The Bonn Government will not ask the Constitutional High Court at Karlsruhe to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party even though its aims are anti-democratic, Minister of Interior Paul Luecke said today. He added, however, that the Federal Government will keep NPD activities under close scrutiny.
There had been considerable speculation here in the past few weeks that the Government would seek the constitutional court’s ruling on the legality of NPD activities which have become disturbingly reminiscent of the early days of the Nazi movement. NPD chairman Adolf Von Thadden has stated in speeches that he advocates anschluss with Austria and considers the 1939 Munich pact, which led to the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and World War II, still legal and valid. NPD rallies have been increasingly attended by violence and the party has established security guards to silence protestors.
Von Thadden recently endorsed the anti-Israel position taken by President de Gaulle, and his followers have, increasingly, taken an openly anti-Semitic position although denying that they accept Nazi racialism.
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