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Protest Rituals and Uncivil

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 7, No. 3, 283301, September 2006

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/06/030283-19 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14690760600819473

Protest Rituals and Uncivil Communities

JESUS CASQUETE

University of the Basque CountryTaylorandFrancisLtdFTMP_A_181888.sgm10.1080/14690760600819473TotalitarianMovements andPolitic alReligions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)OriginalArticle2006Taylor&[email protected]

ABSTRACT Our world features communities suffering from an excess of collective iden-tity. If these communities value group over individual liberties, resort to violent means inorder to pursue their goals, and members join them on a relatively voluntary basis, they

qualify as uncivil. Two such contemporary communities are compared: the Basque move-ment around the terrorist organisation ETA and the right-wing constellation around theNational Democratic Party in Germany. Both are of a radical nationalist nature. Out ofthe resource-pool at the disposal of social groups and communities to preserve their bound-aries in a largely hostile environment, this article will consider one central factor: namely,their political liturgy and politics of the streets. Contemporary western political religions,it will be argued, stage ritual demonstrations with such extraordinary frequency notmerely to put forward their demands in society, but also as an inner means of communica-tion in order to preserve group solidarity.

I Aint afraid of your Yahweh,I Aint afraid of your AllahI Aint afraid of your JesusIm afraid of what you doIn the name of your God

Holly Near

Too Much Bonding, Too Much UncivilityBoth an excess and a shortage of group solidarity are symptomatic features of acollective disease thus might be stated the departure point of this article.Although it is admittedly hard to discern where the desirable balance liesexactly, a liquid we feeling prevents group integration, whereas an all toostrong esprit de corpsoften leads to a pathological collective state in the form ofsocial isolation, sectarianism, ethnocentrism, or self-closure within a narcissismof minor differences.

In their effort to deal with what is deemed a negative trend in contemporarywestern societies namely, the erosion of the social bond social analysts have

Correspondence address: Department of History of Political Thought and of Social Movements, Facultyof Social and Communication Sciences, University of the Basque Country, 48940 Leioa, BasqueCountry, Spain. Email: [email protected].

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284 J. Casquete

delved into one or more of the following aspects. First, they have identified therealms of social and political life which suffer most from a declining civic vitality(as measured, for example, by a declining membership in key contemporary insti-tutions such as churches, trade unions and political parties). This decline, in turn,translates into an erosion of responsible citizenship and social virtues such as

mutual aid and support, responsiveness, and trust. Second, these analyses haveprovided sound explanations for this overall weakening of kinship bonds withinthe social body (time pressures accompanying modern life, the growth of thewelfare state and the subsequent deterioration of family support structures, resi-dential mobility, the stresses of two-career families, and rampant individualism,to name but a few factors often mentioned in the literature). Last but not least,social scientists have attempted to put forward a whole set of measures to counterthe atomisation afflicting the social world and thereby advance toward a moreintegrated society, one in which common links and a sense of being engaged inthe same collective project are brought to the first plane of social intervention.1

Valuable and worthwhile as these efforts no doubt are, I shall approach theissue of the social bond from a slightly different, alternative standpoint. Instead ofattempting either to identify a disease through the careful examination of itssymptoms and causes, or to speculate on the viability and/or desirability ofdifferent therapies for restoring the strength of society, I will delve into how acertain family of communities labelled here uncivil communities succeed inencouraging patterns of exclusivity, isolation, extremism, and parochialismamong its members. These features are considered to reflect an excess of collectiveidentity. More specifically, I identify a mechanism protest undertaken in a ritua-lised manner which enables this kind of community to periodically flex itsmuscles, while at the same time, willingly or not, also allowing it to drift awayfrom society at large.

A community has been defined as a web of affect-laden relationships amongindividuals committed to a set of shared values, norms, meanings and ends

beyond economics.2 Endowed with a robust sense of group solidarity andmutual responsibility, community members experience, however momentarily, a

blurring of the boundaries between self and other. Moreover, they enjoy accessto what has been called a moral code; that is to say, access to relatively clearguidelines as to what set of rules should define peoples obligations to oneanother. To put it differently, individuals participating in a community comeclose to sensing that they are all their brothers keepers: they feel socially inter-

dependent, support each other in case of need, think of each other in situationsof sorrow, and share joy. Martin Buber nicely captured the inner transformationexperienced by a member of a community: Community is the being no longerside by side but withone another of a multitude of persons. And this multi-tude, though it moves towards one goal, yet experiences everywhere a turningto, a dynamic facing of, the others, a flowing from I to Thou.3 Hence, if notnecessarily the values of liberty and equality, at least the third element in therallying cry of the French Revolution fraternity seems to be a companionfeature of every community-building attempt. Within its boundaries generalised

brotherhood and comradeship reign.

This understanding of community necessitates, however, an important qualifi-cation. Although it correctly underscores peoples social interdependence andcommitment to shared values, it entirely dismisses the social practices out ofwhich every community necessarily evolves. Instead of paying attention to the

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Protest Rituals and Uncivil Communities 285

processes through which a we becomes a we, group identity is considered to bea given, something already existing before any social interaction has taken place.4

In other words, for a community to draw its boundaries vis--vis the rest of thesocial world, it is necessary to have a commitment not just to a set of sharedvalues, but also to a set of social practices that brings into being such values and

feelings of mutual closeness. After all, individuals are the unique product of thecombination of what they think and feel. Both thinking and feeling is fed byundertaking some activity together, be it discussion or protesting, working orrelaxing. If a certain social group is composed of individuals linked by close

bonds and committed to a certain set of values, the question of how this commu-nal identification came about still remains. The answer is best sought in the social,dialogical practices of the group, in what the group as such does together.5

Families, churches, neighbourhoods, ethnocultural and/or religious groups,and social organisations of various kinds gays and lesbians, feminists,environmentalists, pacifists are examples of social settings that qualify as

communities, insofar as they meet the above-mentioned requirements, that is,have relatively strong bonds and a commitment to a set of values both of whichare reached through a set of shared social practices. Yet there can be no a priorievaluation of communities as something good from a normative point of view. Ifa defining feature of communities is the sharing of certain values, the questionstill remains: What is the moral standing of the values they share? A good start-ing point to evaluate the moral quality of a community is to pay close attentionto the way in which it deals with liberty. To be sure, communities are able toachieve a relatively strong sense of fraternity among their members. But whatabout liberty? Are communities respectful of individual liberty, both that of itsmembers (inwardly) and that of the rest of society (outwardly)? And with regardto equality: Do they believe in the equal moral worth of every human being,regardless of faith, ethnic origin, values or ideology? These are key contemporaryquestions in the philosophical and sociological debates about communities worthdelving into.

Our world features examples of self-centred communities that, by fosteringexclusive identities and homogeneous groups, drastically curtail the liberties oftheir members. Suffice it here to mention the case of certain ethnocultural andreligious communities that, in their attempt to preserve their perceived heritageand idiosyncrasies, deny their members a non-problematic right to exit wheneverthe individuals vision of the good life collides with the vision held by the

community (or at least as embodied by its official interpreters). Within thesegroups, individuals are more or less formally discouraged to revisit or updatetheir own vision of the good life and are thus compelled to adhere to an essentia-lised identity, one that is largely immune to revision.6The metaphor of the endur-ing, skin-like identity as against that of the T-shirt-like, potentially transientidentity characteristic of liberal communities is most appropriate when dealingwith the kind of totalising group that makes identity into an absolute principle.To the extent that they resort to cultural protections that restrict individualliberty, these communities betray the liberal principle of self-determination andmay therefore be labelled illiberal. All three monotheistic religions host denomi-

nations or groups that pressure their members to defer to religion and punish,more or less severely, every challenge to tradition or custom as inherited or,rather, as they think they have inherited from their ancestors.7In the face of aninner heterodoxy attempting either to expand or to contract the boundaries of

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286 J. Casquete

their system of relationships, they set in motion sanctioning mechanisms againsttheir members in an attempt to restore the cultural or religious status quo ante.

