[PART 51]
Führer-Ex
The making and unmaking of a Neo-Nazi
Fuhrer-Ex: Memoirs of a former Neo-Nazi
By Ingo Hasselbach
with Tom Reiss
Random House, 388 pages, $24
Some would relegate neo-Nazis to a loathsome, but relatively small and
ineffectualfar-right fringe group. They might urge: worry about the real
terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) [Irish ROMAN
Army? - Wol.] or the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas who continue to
wreak deadly havoc around the world.
Overlooked is the fact that German neo-Nazis have menaced and killed
refugeeson their soil, and the intriguing possibility of a neo-Nazi link in
the devastating 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. Defendant
Timothy McVeigh's lawyer has traveled to London to investigate whether
British neo-Nazis contributed bomb components. [The Jewish Review.
March 15, 1996]
Even if no such international conspiracy is uncovered in this case, it is
known that much German neo-Nazi support-in the form of hate and Holo-
caust denial propaganda and explosives manuals (some of U.S. military
issue) -- is forthcoming from U.S. white power groups. The author cites
NEBRASKA as the WORLD HEADQUARTERS of the successor of the
original German Socialist German Workers (aka: NAZI) Party (Could there
be any connection between this fact and the reported encounters with
"German speaking" aerial disk pilots in NEBRASKA, which have been
documented by at least two witnesses? - Wol). Ironically, the German
post-Reich ban on such materials in conjunction with American First
Amendment free speech provisions foster this situation. A more subtle
reason for concern over the ascendancy of such extremist groups is the
current highest postwar unemployment rate in Germany. [The Oregonian.
March 10, 1996]
The famous Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal is more cognizant than most
of this genuine ongoing threat, and has praised this courageous first-ever
insider account of the international neo-Nazi network. Known as the "
Führerof the East," Ingo Hasselbach came of age as a rebel
against the East German Communist state (represented by his Communist
journalist father who he did not know as his real father until adolescence).
While being watched since age 14 by the Stasi (GDR secret police) as a
"potential disturber of the socialist peace...," he courted every
protest group regardless of politics: hippies, punks, skinheads. Getting a
prison education from a former Gestapo officer about the alleged Jewish
conspiracy against the Fatherland, he "graduated" to form the
German Democratic Republic's first neo-Nazi party in 1988 and served for
five years as the leader of the movement's recruiting and violent activities.
While not excusing Hasselbach's behavior, his fractured family background
in a totalitarian state surely served as fertile ground for a career as a sub-
versive. Early memories humanize what might have been a mere diatribe
against his former peers: e.g., his grandmother telling him, ironically,of
being taken to a concentration camp for looking Jewish and then being
released (one of many ironies in the book); and being impressed by the
rebelliousness, rather than the ideology, of a school classmate who gave
the Nazi salute to an authoritarian teacher.
Hasselbach now lives in fear of his life from former Kamrades, for his public
dialog devoted to dissuading German youth from his fanatical path. How
then did his re-education and renunciation in 1993 evolve? His conscience
was finally penetrated by the fatal 1992 firebombing of a Turkish family,
though he claims that his group was not responsible for that incident; the
final severing resulted from the attempted bombing of his mother's Berlin
apartment in response to the earliest inkling of his turncoat leanings. Coinci-
dentally in the U.S. for the first time just two days prior to the Oklahoma City
Federal Building bombing, he described in non-excusing words his reaction
to such horrific events: "Morally, I was a bomb-thrower and just as
responsible as anyone who planted a fuse or drove a truck with explosives.
""The first step for me in rejoining the civilized world was in
realizing that." "And the first step in fighting them was to tell
the story of what made me one of them, of how I pulled others in, and of
how a sewer of the Third Reich waste water flows beneath the clean streets
of modern Germany."
Hasselbach provides chilling insight into the psychology of hatred and alien-
ation:"...I had walked as if sealed inside an ideological space suit, treat-
ing my enemies as if they were deadly viruses. The suit kept the virus from
infecting me and killing the hate. To take the suit off and approach my enemy,
without my ideology on, was to risk discovering him as a person."
Perhaps even more important than insights into the neo-Nazi psyche and
organization, this book confronts us with the dilemma of how to inoculate
against such inhumane ideas and actions in a democratic society.
Reviewed by Sala Horowitz, Ph.D.
Sala Horowitz, Ph.D., is a Portland, Oregon writer/researcher with extensive
experience in health, education and the social sciences.