European Parliament set to usher in first neo-Nazis

[question everything]

Source: Yahoo (AFP)

Brussels (AFP) - Though no stranger to controversy or diatribe, the European Parliament is set to usher in its first fully-fledged neo-Nazi members, from Germany and Greece.

With around 300,000 votes at Sunday's European elections the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is expected to claim one of the country's 96 seats in the new Parliament, in a historical ground-breaker. A recent change in German electoral laws, scrapping all minimum thresholds, paved the way for the march into parliament of the NPD, which has 6,000 members. It describes itself as "national socialist," just like Germany's Nazis in the 1930s, and is openly xenophobic and anti-semitic so a group of German regional governments have tried to have it banned for propagating racism.

Meanwhile, with almost all ballots counted in Greece, the neo-Nazi "Golden Dawn" party is claiming over nine percent of the vote, which would net it three seats in the 751-member Parliament. Golden Dawn was founded in the 1980s by Nikos Michaloliakos, an open admirer of Adolf Hitler. In 2012, Michaloliakos publicly denied the responsibility of Nazis in the mass-murder of six million Jews. By harnessing resentment over EU-driven austerity measures imposed on Greece, Golden Dawn ran third in the European vote held on Sunday, behind the Coalition of the Radical Left and the centre-right New Democracy Party.




Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/european-parliament-set-usher-first-neo-nazis-172937890.html

[sakabatou]

1. Oh god...

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Will they be the first of many?

[awoke_in_2003]

21. Probably, unfortunately...

Hatred of Jews and Romas is on the rise in Europe.

[uhnope]

3. I have many French clients. They are ashamed and embarrassed

It's the equivalent of an off-year election when only the very opinionated, the extremists, and xenophobic old people who watch TF1 (the French equivalent of FOX News or RT) go to the polls.

[karynnj]

4. I have a French friend of a friend with whom I have discussed politics - usually American

she is devastated and worried about her country.

I suspect that this may be like how many of us felt when Republicans won, though it seems this is perhaps worse. I really hope the pendulum swings back quickly. (Yes, I know that at the point this happens it is hard to see things returning to sanity.)

[uhnope]

7. I don't think it's worse than 2000-2008 under Bush in terms of practical effect

Overall the extremists who were elected to the EU, though representing a sizable percentage (up to 25%), don't agree on enough to be a force to steer the EU.

They won't be able to start two wars, killing hundreds of thousands, and crash the European economy.

[newthinking]

18. Unfortunately it doesn't take a majority for a ruthless party to take over a country

if we learn from history it is always a minority that is so ruthless they scare the population into going along.

[PatrynXX]

13. if it's in france

I'd be worried about Natalie Portman moving there. she's Jewish of course , France is not a place I'd want to grow up in. great movies but rough place. especially if you don't know what areas not to go..

[maindawg]

14. Oh no , hes wrong

Why we have so many openly racist politicians here is the USA that one or two neo [I believe neo means fake] Nazis. Hell, we have Nazis, they are pretty harmless. They render themselves harmless you see, when they identify themselves. I wish more politicians were so honest.

[allan01]

5. please drop the new with the word neo nazis( neo means new) so what is new with them vs the old nazi

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. That's the trouble with completely proportional representation over a wide region

With 96 seats, Germany can end up electing small neo-Nazi parties. If they elected in, say, 5 areas, they'd have an effective 5% or so threshold without having to explicitly say so.

[question everything]

9. There is nothing wrong with proportional representation of you set a threshold

of, say, 1,000 votes before you can start counting. As the story points out, Germany recently scrapped the minimum threshold.

[SoapBox]

8. Let's see....

Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it...

and

This is why people MUST vote!

[Octafish]

10. It's what happens when Bonzo goes to Bitburg.

[nomorenomore08]

26. My brain is hanging upside down...

[Octafish]

27. Check out what Carla Binion wrote about NAZIs in the GOP.

Makes me sick, this does.

A Fresh Look

Nazis and the Republican Party

by Carla Binion

Investigative reporter Christopher Simpson says in BLOWBACK that after World War II, Nazi émigrés were
given CIA subsidies to build a far-right-wing power base in the U.S. These Nazis assumed prominent positions
in the Republican Party's "ethnic outreach committees." Simpson documents the fact that these Nazis did not
come to America as individuals but as part of organized groups with fascist political agendas.

SNIP...