A specific case of social groups hosting illiberal values is what I call uncivilcommunities. With this term, I refer to a body of members suffering from astrong feeling of collective identity that allows the group to forge cohesion at the

price of social closure. These communities feature the following characteristics.First and foremost, they adhere to a vision of the good life whose underpinningvalues clash with basic values widely agreed upon in liberal societies, such as theequal moral worth of all human beings, tolerance as a regulative principle in thesocial realm or, most obviously, respect for other peoples lives. To the extent thatthey deeply challenge these values, in particular the privilege of the individualover the community, these communities can be considered revolutionary.

Secondly, unlike the ethnocultural and/or religious communities sketchedabove into which, as a rule, group affiliation is ascribed and one is consequentlythrown with little or no choice at all in the case of uncivil communities, exces-

sive bonding is usually adopted on a relatively voluntary basis. Nevertheless, thisbonding is not perceived by its adherents to be a constraint. On the contrary,relatively open boundaries in order to desert or join the group are common which does not imply, though, that exit options are readily at hand, especiallywhen they are accompanied by a voicing of disagreements, nor that voluntarismequals civility.8

Finally, the means through which uncivil communities carry forward theirgoals are not exclusively discursive and aimed at rational persuasion, as corre-sponds to the ideal-typical strategy of actors in civil society.9Because they hardlyaccept coexistence with other ideologies or worldviews, these communities areprone to violence, in different forms and intensities, in the battle against theenemies of the faith. In the most extreme cases, the death of those members insociety targeted as enemies is the ultimate consequence of this intolerance. Astrong identity does not necessarily correlate with violence, but in the case ofuncivil communities, it does. To sum up, then, uncivil communities may best beviewed as bearers of inequality, intolerance and violence within otherwise liberalsocieties.

From a complementary standpoint, uncivil communities may also be regardedas enclaves of political religions. Drawing on the seminal works of Voegelin(1938) and Aron (1944), several interpreters have pointed out that Italian Fascism,National Socialism, and Soviet-like communism, first as mass social movements,

thereafter as established regimes, developed a sophisticated set of beliefs anddevised rich ritual practices that resembled religious phenomena.10All of thesepolitical religions similarly ascribe a sacred status to a secular entity, be it thenation, the state, the race, or the class, and consecrate this status as the absoluteprinciple of collective existence and the main source of values and guidelines forindividual and mass behaviour. Emilio Gentile has pointed to political religionsas a distinctive feature of totalitarian regimes (the institutionalisation of extremeversions of uncivil communities, one might say); their purposive crafting of asecular religion through, a real system of beliefs, myths, dogmas and command-ments that cover all of collective existence and by way of the introduction of an

apparatus of rituals and festivals, in order to transform permanently the occasionalcrowdsof civil events into the liturgical massesof the political cult.11

In what follows, ritualised social protest will be considered as a key mechanismfor easing the transition from random masses into more cohesive groups. Protest

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rituals are here understood as all the regularly-occurring symbolic performances,staged by a collective actor in the public sphere with the manifest purpose ofinfluencing both the authorities and public opinion. By means of protest, actorschallenge the established social, political and/or cultural order. Furthermore, asis often the case with symbolically-loaded activities, protest rituals are also

performed for expressive, and not just purely instrumental, purposes. Dependingon the specific case, the creation of inner cohesion may be a by-product of theprotest ritual or, rather, its main purpose.12

With the aim of unveiling the political liturgy of uncivil communities, ratherthan looking back to historical examples of political religions in the annals oftotalitarian regimes, I will consider contemporary communities that fulfil thefollowing conditions: first, suffering from an excessive we-sense; second, hostuncivil, violent trends; and, last, resort to an entire set of ritual practices regularlystaged in the public sphere.

MLNV and NPD: Two Uncivil Communities at Play

In order to illustrate how these kinds of communities build and maintain a strongcollective identity in the midst of an environment hostile to their worldviews andpractices, I have selected two seemingly unrelated, contemporary uncivilcommunities in Europe. Both are of radical nationalist nature and were bornaround the same time. The first is the Movimiento de Liberacin Nacional Vasco(MLNV Basque National Liberation Movement); the other is the neo-Nazimovement built around the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD National Democratic Party of Germany). As we will see, telling parallels betweenthe MLNV and the NPD can be pointed out with respect to their social practices.However, some significant differences also emerge when paying closer attentionto their discourses. Whereas the Basque movement claims to be the heir to eman-cipatory struggles of the left and thus formally acknowledges the principle ofhuman equality its right-wing counterpart in Germany supports the assumptionthat ethnic affiliation substantially determines the value of a human being,claiming that the really meaningful cleavage nowadays is not that between theleft and the right, but that between the people from below and the rich.13

Their respective social and political structures also differ substantially. TheMLNV is well rooted in society and enjoys relatively widespread approvalamong the population, whilst the right-wing nationalist stance in Germany is

rather residual as far as followers and electoral success are concerned, at least inthe west side of the country. In short, both group constellations share a similarpraxis and several morphological similarities, although not the same ideologicalfield or same socio-political environment.

Departures in ideology and environment notwithstanding, the political wingsof both groups have recently and almost simultaneously faced attempts to outlawthem. At the initiative of the redgreen German government (a coalition betweenthe Social Democratic Party and The Green Party), a ban prohibiting the NPDwas presented to the Tribunal for the Protection of the Constitution in January of2001; it was rejected in March of 2003. Batasuna, the political arm of the MLNV,

was banned in August of 2002 on the grounds that it was allied to the terroristorganisation ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Homeland and Freedom).14

Let us more closely consider the major features of each of these radical-nationalistmovements.

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288 J. Casquete

The MLNV is an umbrella organisation for extreme Basque nationalism. It hasbranches in the fields of feminism (e.g., Egizan), environmentalism (Eguzki), inter-national solidarity (Komite Internazionalistak), Basque culture, youth issues (Jarrai,Segi), students (Ikasle Abertzaleak), prisoners rights (Etxerat), and the workersmovement (notably the trade union LAB Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak, Patriot

Workers Committees). More important, the arm of the MLNV in electoralpolitics is theHerri Batasunaparty, or Peoples Unity, thereafter renamed EuskalHerritarrokin 1998 and Batasunain 2001 prior to its ban one year thereafter. What-ever the name, since its foundation in 1978, this party has gathered considerableand rather stable electoral support: 16.5% of the valid vote in the Basque regionalelections in 1980; 14.7% in 1984; 17.5% in 1986; 18.3% in 1990; 16.3% in 1994; 17.9%in 1998; and 10.1% in 2001.15 ETA, first formed in 1959 as a discussion groupaimed at renewing and revitalising Basque nationalism discourse and praxis inthe midst of Franciscos dictatorship, views itself as the armed vanguard of theMLNV. The stated goals of this movement are the recognition of the right to self-

determination as a preliminary and necessary step toward the achievement of aBasque socialist and independent state. Such a Basque nation necessarily impliesthe redrawing of the state borders of both Spain and France, the two stateshosting the imagined Basque community.

