Surge of neo-Nazi activity in Germany: refugees are being beaten, Merkel remains silent

Europe is not going through the best of times. While the Greek crisis, like a bottomless pit, requires more and more financial investments, and sanctions against Russia have led to multibillion-dollar losses (according to a study by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, the combined losses of the EU as a result of the anti-Russian sanctions may reach 100 billion euros and two million jobs), the Middle East problems put a new thorny issue before the Europeans. Millions of refugees from Syria, Iraq and other countries in the region have rushed to the European continent in search of a better life. Some EU countries are trying to literally dissociate themselves from this problem, Hungary, for example. By the beginning of winter, the Hungarians are planning to build a 150-kilometer wall four meters in height along the border with Serbia, hoping to stop the flow that has flooded the country: since the beginning of the year, 81 thousand illegal immigrants have arrived in Hungary.

A difficult situation, in the long term, risks emerging in Germany, which is rightfully considered to be the European economic and political hegemony. The German public was shocked by the Interior Ministry's recently published forecast, that about 800 thousand refugees will arrive in the country by the end of the year. At the same time, the state has several problems, both economic and political. And if the German state can provide additional financial support for local communities (the German budget surplus amounted to 18 billion euros at the end of 2014), to stop the growth of nationalist sentiment in their own society is a much more difficult task.

The events of recent days in the town of Heidenau, located near Dresden in Saxony, have clearly demonstrated it. In the last year, the federal land of Saxony, conditionally related to the former East Germany, hasn't had the best reputation in the country in connection with the blossoming of the xenophobic movement PEGIDA. When it became known about plans of the state bodies to resettle 250 refugees in Heidenau, there were a lot of threats from neo-Nazis. On the night from August 21 to 22, it became clear that those were not empty threats: nearly a thousand aggressive demonstrators blocked entrances to the building where the refugees should have been located. Neo-Nazis initiated tough clashes with police, which resulted in the wounding of more than 30 law enforcement officers. The next night clashes continued, at the moment the situation is being monitored by the police. In addition to Heidenau, last week unknown people in the Bavarian town of Neustadt an der Valdnaab set a hostel for refugees on fire. An attempt at setting fire to a shelter for refugees in the Berlin district of Marzahn, which is considered a den of neo-Nazis in Berlin, was also registered.

The entire spectrum of political parties represented in the Bundestag strongly condemned what is happening. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) stated that the events in Heidenau "are shameful for our country and totally unacceptable." Against this background, German journalists and politicians are increasingly demanding that Chancellor Angela Merkel express her view on this issue, but as of this writing, she remains silent. "I cannot understand Merkel's hesitation in choosing the right words for this situation," the chairman of the Green faction Katrin Göring-Eckardt said. The Secretary General of the ruling coalition of the Social Democratic Party, Yasmin Fahimi, also noted that "the chancellor cannot remain silent on this issue anymore."

Modern German slang has a verb «merkeln», named like that after the modern Bundestag Chancellor. Its meaning is "to say a lot, but about nothing." There is no doubt that the head of the German government, in the end, will break her silence and select beautiful and true words. But how will a practical solution to the refugee issue and a strengthening of nationalist tendencies in society look? There are no specific answers to these important questions at a national level, and especially at European levels. One solution would be to introduce a strict internal European regime of border control, but Germany has yet to make such move. While making great efforts for the political unification of Europe, Germans are fundamentally opposing separation lines within the EU. Accordingly, the Europeans will have to solve the problem together. Joint decision making, as it is known, is traditionally a problematic theme for the 28 member countries of the European Union ...