Far-Right Goes West

"Now we want to tackle the west," said Udo Voigt, chairman of the far-right extremist National Democratic Party (NDP), this week in Berlin, just days after his party won more than 7 percent of the vote in state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania.

Under the motto "Work - Family - Home," leaders of the NPD and the right-wing German People's Union (DVU) renewed their alliance Thursday, saying their strategy of striking separately but winning together has been bearing fruit.

NPD wants seats in "Reichstag"

Voigt's fellow party leader Holger Apfel said the NPD had to "do its homework in the West" if it wanted to make it into the "Reichstag" in 2009.

With the word "Reichstag," Apfel alluded to the Nazi parliament during the Third Reich. Since Germany was reestablished in 1948, its parliament has been called the "Bundestag." When the government moved to Berlin in 1999, the Bundestag moved into the former Reichstag building.

Counseling for job-seekers

The NPD gained votes in last Sunday's state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pommerania on an anti-establishment and anti-foreigner platform. The party has also emphasized its plan to engage in community work and set up counseling offices, particularly for the unemployed.

"I'll not only devote all of my energies to parliamentary work now, but also to the overarching goal of uniting nationalist forces outside the parliament," the NPD's Udo Pastörs said. "I'll actively work for a political movement devoted to nationalist and socially caring policies."

The neo-Nazis said one of their aims is to replace parliamentary democracy with a new system of government in Germany and called the existing system unable to resolve people's problems.

"The federal republic's parliamentarianism cannot be the final stage," Voigt said. Other members of his party have also argued for Germany to renegotiate it national borders.

Constitutionality questioned

Against the background of such statements, voices are mounting in Germany that demand a fresh attempt to ban the NPD for unconstitutional activities.

The latest attempt to do so failed in 2003 after Germany's highest court threw out a case promoted by the German government and parliament.

A study conducted Friday by German public broadcaster ARD showed 82 percent of Germans do not believe the NPD to be a democratic party while 70 percent said the party's gains have hurt Germany's international image.

Gerhard Frey, a multi-millionaire publishing giant and leader of the DVU, however, said he is confident the far-right will be able to gain ground.

"As long as this government sends our young soldiers into a Middle East conflict that is not ours and as long as it wastes money on the EU while more and more Germans pinch and scrape, we will increase our following," he said.