the "foul beast".
A beautiful national story that is not free of stains. In 1959, two years before the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who ordered the final solution, West Germany faced a wave of anti-Semitic acts, less than a generation after the end of the war. And in the 1970s, the Gastarbeiter , the "guest workers" from Turkey, Greece or Eastern Europe, were often the victims of aggression or even racist killings.
The extreme right, racism, anti-Semitism have always been present, hiding in the shadows somehow. " What has changed is the extreme visibility of a radicalized extreme right, able to occupy the ground and mediatize its actions, " said Emmanuel Droit. It has been seen in particular with the Pegida movement, the "European Patriots against the Islamization of the West", which is now reduced to nothing, but which organized large demonstrations capable of bringing together up to 20,000 people in 2014 to Dresden, in East Germany, who fed on a new fear of Islam and another newer immigration.
Because it is really the migration crisis of 2015 that served as a catalyst for a return of xenophobia, especially in East Germany. " We forget it too often in the West but the fall of the Wall was a first shock and the migration crisis a second , says Emmanuel Droit. The Germans in the East suddenly had the impression that they had globalization on their doorstep ". In the FRG, immigrants who began arriving in the 1950s were often better integrated than in the East. In the GDR, on the other hand, immigrant workers from other communist countries, such as Vietnam or Cuba, often lived apart from the rest of the population, sheltered in homes. As the archives of the Stasi, the East German secret police, show, they were not protected from attacks.
In these documents, we already find the word " Kanake " pejorative term used to designate foreigners in Germany. But this rather recent "fear of the foreigner" among the East Germans, remains rather fantasized and removed from reality, despite the promise of Angela Merkel to welcome a million foreigners under the slogan "Refugees Welcome ". Saxony, for example, has only 4 % foreigners when some parts of the West receive up to 15%.
But with the policy of openness to immigrants, the most conservative fringe of CDU Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats), ranked right, also preferred to leave the party, judged from now too much left, analyzes Emmanuel Droit. It is in this political vacuum that the AFD has been able to penetrate. Its rise was accompanied by a release of anti-Semitic and racist speech. " The question arises whether the AfD has a responsibility by his words, especially in the case of Halle , said the researcher. The party has no direct responsibility. But he has undeniably created a climate. "
But the AfD soon found herself overwhelmed on his right. " Some of the neo-Nazis present in East Germany think that the AfD has no chance of coming to power, which began to provoke a terrorist temptation for three or four years ", with the proliferation of groups such as that Revolution Chemnitz planning attacks in Munich, or the NSU, and considers Patrick Moreau. Which reminds that the German police do a lot of work to infiltrate and dismantle the cells of the extreme right. On the other hand, she is often lost to cases like Halle's killer, these "lone wolves" radicalized on the Internet and acting outside of any framework.