Farmers
in Oldenswort use their tractors to recreate symbol of a violent 1920s protest
movement. Photograph: Nils Kroeger
German far right infiltrates green groups with
call to protect the land
The
Observer
Germany
Extremists exploit rural nostalgia and farmers’ anger
at globalisation to smuggle in ideology
Philip
Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Sun 28 Jun
2020 08.47 BST
The poster
advertising the evening of debate and organic canapés in Halle’s university
district looked familiar to environmentally conscious Germans: a rugged pair of
hands, cupping fertile brown soil, underneath the slogan “Farms instead of
agricultural factories”, written in a font mimicking that of a popular
biodynamic food brand.
The only
hint the event wasn’t organised by sandal-wearing good-lifers but a local group
of far-right nationalists was in the subtitle: “Let’s chase the globalists off
our acres!”
Farmers
associations and environmental groups in Germany are increasingly warning of a
new strategy pursued with increasing transparency by the country’s new right:
to use the enduring popularity of organic lifestyles and a burgeoning green
movement as a step into the mainstream.
One
harbinger of this is a new quarterly glossy magazine Die Kehre (The Turning),
published this month, which describes itself as a “magazine for natural
protection”. It draws its title from the writings of anti-modernist philosopher
Martin Heidegger and tries to reclaim environmental concern as a reactionary
cause.
In its
editorial, the magazine describes ecology as the “crown jewels” of the right
“robbed” by the leftwing green movement in the 1970s, and argues for redefining
the subject away from Klimaschutz (climate protection) towards Heimatschutz
(homeland protection). Several articles warn of the danger to Germany’s
“native” bird species and “fairytale forests” posed by windfarms.
Another
column cites a manifesto by far-right thinktank Recherche Dresden, “Seven
theses for a conservative-ecological turn”, written in the wake of the German
Green party’s triumph at the 2019 European elections: “The world’s population
has to be stabilised at a lower level – otherwise we face irreversible
ecological collapse.”
If the
magazine’s political messages are at times deliberately covert, the leanings of
its supporters are less so: one of its most prominent champions on social media
is Björn Höcke, the Thuringian leader of far-right party Alternative für
Deutschland’s aggressively nationalist wing – a German court last year ruled he
could legally be called a fascist.
The
magazine is edited by a member of the Identitarian movement, a group of
nationalist activists that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last year
declared an extremist entity, and which also hosted the information evening
about permaculture and sustainable farming in Halle at the start of last year.
That event was not an isolated instance: a survey carried out among German
natural protection NGOs found this month that 42% of respondents had in their
work come across people with rightwing extremist views.
“We
discovered a significant number of environmental groups who had contact with
far-right ideologues,” said Daniela Gottschlich, one of the political
scientists who conducted the survey for the Diversu thinktank. “We discovered
many felt unable to cope with the challenge and ask for support.” As such,
attempts to use green issues to smuggle far-right ideas into respectable
society are not new, said Yannick Passeick, a spokesperson for Farn, a
government-sponsored body against radicalisation among environmentalist groups.
Coming from
older rightwing extremist parties like the neo-Nazi NPD, Passeick said, “It is
a method we have known for decades.” What had changed since the AfD entered the
German parliament in 2017, he added, “is the way these attempts are becoming
more aggressive and openly visible”. Visibility was also the motive in the
northern municipality of Oldenswort on 11 June, when farmers arranged 324
tractors on a field to form the outline of a red sword cutting a white plough –
the symbol of the Landvolkbewegung, a farmers’ protest movement active in the
state of Schleswig-Holstein from 1928 to 1933. Most famously portrayed in Hans
Fallada’s novel A Small Circus, the “rural people’s movement” set out to draw
attention to their financial difficulties and the ineffectiveness of their
lobby groups, but ended up planting bombs at public buildings, including the
Reichstag.
Though
Hitler later banned members of the Nazi party from joining in
Landvolkbewegung’s protests, historians argue the movement’s nationalistic and
anti-parliamentary agenda aided the rise of National Socialism. The revival of
the movement’s symbol has been criticised by local politicians.
Farmer
Jann-Henning Dircks, who organised this month’s protest, told the Observer he
learned about the historical group from the nephews of one of its founders. The
sword in the symbol, he said, was “the knife used by the politicians and
know-it-alls in our country to destroy our homeland”.
Farmers
were frustrated with the growing bureaucracy posed by new regulations on the
use of fertilisers and the protection of insects, he said, adding that legal
inconsistencies across the EU meant German farmers were struggling to compete
against counterparts in eastern Europe.
Asked why
he had chosen to reclaim such an inflammatory symbol, he said: “You have to
cause a scandal before you get a hearing. Obviously we distance ourselves from
National Socialism, but we can’t deny our history”. Dircks said his movement
would resist being patronised by any party, and claimed there had been no overt
attempts to seek contact from far-right groups. “I don’t even know anyone in
the AfD, but since not everyone wears their party membership on their sleeve, I
can’t completely rule it out either.”
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