As is always the case with uncivil communities and political religions, withinthe boundaries of this community-movement a sociodynamic of stigmatisation isset in motion against a broad variety of others branded as outright enemies to betreated accordingly (that is, killed, kidnapped, harassed, forced to migrate,subjected to ostracism). Spanish politicians and representatives ranging fromlocal to regional levels (that is to say, Basques who are members of either of thetwo major political parties in Spain, the Popular Party and the Spanish SocialistParty) judges,16 police and military forces, journalists, university lecturers, andothers considered not to be proper members of the national community thesehave been the favourite targets of terrorist attacks in recent decades. (Sinceseveral have been assassinated, all representatives of the two major parties, eventhose at the local level, are escorted by body-guards). All in all, from 1968 (whenETA committed its first murder) through December 2003, a total of 808 personshave been killed by different Basque terrorist organisations.17 Apart frommurders, the threat of suffering violent attacks results in dramatic consequencesin the everyday life for a considerable portion of the population. Experts estimatethat there are some 42,000 potential victims of ETA who may be targeted at any

moment.18These comprise the so-called collective of victims of prosecution.The sociodynamic that helps to build reality, including the construction of the

enemy, is a social process that takes place within the MLNVs own associationaland informative settings. To this end, over time the movement has woven a tightsocial infrastructure, with slightly over 100 so-called herriko tabernak, or popular

bars, as its spearhead, as well as different media platforms (the daily newspaperEgin, later called Garafollowing its juridical closure; several magazines and webpages, and so on). To a considerable extent this infrastructure allows membersand sympathisers of the MLNV to live in an organisational world relativelyautonomous from that of broader society. It conforms, one might say, to a

counter-society in its own right or, in the words of Cass Sunstein, a feudinggroup, one of whose characteristics is that its members tend to talk only to oneanother, or at least only to listen to one another, fueling and amplifying theiroutrage and solidifying their impression of the relevant events.19

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Telling parallelisms regarding both morphology and social practices betweenthe MLNV and our second case study, the right-wing constellation around theNPD in Germany, are worth pointing out. Established in 1964, the NPD is theoldest radical rightist party in the country. It has steadily gained ground withinthe German right-wing landscape to the point of becoming by and large its most

influential organisation, and at the same time the most radical one.20But beinginfluential is not the same as being able to persuade a broad audience. Inasmuchas it is capable of attracting considerable public attention, the NPD is a prominentactor that nevertheless does not enjoy widespread approval within German soci-ety. The fact that the NPD is more closely and systematically surveyed in theyearly Reports on the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutzbericht VSB) bears witness to its prominence in public discussion.

Moreover, the electoral salience of the NPD has varied considerably since itsfounding. At the federal level, its best results were achieved in 1969, when italmost entered the Bundestag with a share of 4.31% of the votes, just below the

5% hurdle established by the German Constitution as necessary to enter theparliament. Since these glorious electoral years the situation has changeddramatically, with progressive losses being the overall trend. Thus, at the federalelections of 1998, the NPD achieved 0.3% of the valid vote. With a share of 0.4%(or 215,232 votes), it did not fare much better in the elections held in September2002. Yet ever since, the NPD has attracted the votes of the German extremeright around the new rallying cry, Volksfront(National Front). The first outcomeof this strategy came with elections in the eastern federal state of Saxony inSeptember 2004, in which the NPD reached a 9.3% of the vote, slightly behindthe Social Democrats (SPD). Notwithstanding this recent success, when consid-ered in electoral terms alone the NPD is an insignificant actor as a whole, withlittle prestige among the population although with outstanding prominence inpublic debates.21

The ideological features of the NPD may be summed up by describing it as arevolutionary movement that rejects, both in discourse and in practice, the equalmoral worth of human beings (or the dogma of equality, as they denounce it).On the one hand, the NPD attempts to forge new men and women, a new revolu-tionary ethos that merges individuals into a national community (Volksgemein-schaft) defined by ethnic, rather than republican, criteria. With its constant appealsto the establishment of a national community, the NPD makes use of a keyconcept first employed by National Socialism. Through the concept of national

community, the NPD understands a social group bound by blood and destiny.Within community boundaries, the interests of the individual should be uncondi-tionally subordinated to the community of fellow comrades. This revolutionaryproject attempts to invert the liberal dictum of young Goethe, according to whichGermany is nothing, but each single German is a lot.22Instead, the NPD givesabsolute pre-eminence to the collective over the individual. Thus Party leaderUdo Voigt declared in 1998 during a demonstration in Passau: Nothing for us,

but everything, everything for our beloved and dishonoured fatherland.23 Inultra-nationalist worldviews like that held by the NPD, the life of an individualonly makes sense and is worth living insofar as they are willing to sacrifice their

own views for the sake of a life wholly devoted to the national community.Retreat into the warmth of the national community as an antidote against modernindividualism is therefore a conspicuous trend in the extreme nationalist stance,in Germany as elsewhere.

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290 J. Casquete

Likewise, a further feature of the project of the NPD posing a profoundchallenge not only to German society, but also to the international order, is that itstrives to alter the German national borders established after the defeat of Nazismin 1945 so that they include former German territories now belonging to neigh-

bouring countries, such as Poland or the Czech Republic.24A linguistic reflection

of this stance is the fact that, in the right-wing extremist parlance, the five newLnder that once were part of East Germany are customarily referred to as Mittel-deutschland, implying that there are more German territories further east alsoforming an intrinsic part of the ethnic community.

As with the case of the MLNV, in order to produce and reproduce a collectiveidentity in the face of a hostile environment, the NPD has its own recreational,social and informational infrastructures. The nationalist movement organisedaround the NPD includes youth and student movements (for example, JungeNationaldemokraten, Nationaldemokratischer Hochschulbund, and the Schlerinitiative

fr freie Meinungsbildung und -usserung), right-wing oriented skinheads and neo-

Nazi groups collected in so-called Kameradschaften (fellowships),25

supportorganisations for prisoners (Hilfsorganisation fr nationale politische Gefangene undderen AngehrigeHNG), think tanks (such as the Deutsches Kolleg), newspapersand other regular publications (for example, the monthly Deutsche Stimme, with acirculation of 21,000 copies in 2004; also Vorderste Front, and Der Aktivist, Frontdi-enst), as well as 9501,000 websites in the period between 2002 and 2004.26

NPD members and sympathisers consider Germany to be populated by along list of enemies: foreigners, homosexuals, disabled persons, leftists, tradeunionists, homeless people, travellers and Jews. All those not conforming totheir definition of the national community automatically enter into the categoryof enemies, to be handled accordingly if they ever dare to enter the fear areasdominated by the radical-nationalist ranks. Under the motto He who is notwith us, is our adversary,27 members of these social groups as well as theirproperties, places of residence of worship (such as Jewish graveyards and syna-gogues) are targeted by right-wing extremists. According to official data, inthe year 2004 alone there were 12,051 politically motivated criminal offences byright-wing extremists, of which 776 had a violent nature directed mainly againstforeigners, left-wing activists and Jews (See Table 1).28 Experts estimate that,since German reunification in 1990 until the early new century, at least 140people have died as a consequence of right-wing extremist attacks; in all, morethan 100,000 criminal offences have been committed.29

The Demonstration Liturgy of Extreme Nationalism

Besides valuing national identity over other, more contingent and transient iden-tities and not to mention sharing a social construction of the enemy propa-gated and sustained through their respective socialisation, organisational andmedia settings both examples of uncivil communities, the MLNV and theNPD, show similarities in a further respect: both take to the streets with remark-able frequency. For what purpose? In broad terms, the functions that socialprotest fulfils for its carriers are of two kinds. On one hand, protest serves to

publicise a certain goal in the public sphere; on the other, protest catalysesgroup solidarity and integration through the politicisation of the emotionsunleashed before, during and in the aftermath of protest. As Ernest Koenker hasargued, by virtue of sheer numbers confidence is engendered and enthusiasm

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transmitted for an irresistible cause.30 The number of demonstrations and thepeople involved is a valid indicator of the protest level staged by any socialactor. A demonstration is here understood as a collective gathering in a publicspace aimed at exerting political, social and/or cultural influence on both theauthorities and public opinion through the disciplined and peaceful expressionof a point of view.

