The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Quarter of All Germans Favor One Party Rule
Posted by admin on: 2006-11-17 08:32:02 in category: General [ Print]

A tenacious number of Germans hold far-right views including deep skepticism about democracy, belief in their supremacy over other nations and suspicion of Jews, a poll released Wednesday indicated. About 5,000 Germans were questioned for the survey conducted for the respected Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is run by the Social Democratic Party, partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government.

It found that nine percent of those polled believed “predominantly” or “completely” that under some circumstances a dictatorship can be a better system to run a state than a democracy. Fifteen percent support an iron-fisted leader “to govern Germany for the benefit of all”. One in four — 26 percent — said they favored a single party in Germany “that would embody the national community as a whole”.

About 15 percent said they believed the Germans were “by nature” superior to other cultures while one in 10 said they believed that some human beings were unworthy to live.

Sociologist Oliver Decker of the University of Leipzig, who conducted the study for the Usuma opinion research institute, said he noticed key regional differences. Easterners, he said, were more likely to express xenophobic views while westerners were more anti-Semitic.

Forty-four percent of those in the former communist east said that foreigners came to Germany to exploit the generous social welfare system, versus 35.2 percent in the west. Meanwhile 15.8 percent of westerners agreed with the statement “Jews use dirty tricks more than other people”, against six percent in the east.

Westerners were also more likely to play down the importance of the Nazi era, with nine percent saying they thought the focus on this period was exaggerated versus five percent in the east. Decker said that unemployed Germans expressed right-wing views most often, followed in second place by pensioners. And more men held far-right opinions than women.

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