World News and Trends
Neo-Nazi terrorism in Germany
Neo-Nazis and others of the far right are responsible for 130 race-related murders in Germany since the reunification of East and West Germany about a decade ago. Since March 1998 German police have discovered weapons centers, and terrorists have sparked incidents, in Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and elsewhere.
Says Hajo Funke, professor of politics at a Berlin university and an expert on far-right extremism: "The findings of weapons by police have been getting more and more frequent ... We can expect victims in the near future to be companies, democratic organizations and left-wing groups."
Grame Atkinson, European editor of Searchlight, recently said: "What we are seeing is a very worrying trend in the organization of far-right groups with a view to committing terrorism. They are talking about creating terrorist cells ... with foreigners [being] driven out from rural areas and smaller towns."
Europe has vivid memories of antigovernment groups trying to destabilize German democracy in the 1920s and early '30s, which ultimately devastated the entire continent. (Source: The Observer [London].)