In Germany, the NPD has resorted to a politics of the streets over the last fewyears. First propagated by the party leadership in 1997 and then approved at a

party conference in Stavenhagen in 1998, the NPD adopted a strategic reorienta-tion grounded on three pillars in an effort to occupy the public realm: (1) thebattle for the minds (meaning influence on public opinion and political socialisa-tion of followers); (2) the battle for the parliament (participation in electoralcontests); and (3) the battle for the streets (mass mobilisation in the form ofdemonstrations and other public events). This third pillar includes the fight forthe so-called nationally freed areas, theorised by its proponents as follows:

We have to manage free areas, in which wede facto exert power, in whichweare able to sanction, that is to say, to punish deviants and enemies, we

support our fighting comrades, we help oppressed, marginalised, andprosecuted fellow citizens The system, the state, and their henchmenwould be of secondary relevancein the specific way of life of the politicalactivists in the city.31

Table 1. Violent crimes and other criminal offences with a right-wing extremistbackground

2001 2002 2003 2004

Violent crimes:

Homicide 0 0 0 0Attempted homicide 9 8 7 6Assault 626 646 637 640Arson 16 26 24 37Causing injury, death or serious property damage by

detonating an explosive device1 1 0 2

Contributing to rioting or civil disorder 34 32 28 25Dangerous disruption of rail, air, ship or road transport 3 11 2 6Unlawful deprivation of liberty 0 1 2 2Robbery 7 6 12 9Extortion 3 5 2 5

Resisting public authority 10 36 45 44TOTAL 709 772 759 776Other criminal offences

Property damage 251 178 225 243Coercion/threat 190 115 93 97Illegal propaganda activities 6,336 7,294 7,551 8,337Desecration of cemeteries 30 30 26 20Other criminal offences, esp. incitement to hatred 2,538 2,513 2,138 2,578TOTAL 9,345 10,130 10,033 11,275

Total number of criminal offences 10,054 10,902 10,792 12,051

Source: Verfassungsschutzbericht 2001 to 2004.

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292 J. Casquete

These fear-areas are more than a rhetorical statement in the five new Lnder (orMitteldeutschland:Brandenburg, Saxony, Thringen, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklen-burg-Vorpommern) and in East Berlin where, according to some estimates, theright-wing extremism in the population reaches potentially 17% of thepopulation32 where the NPD is well rooted, one might say trendy, especially

among the youth.The official figures available clearly reveal the extensive efforts invested inmaking the NPD present in the public sphere, thus buttressing collectiveidentity. Rather imprecisely, according to the Office for the Protection of theConstitution, the NPD took to the streets over 50 times in 1998; around 60 in1999; well over 50 in 2000; around 70 in 2001; some 100 in 2002; around 50in 2003; and around 40 in 2004.33As a rule, right-wing adherents face counter-demonstrations called for by a broad spectrum of social, political and religiousactors representing the overwhelming majority of German society. The busyschedule of demonstrations staged by the neo-Nazi scene clustered around the

NPD has led the authorities to refer to a certain demonstration fatigue in2003.34As far as the number of participants is concerned, as a rule no more thana few hundred right-wing extremists attend the call to demonstrate. In 2001, forexample, seven demonstrations attended by between 900 and 3,300 people werereported, whereas the rest proved less successful.35

However low these figures might seem at first, an additional variable should beconsidered: the risk and cost involved in taking part in these demonstrations.Barriers to participation, such as time expenditure; the regular presence of hostileforces (counter-demonstrators); being watched by hundreds, even thousands, ofpolicemen and journalists (as in Berlin and other locations during their ritualperformance on the First of May); and having to overcome the police filters evento enter the demonstrations, means that we should not underestimate the appar-ently low attendance at right-wing demonstrations. Having a human contingentwilling to pay such a high price for feeling the warmth and beauty of the Volksge-meinschaftleads us to consider demonstrations organised by the NPD, alone or inassociation with other right-wing extremists, as they deserve to be regarded: aserious reminder that the roots of right-wing extremism are deep indeed in somesectors and areas of German society.36

In contrast, the data available for the Basque case are more precise. Accordingto the Basque police (Ertzaintza), in 1999 a total of 3,270 demonstrations andpublic gatherings with over 20 participants were registered as effectively having

marched along Basque cities and villages; in 2000 the number reached a total of5,537; in 2001 the figures decreased, amounting to 4,148; with 3,864 in 2002; 3,590in 2003; and 3,463 in 2004. In the rest of Spain (once the data concerning theBasque Country has been excluded), the number of demonstrations from 1999through 2004 averaged 9,023 a year, with a low figure of 7,992 in 2004 and a peakof 10,098 in 2001. Taking these figures into account, the demonstration density rate(DDR), here calculated as the number of demonstrations per every 1000 inhabit-ants, is 8 times higher in the Basque Country than in Spain.37

Yet this readiness to protest in the Basque Country is not evenly distributedamong different groups. There is a subset within this ideological spectrum

considering the street its tribunepar excellenceand accordingly occupies the publicsphere with a far greater frequency than the rest of the Basque social and politicalactors. In an attempt to cover the demonstration activities of many of thesegroups, in its records the Basque police reserves a rather diffuse category under

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the entry In favour of Basque prisoners/MLNV/Related. This entry includes afigure of 1,873 demonstration events for the year 1999 (57.27% of the total); in2000: 2,506 (45.26%); in 2001: 1,804 (43.5%); in 2002: 1,447 (37.4%); in 2003: 1,290(35.9%); and in 2004: 1,278 demonstrations (40.6%). No doubt that, were it not forthe demonstrations of this sub-group, the overall protest scale in the BasqueCountry would have remained substantially lower than it has been during thisperiod (See Figure 1).Figure1 Totalnumberof demonstrationsin theBasqueCountryand demonstrationsby theMLNVSource:BasqueHomeMinistry,withmyelaborationbasedonpersonalcommunication.Highestbarsrefertothetotalnumberof demonstrationsstagedin theBasqueCountry,thelowestthosestagedbyradicalnationalists.A universal feature of religious thought and behaviour, as well as of politicalreligions, is the sharp distinction made between the sacred and the profane withrespect to time and space.38According to the religious Weltanschauung, there aresacralised locations endowed with a powerful meaning and saturated with adense symbolism. Churches are the most obvious example of sacred spaces.Much the same for time: the religious mind makes a break between profane andholy time. In this sense, a common feature of German National Socialism, ItalianFascism, and Soviet communism alike to turn to historical examples of politicalreligions is their sacralisation of a rich array of places and dates. In National-Socialist Germany, examples of memorial sites with transcendent significance arethe city of Nuremberg (home of the Party Rally) and the Feldherrnhallein Munich.