Simpson shows how the State Department and the CIA put high-ranking Nazis on the intelligence payroll "for
their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare," among other purposes. The most important Nazi
employed by the U.S. was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's most senior eastern front military intelligence officer. After
Germany's defeat became certain, Gehlen offered the U.S. certain concessions in exchange for his own
protection. Gehlen promoted hyped up cold war propaganda on behalf of the political right in this country, and
helped shape U.S. perceptions of the cold war.

Journalist Russ Bellant (OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY) shows that
Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi war collaborator, built the Republican émigré network. Pasztor, who served as
adviser to Republican Paul Weyrich, belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, a group that helped liquidate
Hungary's Jews. Pasztor was founding chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.

Two months before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish Week,
disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken Nazis and anti-Semites. The
article prompted six leaders of Bush's coalition to resign.

According to Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:

1.Radi Slavoff, GOP Heritage Council's executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for Bush." Slavoff was a
member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an event in Washington honoring Holocaust
denier, Austin App.
2.Florian Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for Bush."
Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Valerian Trifa.
3.Nicholas Nazarenko, leader of a Cossack GOP ethnic unit. Nazarenko was an ex-Waffen SS officer.
4.Method Balco, GOP activist. Balco organized yearly memorials for a Nazi puppet regime.
5.Walter Melianovich, head of the GOP's Byelorussian unit. Melianovich worked closely with many Nazi
groups.
6.Bohdan Fedorak, leader of "Ukrainians for Bush." Fedorak headed a Nazi group involved in anti-Jewish
wartime pogroms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bartcop.com/nazigop.htm

It is sickening. To prevent the continuing spread of the contagion, I took the liberty of tying a few strings together...

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn t win WWII, so they backed Bushes

So far, not so good.

"Money trumps peace." -- pretzeldent George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

[nomorenomore08]

32. Can't say I'm surprised by any of this. n/t

[HeiressofBickworth]

33. In the 60's, I lived just out of Bitburg -- for 2 years

I never knew the cemetery existed. Figures St. Ronnie of Reagan would be the one to find graves of SS soldiers to put flowers on. Jerk.

[Helen Borg]

11. Are most Tea Party members much better than these guys?

...

[tom_kelly]

15. Just what i was thinking

Sounds like an separate wing of tea-baggers.

[newthinking]

19. As bad as tea partiers are, many of these are worse.

Tea partiers are chicken hawks, these guys will often really do violence. Though if enough of these guys gain power the tea party types would join them and push them over. That is part of the problem: What starts as a relatively smaller win can quickly evolve since these guys are ruthless.

[awoke_in_2003]

22. No, not really. nt

[cosmicone]

12. will Victoria Nuland send them cookies? n/t

[newthinking]

17. +1

[EmilyAnne]

20. VNDS strikes again! nt

[LanternWaste]

29. Much more likely that someone will make an irrelevant and petulant post about her instead...

Much more likely that someone will make an irrelevant and petulant post about her instead...

[newthinking]

16. Very serious situation in Europe - and the world really. The "International Republican Institute"

and the corporate state have been working together quietly but effectively. The Republicans would like to see a world government run by their party. People should be more aware of this.

This is why the Democratic party seriously needs reform and needs to offer the US (and the world) a much more differentiated alternative vision.

Liberals are losing out in the world to big money and there is no consistent body providing an alternative vision. The US Democratic party could do that, if only they would embrace a truly liberal populist platform.

[nyabingi]

24. Funny you mention the IRI...

...I heard Madeleine Albright on the now-right-wing NPR last week talking about her election monitoring mission as a part of the "National Democratic Institute" (which basically does the same thing as the IRI) to Ukraine.

These groups, all part of the National Endowment for Democracy, are actively engaging in regime change all around the world and their activities need to be highlighted and noted by everyone interested in actually promoting democracy overseas.

[nyabingi]

23. As the world continues to get browner...

...we'll see an inevitable resurgence of white supremacy in all the countries dominated by those who see themselves as white. The rise of the "tea party" in the US is the American version (and no less odious than the neo-Nazis from Germany and Greece), sparked by the election of a non-white president and rising populations of Latinos due to immigration.

[Enthusiast]

25. I hope someone does something drastic to derail these neo-Nazis.

[Nye Bevan]

28. Those who advocate a parliamentary system with proportional representation

should be careful what they wish for.

[question everything]

30. This system can work is you set a threshold before a member can be assigned

say, 5000 votes. The problem, as detailed in the OP, was that Germany scrapped the threshold.

[shenmue]

31. Ptooey

I spit on them. Ha!

Fascism sucks.

[Rhinodawg]

34. People never learn.

Gee, I can't imagine who their enemy will be.

Every jew in Europe should just get the hell out of there.