The Proposed NPD Ban is Now Officially a Partisan Issue
The German polity tries to deal with an electorally insignificant extremist NPD five months before the election, looks very stupid in the process
Tag: germany
German Right-Wing Extremist Gerhard Frey Has Died
Gerhard Frey, notorious right-wing publisher, politician and founder of Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) founder has died one day after his 80th birthday. He leaves behind an impressive legacy of making money from hatred.
Germany: Right-Wing NPD Posts Semi-Secret File on Itself
Germany’s right-wing extremist NPD has published a confidential brief regarding a potential ban of the party that was compiled by government agencies
Review: Gideon Botsch, Gideon Botsch, Die extreme Rechte in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis heute [in German]
I’ve just completed a review of Gideon Botsch’s history of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany after 1945 for Jahrbuch Extremismus & Demokratie. The book is good, but obviously, I have few quibbles, mostly with the (lack of) theoretical underpinnings. I also think that it is a bit too short (I seem never to get enough of…
Banning Germany’s NPD – Not a Very Bright Idea
The NPD is Germany’s oldest surviving Extreme Right party. It has been around for about five decades. After merging with its long-time rival German People’s Union (DVU, the ruling mentioned in the post was finally squashed), it is also a serious contender for the coveted title of Germany’s daftest party (see exhibit number one). While…
European Social Survey Multilevel Data
Like social networks, multilevel data structures are everywhere once you start thinking about it. People live in neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods are nested in municipalities, which make up provinces – well, you get the picture. Even if we have no substantive interest in their effects, it often makes sense to control for structures in our data to…
Germany: The Wall in the Head, twenty years after unification
Today is Oscar Gabriel’s retirement/leaving do. Unfortunately, I could not make it to the party, but I wrote a chapter for the super-secret Festschrift that should by now be in his hands. The chapter (in German) deals with an old favourite of his (and mine): cultural-attitudinal differences between East and West Germany (or rather between…
Germany and the European Crisis: Confusion and Delay
Yesterday, the BBC’s man in Berlin discovered that there are constitutional limits to Merkel’s ability to somehow save the Euro. Following a constitutional amendment in the 1990s, article 23 of the Basic Law stipulates that any further transfers of sovereignty to the EU require absolute two-thirds majorities in both the Bundestag and the Federal Council…
Germany’s and Merkel’s role in the euro-crisis
Globalisation is a wonderful thing. I just had a full Brazilian. Interview, that is. A journalist for Exeme sent me a mail with a couple of questions, I sent back my answers a few hours later and lo, thanks to broken English and the internet, the job is done, time difference and the Atlantic not…
Why the EU commission takes Germany to court
You may or may not be aware that the EU commission has announced yesterday that it will take Germany to court over the country’s failure to transpose the data retention directive into national law. What makes the recent case unusual is its domestic background