Examples of sacred days for which memory was organised in social terms were30 January (based on the 1933Machtbernahme, when the Nazis took over power);16 March (Heldengedenktag, or the Remembrance Day for Heroes of the Move-ment); the First of May (Day of National Labour); and 20 April (the anniversary ofHitlers birth). In Italy, state holidays included Statute Day on 20 September; theanniversary of Italys declaration of war on 24 May; and the day of the foundingof Rome on 21 April, which after 1922 was sanctioned as the Fascist Labour Day.The Piazza Venezia in Rome, where the office of the Ducewas located from 1929,

became a place of constant pilgrimage and huge assemblies. Finally, Red Squarein Moscow and the anniversary of the revolution on 7 November also enjoyed

high symbolic value, celebrated with great pomp in the Soviet Union.39

To return to our contemporary cases of uncivil communities, both the MLNVand the right-wing milieu around the NPD have invested considerable energy indevising a complex set of dates with much of symbolic significance, which they

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Figure 1. Total number of demonstrations in the Basque Country and demonstrations by theMLNV

Source: Basque Home Ministry, with my elaboration based on personal communication. Highest barsrefer to the total number of demonstrations staged in the Basque Country, the lowest those staged by

radical nationalists.

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294 J. Casquete

use to remember their past. Their mnemonic activities are almost invariablyexercised through demonstrations and gatherings. In the case of the MLNV,which claims to make the nationalist and the leftist tradition compatible, the cultof the community takes place during a broad variety of days stemming from thesetwo sources. The annual commemorative cycle celebrated by the radical national-

ist community in the Basque Country since Francisco Francos death in 1975includes the following dates: 3 March, for the remembrance of five workers killedin 1976 by police in Vitoria during the course of a labour conflict; Easter Monday,the Day of the Basque Fatherland, first celebrated in 1932 by moderate national-ists and admittedly the most relevant date in the nationalist calendar; the First ofMay, Labour Day; the first Sunday in May, BizkargiDay, which harkens back toBasque soldiers (gudariak) fighting in the Bizkargi mountain against the Francoistarmy during the Spanish Civil War, as well as to Basque soldiers who continue tofight against the Spanish today (meaning ETA members); the first Sunday in July,Albertia Day, a homage to Basque soldiers of yesterday and today; 27 September,

Basque Soldiers Day (Gudari Eguna), a commemorative day for two ETAmembers executed by Franco two months before his death in November 1975; theeve of 12 October, the Day of Hispanity, in this case a counter-celebration to showrejection of the Spanish polluted order imposed upon the Basque Country; 20November, the day on which, in 1984 and 1989, two representatives of Herri Bata-suna, the political arm of the ETA at the time, were killed by paramilitary forces;the eve of 6 December, Spanish Constitution Day, again a counter-celebration;and, finally, 21 December, the anniversary of the 1976 paramilitary assassinationof J. M. Bearan,Argala, the most prominent ETA member at the time. Note thatmany of these dates revolve around the cult of martyrs in the movement, afeature of every nationalism and certainly of the historical political religions aswell. As the Israeli historian Idith Zertal has asserted, the killing fields of nationalethnic conflicts, the graves of the fallen, are the building blocks of which modernnations are made, out of which the fabric of national sentiments grows.40

Since Spains transition to democracy, the mode of celebration on all these holi-days linking those lieux de la memoirewhich are often calendars, national heroesand collective identity consists of taking to the streets in a ritualised fashion as ameans of coalescing and nourishing memories connecting individuals to theircommunity. These dates provide an opportunity to members and sympathisers ofthe MLNV to make up communities of remembrance, and thus communities offeeling.41Yet the vast majority of demonstrations occur periodically although not

always predictably, as in the case of martyrological calendars. Some protestsconstitute an immediate response to a precipitating factor that unleashes mobili-sation (for example, the arrest or death of suspected ETA members, or the threatof a ban on organisations under the MLNV umbrella); still others are staged peri-odically without any immediate cause. Thus, in the five-year period between 1998and 2002, the streets of Basque cities have seen an average of five mass demon-strations per year, and 26 in all. Rather arbitrarily, if they reach the threshold of10,000 participants according to different newspaper sources, they qualify as amass demonstration.42 Generally orchestrated in the city of Bilbao (17 in total,with another 5 in San Sebastian and 4 in Pamplona), these demonstrations have

attracted tens of thousands of citizens under a democracy framework(Democracy for the Basque Country, Give a say to the Basque people, Buildingpeace, the Basque Country has its say, In favour of a democratic solution, now! these have been slogans of several demonstrations); in support of ETA prisoners

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(For Christmas, Basque prisoners to the Basque Country, In favour of the rightsof Basque prisoners, Basque prisoners to the Basque Country, now!), or otherrelated themes (such as, against Spanish fascism, torture practices by policeforces, and the shutdown of a newspaper related to the MLNV).43

Be it in fixed dates or without any foreseeable calendrical order, a rich symbolic

deployment accompanies every demonstration by the MLNV. Boundary-drawingsymbols often present are the following: the Basque flag, the ikurria; one song toconclude the event (the Basque soldiers hymn: Here are the Basque soldiers,willing to free the Basque Country, our blood is ready to be sacrificed for it);44

portraits of Basque prisoners carried by relatives or friends; and, as a lastexample, songs, slogans, banners, and so on, running invariably and exclusivelyin Basque language arguably the most outstanding symbol itself of Basquenationalism.

The NPD calendar and its mnemonic practices are admittedly not as dense asthose for the MLNV, but there are several days in which right-wing nationalists

ritually take to the streets, put forward their demands and build community,albeit an uncivil one.45The two most relevant dates in the neo-Nazi commemora-tive calendar are the First of May, celebrated by the Nazis for the first time in 1933in a successful attempt at co-opting symbols of the left, resumed by the NPD onthe streets in 1994 (it was previously celebrated in closed spaces); and the anniver-sary of the death of Rudolf He in 1987, on the weekend closest to 17 August.46

Apart from these days, the NPD and neo-Nazi groups have taken to the streets inprevious years on days like 13 February (the anniversary of the bombing ofDresden); 8 May (the date of German capitulation in the Second World War); 1September (start of the Second World War); the anniversary of the beginning ofconstruction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August; 3 October (the date of Germanreunification), 9 November (to pay homage to fallen Nazi Party members inMunich during the 1923Hitlerputsch); in addition to other dates from the NationalSocialist era. However, it is quite difficult to keep track of all these dates onseveral grounds: first, the mass-media do not always report activities by theextreme nationalists only attended by a few dozen people, or that do not end upin confrontation with police or counter-demonstrators; second, and due to thestrictness of the German law on matters concerning the Nazi past and its glorifica-tion (most of all of martyrs), the motives often stated in asking permission to theauthorities in order to stage a demonstration do not overlap with the genuinemotivation. How should the authorities deal, for example, with the request for a

demonstration against the cuts in the social welfare system which is called andnot by coincidence on the anniversary of Hitler?

