Bonn seeks to 'buy out' the far-Right

By Toby Helm
in Berlin

THE German government is planning to lure the country's most troublesome neo-Nazis away from the far-Right by offering to help them pay for new accommodation away from their groups and find jobs. The programme is expected to cost more than £30,000 for each activist and is the most controversial measure announced by the Social Democrat/Green coalition in its fight against growing far-Right extremism.

Last night some German politicians said it was a waste of money. Berhard Vogel, the Christian Democrat prime minister of the state of Thuringia, said the scheme could attract more people to the movement rather than fewer.

But Otto Schily, the interior minister, said he would work with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the scheme. He believed that it would weaken and destabilise the neo-Nazi movement from within and was "an important instrument in the fight against the far-Right".

According to details of the plan leaked to Der Spiegel magazine, approaches were being made to key figures on the far-Right to see who might accept state help. The theory is that by seducing the most able extremists into mainstream employment and away from their groups, the movement will lose its coherence and ability to co-ordinate activities.

David Irving writes:

King Ethelred the Unready tried the same thing in England, after Danish (Viking) hordes overran our eastern shores, taking turns to pillage, burn, loot, and rape the English (one longboat-load of stalwarts was heard to cry: "Oh no, not us again! We did the raping last week!"). Ethelred paid Danegeld to the Vikings to go away and stop bothering us. Alas, it led to the famous expression: "The more you pay them the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Danes."