These reasons help to explain the dearth accurate figures on demonstrations bythe right-wing scene around the NPD, even of those provided by administrative

bodies (see note 32). Legal constraints as to what is allowed to be said, showed orcelebrated also explain the nature of the symbolic world of the German right-wing nationalist scene. Since its members and followers can not openly espousetheir deepest thoughts and beliefs, they employ coded symbols, based on a richarray of clothes (like the clothing brand-name Consdaple, whose middle five lettersincorporate the acronym of the Nazi Party); icons related to National Socialism

(the imperial eagle, the iron cross) or to paganism (runes, the Thor hammer);number-codes (18, standing for the first and eighth letters of the alphabet,meaning A. H.: Adolf Hitler), and so on.47Moreover, since the German radicalnationalist constellation is convinced that the real ideological divide in European

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296 J. Casquete

societies is not between left and right, but between the people from below andthe wealthy, it also attempts to reach the left by appropriating its symbols. We

just noted the co-opted examples of the First of May, the hammer and sickle, andthe colour red in the 1930s. Now contemporary left symbols such as images ofChe Guevara or Rudi Dutschke (a leader of the student movement in 1968, now

reinterpreted as a national revolutionary), and the Palestinian scarf, are alsoappropriated, falling prey to the vampirism of the NPD.48

Political Religions and Protest

Social groups, including communities and political religions, resort to severalmechanisms and practices in order to coalesce and foster a sense of collective iden-tity. They might engage in an in-groupout-group relationship, thus creating theconditions for a situation in which two groups understand each other as adversar-ies in the most lenient cases of boundary-making, or indeed as outright enemies in

the most confrontational ones. Likewise, they might develop a social network(such as consciousness-raising groups, clubs, workshops, and so on) on the basisof fellowship and common interests or values. Thirdly, in our informationsocieties, it is hard to overlook the role that the media (newspapers, magazines,TV and radio stations, publishing houses and music companies); and increasingly,new communication technologies play in shaping the public and catalysing a senseof we.49

Out of the pool of mechanisms available to social groups in order to fostercollective identity, the focus throughout this article has laid on a kind of ceremo-nial behaviour: protest rituals. Very often, protest as the mobilised expression ofdissent stands for a moment of human creativity for enacting endogenous socialchange by groups lacking meaningful political resources beyond the power ofnumbers and street politics like demonstrations. Thus protest as an expression ofthe creativity of social action often turns into a healthy feature of liberal societies.This is not surprising, because complete absence of protest and conflict is, afterall, only imaginable in a stagnant social world. But not every expression of civilsociety is a civilised one in the sense that it pursues its goals through discursive,peaceful means. While most social movements, NGOs or self-help groups adhereto a discursive understanding of social and political life, a few, on the contrary,either show appreciation of uncivil channels to achieve political goals, or hostextremist values and attitudes (or both).

The periodic staging of protest stands out as a key factor enabling uncivilcommunities to foster group solidarity. As long as it is accompanied by a sharedfocus of interest, the physical co-presence of individuals in protest events appearsto be a condition for developing a strong in-group loyalty and, consequently, forcementing the community around a core set of values that, in the case of politicalreligions, sometimes merges with those endorsed by the liberal society at large.Periodic assemblies and joint participation in symbolic action thus becomes one ofthe necessary means by which uncivil ideas, sentiments and attitudes arepropagated. However, from the point of view of the societal bond, namely, strongout-group antagonism, the price is high indeed, particularly when taking into

consideration its dramatic consequences in the form of violence.Throughout this article, I have reviewed the political liturgy of two such uncivilexpressions within civil society that help to buttress and sustain a surplus of groupidentity. Key ideological departure points between the two notwithstanding,

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regarding their social praxis the Basque MLNV and the German NPD movementsmay be considered political religions that share the following features: (1) they

both challenge liberal values insofar as they value the national community overindividual liberties and the right to life; (2) both resort to violent, illiberal means inorder to pursue their goals; and finally (3) both achieve group representation and

maintain their collective identity over time not exclusively, but to a considerableextent by the periodic staging of protest.Whether on fixed or on random dates, in our case studies demonstrations

provide an opportunity for participants to witness themselves sharing simulta-neously sharing a physical space as a representative sample of the (idealised)nation. An amorphous crowd occupying the public sphere and sharing a commoncult thereby becomes a national congregation not merely one that is imagined,

but one that is embodied. Demonstrations thus become a precious device makingit feasible for uncivil communities of extreme nationalist character to make thetransition from the imagination of the nation (a largely individual activity) to its

visualisation (a social one, and the provider of resources for imagination).

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dieter Rucht, Juan Carlos Velasco and Matthew Feldman forthoughtful comments on a previous draft of the article. Financial help to conductthis study was made available by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, 0162.323-H-15387).

Notes

1. On the erosion of the social bond and the growth of atomism, see: Alan Wolfe, Whose Keeper? SocialScience and Moral Obligation (Berkeley, CAL: University of California Press, 1989); Robert D.Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon andSchuster, 2000). Yet individualism as a social sickness is hardly a novel feature of our societies. Inhis sharp analysis of American society, de Tocqueville identified the symptoms of individualismearly on: Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the commu-nity to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and hisfriends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society atlarge to itself, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994[1835], Bk. II, Pt. II, Ch. II), p. 98.

2. Amitai Etzioni, Creating Communities and Good Societies, Contemporary Sociology29/1 (2000),pp. 188195; John Rawls,Justice as Fairness(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p.3

and 20, respectively.3. Martin Buber, I and Thou(Edinburgh: Clark, 1958), p. 21; emphasis in the original.4. Analysing the process of becoming is precisely the aim of constructivist approaches to the study

of social groups. These approaches have drawn attention to how a group builds and makes senseof its action. See Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs inContemporary Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Idem, Challenging Codes:Collective Action in the Information Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); PiotrSztompka, Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becoming(Cambridge: Polity Press,1991).

5. Some authors have come close to incorporating praxis as a defining feature of communities. Thus,Bellah et al. define a community as a group of people who are socially interdependent, whoparticipate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practicesthat bothdefine the community and are nurtured by it. They then define practices as shared activities thatare not undertaken as means to an end but are ethically good in themselves; Robert Bellah et al.,Habits of the Heart(New York: Harper&Row, 1985), p.333 and 335, respectively; emphasis in theoriginal. Unlike Bellah, throughout this paper social practices will be understood more loosely:they refer to what individuals do together, without implying any ethical stance toward thecommon project.

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6. Ostracism is an example of an informal mechanism to exert social control when a member of thecommunity dares to challenge the inherited codes and decides, say, to marry outside ones reli-gion or ethnic group or to attend a secular university.

7. The Amish, Hasidic, and Islamic fundamentalists are cases of religious subgroups that voluntarilykeep distances from the world at large.

8. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Richard Boyd, Uncivil Society: The Perils of Plural-ism and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004), pp.1214.9. The words of a leading theoretician of civil society effectively expresses this incompatibility

between violence and civility: Violence is thus prima facie incompatible with the civil societyrules of solidarity, liberty and equality of citizens, since those individual citizens who are violatedexperience interference with their bodies, which may consequently suffer damage, physically andpsychically, John Keane, Reflections on Violence (London: Verso, 1996), p. 68. See also Jean L.Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992);Jrgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996).

10. Eric Voeglin, Die Politische Religionen(Wien: Schriftenreihe Ausblicke 12, 1938); Raymond Aron,Une histoire du XXesicle(Paris: Plon, 1996 [1944]); Jean-Pierre Sironneau, Scularisation et religionpolitique (La Haye-Paris-New York: Mouton, 1982); Hans Maier, Politische Religionen (Freiburg:Herder, 1995); Idem, Das Doppelgesicht des Religisen(Freiburg: Herder, 2004); Emilio Gentile, TheSacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Idem,The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secu-lar Religion and Totalitarianism, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1/1 (2000): pp.1855; Idem, Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e totalitarismi (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 2002);Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History(London: Hill&Wang, 2000); Klaus-Georg Riegel,Der Stalinismus als politische Religion, Beitrge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, 44 (March2002): pp.119133; Marcin Kula, Communism as Religion, Totalitarian Movements and PoliticalReligions, 6/3 (2005): pp. 371381.

11. Emilio Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics (note 10), p. 20; emphasis in the original. In pointingout beliefs and rites as the basic cornerstones of every religious manifestation, Gentile closelyfollows Durkheims classic interpretation of religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices

relative to sacred things. mile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life(Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001 [1912]), p. 46.

12. For a conceptualisation of protest rituals, see Jesus Casquete, From Imagination to Visualization:Protest Rituals in the Basque Country, Working Paper, Discussion Paper SP IV 2003-401, Wissen-schaftszentrum Berlin fr Sozialforschung (WZB), September 2003. On rituals, see Steven Lukes,Political Ritual and Social Integration, in Idem, Essays in Social Theory (London: Macmillan,1977); David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power(New Haven and London: Yale University Press,1988); Zdzislaw Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity: Essays in Political Anthropology(Albany, NY:State University of New York, 1993); Catherine Bell, Ritua:. Perspectives and Dimensions(New Yorkand Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Towards anAnthropology of Public Events(New York/ Oxford: Berghan, 1998); and Randall Collins, InteractionRitual Chains(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

13. For an overview of the Basque radical nationalist scene, see Jos Manuel Mata, El nacionalismovasco radical: Discurso, organizacin y expresiones(Bilbao: Universidad del Pas Vasco, 1993); IzaskunSenz de la Fuente Aldama, El Movimiento de Liberacin Nacional Vasco, una religin de sustitucin(Bilbao: Instituto Diocesano de Teologa y Pastoral/ Descle de Brouwer, 2002). For the case of theNPD, see Uwe Hoffmann, Die NPD: Entwicklung, Ideologie und Struktur (Frankfurt a/M: PeterLang, 1998); Armin Pfahl-Traughber, Die NPD in der zweiten Hlfte der neunziger Jahre. Ideolo-gie, Strategie und Organisation, in Claus Leggewie and Horst Meier, eds., Verbot der NPD oderMit Rechtsradikalen leben?(Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 2002).Although with no formal links to each other whatsoever, some German extreme nationalists havenevertheless expressed admiration towards the Basque radical fringe. Thus, a member of the neo-nazi group Sauerlnder Aktionsfrontthreatened in 2001: Also those who work against our race andtry to smash it security forces, public prosecutors, judges have names, addresses, families.

Let them have it clear that we simply will not tolerate them. Your fantasy knows here no limits The Basque ETA serves us here no doubt as a model; quoted in Anton Maegerle, Rechsextremis-tische Gewalt und Terror, in Thomas Grumke and Bernd Wagner eds.,Handbuch Rechtsradikalis-mus: Personen Organisationen Netzwerke vom Neonazismus bis in die Mitte der Gesellschaft(Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 2002), p.167.

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14. In March 2006, ETA declared a permanent cease fire that will hopefully lead in the years to come(at least as much as it is concerned with radical nationalist uncivility in the Basque Country), thistext to be viewed as an historical analysis rather than a sociological one dealing with ongoing events.

15. The electoral results of both 1998 (October) and 2001 deserve a brief comment. In September 1998,the political party Euskal Herritarrokbenefited from a cease-fire declared by ETA and received thesupport of those voters wanting independence without the use of violent means pursuing it;

however, 14 months later the terrorist organisation again took up armed struggle and Euskal Herri-tarrokconsequently lost a great deal of popular support. Following the ban of Batasuna, the heirparty EHAK (acronym in Basque for Communist Party of the Basque Countries) has increased itsshare of the vote. EHAK ran for the regional elections in 2005, achieving a 12.5% of the vote.

16. Since Several have been assasinated, all representatives of the two main parties, as well as judges,are escorted by bodyguards.

17. Sabino Ormazabal Elola, Un mapa (inacabado) del sufrimiento(Bilbao: Fundacin Robles-Arangiz,2003), p.15; Jos Luis Barbera and Patxo Unzueta, Cmo hemos llegado a esto: La crisis vasca(Madrid:Taurus, 2003).

18. El Pas, 29/2/2004: 29.19. Cass Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p.115.20. Thomas Grumke and Bernd Wagner, eds.,Handbuch Rechtsradikalismus: Personen Organisationen

Netzwerke vom Neonazismus bis in die Mitte der Gesellschaft(Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 2002); SPD-Bundestagsfraktion, Rechtsextremismus in Deutschland: Eine Handreichung, 2005, http://www.spdfrak.de/cnt/rs/rs_datei/0,,5071,00.pdf; accessed 12 April 2006; Toralf Staud, ModerneNazis: Die neuen Rechten und der Aufstieg der NPD(Kln: Kiepenheur&Witsch, 2005).

21. This is in sharp contrast to the MLNV, which enjoys huge visibility in public debates at the sametime that it is a prestigious actor for a considerable part of the population.

22. Quoted in Sebastian Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 19141933(Munich: dtv,2002), p.6.

23. Udo Voigt, Mit der NAPO auf den Weg in das neue Jahrtausend, in Apfel Holger, ed., AllesGrosse steht im Sturm: Tradition und Zukunft einer nationalen Partei (Stuttgart: Deutsche Stimme,1999), p.471; emphasis in the original.

24. For example, on 3 October, 2001, the anniversary of German reunification, the NPD co-organised ademonstration in Berlin under the motto Germany is larger than the German Federal Republic.

Some 1,000 right-wing extremists attended. Along these lines, the then NPDs deputy nationalchairman, Holger Apfel, declared in June 2002 his allegiance to a German Vaterland extendingfrom the river Maas to the Memel and from the Etsch to the Belt (VerfassungsschutzberichtVSB2002, www.verfassungsschutz.de/de/publikationen/verfassungsschutzbericht/, p.50, accessed11 April 2005), in literal reference to the forbidden first stanza of the German National Anthem.Written by the poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841, the four rivers mentioned in the anthemthen delimited the boundaries of German speaking areas to the West, East, South and North.

25. The Kameradschaftenare small and decentralised organizations overwhelmingly made up of males(females amount to only around 10%) between 18 and 25 years old. The vast majority of theapproximately 160 Kameradschaftenexisting in 2004 have between 5 and 20 members. In 2000, theyhad a total membership of some 2,200 youths; in 2004 around 3,800 (Verfassungsschutzberichte,2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004). Although organically they are not part of the NPD, over the last few

years many of the Kameradschaftenhave built a strategic alliance and thus have come close to it. SeeNeonazistische Kameradschaften in Deutschland, December 2000, www.extremismus.com/vs/kameraden.htm, accessed 11 April 2006.

26. VSB 2002, 2003 and 2004. For a detailed account of the organizational and media scene around theNPD, see Thomas Grumke and Bernd Wagner, (note 18), pp.387397, 402413. On the media infra-structure within the right-wing milieu in general, see: Thomas Pffeifer, Fr Volk und Vaterland: DasMediennetz der Rechten Presse, Musik, Internet(Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch, 2002). On right-wingextremism in the Internet see Rainer Fromm, and Barbara Kernbach, Rechtsextremismus im Internet:Die neue Gefahr(Munich: Olzog, 2001); and Bernd Nickolay, Rechtsextremismus im Internet: Ideolo-gisches Publikationselement und Mobilisierungskapital einer rechtsextremen sozialen Bewegung?(Wrzburg: Ergon, 2000).

27. Udo Voigt, (note 21), p. 473.

28. VSB 2004, pp. 32ff. According to the Home Ministry, an offence is defined as politically motivatedif the circumstances of the offence or the attitude of the offender lead to the conclusion that it isdirected against a person on account of their political opinion, nationality, ethnic origin, race,colour, religion, ideology, origin, sexual orientation, disability, appearance or social status. SeeVSB, 2002, pp.2930.

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29. Bernd Wagner, Kulturelle Subversion von rechts in Ost- und Westdeutschland: Zu rechtsextre-men Entwicklungen und Strategien, in Thomas Grumke and Bernd Wagner (note 18), p. 18; SPD-Bundestagsfraktion, (note 18), p. 12.

30. Ernest Koenker, Secular Salvations: The Rites and Symbols of Political Religions . (Philadelphia:Fortress Press, 1965), p. 74.

31. Schafft befreite Zonen!, Vorderste Front, No. 2, June 1991, pp.4 and 6; emphasis in the original.

The Vorderste Frontis the organ of the Nationaldemokratischer Hochschuldbund, a student organisa-tion affiliated to the NPD.32. As opposed to 12% in the west part of the country. See Richard Stss, Rechtsextremismus in verein-

ten Deutschland(Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2000), pp.2930.33. See VSB 1998 through 2004. To two questions posed in the Bundestag by the PDS (Party of Demo-

cratic Socialism), the Federal Government provided the following figures of demonstrations stagedby the NPD and Kameradschaften following the appointment of Udo Voigt as Party chairman inMarch 1996: 1997, 12 demonstrations; 1998, 39; 1999, 48; 2000, 38; 2001, 81 (Deutscher Bundestag,14. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 14/7240 [30/10/2001], and Drucksache 14/9515 [24/6/2002]).However, in the report presented by the Federal Government before the Constitutional Court inorder to ban the NPD, the figures are quite different: 1997, 48 demonstrations; 1998, 71; 1999, 87;2000 (until December), 76 (see Verbotsantrag gegen die NPD, available at www.extremis-mus.com/dox/antrag.pdf, accessed 11 April, 2006). The noticeable increase in the number ofdemonstrations organised by the right-wing scene in 2001 and 2002 had, as a precipitating factor,the attempt to have them banned.

34. VSB 2003, p.26.35. Armin Pfahl-Traughber, Rechsextremismus als neue soziale Bewegung? Aktivitten und Kooper-

ation von NPD, Neonazis und Skinheads, Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 16/4 (2003),pp. 4354.

36. Jesus Casquete and Ingo Grasdorf, Schlacht um die Strasse: Die 1 Mai Demonstration der NPDin der Reichshauptstadt Berlin 2002, in Dieter Rucht, ed., 1 Mai Berlin 2002: Politische Demonstra-tionsrituale(Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 2003).

37. From 1999 to 2003, an average of 4,086 demonstrations took place in a country of 2.1 million inhab-itants, with a DDR of 1.94; in sharp contrast, the DDR in Spain for the same four-year periodamounted to 0.24 in a country of 38 million (again, without including the Basque Country). See

Anuario Estadstico del Ministerio del Interior, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004 (www.mir.es/MIR/Publi-caciones/catalogo/unidad/secgenTecnica/periodicas.html, accessed 11 April, 2006). No data forthe year 2002 is available.

38. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt,Brace&World, 1959).

39. Ernest Koenker, (note 28); Klaus Vondung,Magie und Manipulation: Ideologischer Kult und politischeReligion des Nationalsozialismus (Gttingen: Vandehoeck&Rupprecht, 1971); Simon Taylor,Symbol and Ritual under National Socialism, British Journal of Sociology32/4 (1981), pp.504520;Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole(Greifswald: SH, 1996); Emilio Gentile, 1996, The Sacrilization of Politics in Fascist Italy (note 10);Mabel Berenzin, Mabel, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca andLondon: Cornell University Press, 1997).

The Francoist dictatorship in Spain, although resembling political religions by devising a rich setof sacred dates (i.e., July 18, National Uprising Day; October 1, CaudilloDay; October 12, Race orHispanity Day), places (Alczar de Toledo, Valle de los Cadosin Madrid) and martyrs (Jos AntonioPrimo de Rivera) based on the myth of the civil war see Giuliana di Febo, Ritos de guerra y devictoria en la Espaa franquista (Bilbao: Descle de Brouwer, 2002) departs from this analyticalcategory to the extent that it subordinated the political dimension to traditional Catholicism. Afterall, the Spanish military headed by Franco understood their rebellion as a crusade against athe-ists, as well as against Basque and Catalan nationalists.

40. Idith Zertal, Israels Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005), p.9.

41. Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 2003); Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 2004).42. Three newspapers have been reviewed in order to check whether they report a demonstrationto have exceeded 10,000 participants: Gara (the current mouthpiece of the MLNV), El Correo(best-selling daily paper in the Basque Country), and El Pas (best-selling newspaper inSpain).

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43. Jesus Casquete, El poder de la calle(Madrid: Centro de Estudios Polticos y Constitucionales, 2006);Idem, The Power of Demonstrations, Social Movement Studies5/1 (2006), pp.4560.

44. The origins and re-interpretation of this song are analysed in depth, in Jesus Casquete, Msica yfunerales en el nacionalismo vasco radical,Historia y Poltica, pp.191216.

45. The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution reports 22 commemorative demonstra-tions in 2001, 13 of them organised by the NPD and the other 9 by neo-Nazi and other right-wing

organisations. See the report, entitled Demonstration als Aktionsfeld von Rechtsextremisten(www.verfassungsschutzbericht.de, November 2002, accessed 15 March 2005).46. The cooptation of the First of May as a commemorative holiday is a remarkable, though not

unique, example of the symbolic vampirism by the Nazi regime. Another wonderful example ofits appropriation of working-class symbols is provided by an official commemorative medal of theFirst of May in 1934, which showed the sickle and hammer joined by the wings of an imperialeagle with the swastika at its feet, complemented by Goethes head in the upper half of the medal,a symbol for the intelligentsia. See Helmut Hartwig, Plaketten zum 1. Mai 19341939. Herkunftund Funktion von Bildsymbolen im Faschismus,sthetik und Kommunikation, 26 (1976), pp.5660.A last example of Nazi reinterpretation of leftist symbolism was its prominent use of red, to thisday a colour closely associated with the left. For an analysis of the meaning of the First of May forthe Nazi movement before 1945, as well as for the neo-Nazi movement today, see Casquete andGrasdorf, (note 34).As for Rudolf He, ever since one year after his death on August 17, 1987, at the prison of Berlin-Spandau, he has been regularly honored as a martyr for peace, not only by the German right-wing scene but also by those in other European countries. To this end, and not without legalobstacles, right-wing extremists have staged demonstrations throughout Germany, wheneverpossible in the cemetery of Wunsiedel (Bavaria), where He is buried. From 1991 through 2000,demonstration-homages in Wunsiedel were forbidden; prohibition resumed in 2005. In an attemptto overcome prohibitions, these rituals of solidarity have been organised in neighbouring coun-tries such as Luxemburg, Sweden and Denmark; see Thomas Drfler and Andreas Klrner, DerRudolf-He-Gedenkmarsch in Wunsiedel: Rekonstruktion eines nationalistischen Phantasmas,Mittelweg36/4 (2004), pp. 7491.

47. Agentur fr soziale Perspektiven, ASP, eds., Versteckspiel: Lifesyle, Symbole und Codes von neonazistis-chen und extrem rechten Gruppen(ASP e.V.: Berlin, 2002).

48. Casquete and Grasdorf, (note 34).49. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000); Idem, Smart

Mobs: Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access(Cambridge, MA: Perseus,2003).

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