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A party considered by many to be neo-Nazi has won seats in a regional parliament in Germany. It's the third time that's happened in two years, and this time it's in the home state of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The results indicate anger toward Merkel's ruling coalition, as NPR's Emily Harris reports from Berlin.
EMILY HARRIS: Pre-election polls predicted that Germany's National Democratic Party, known here as the NPD, would pass the five percent mark needed to get into parliament in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in northeastern Germany.
At the area's Schweriner Volkszeitung newspaper, editor Thomas Shunck(ph) says many NPD supporters are among the 18 percent of locals who are unemployed.
Mr. THOMAS SHUNCK (Editor, Schweriner Volkszeitung Newspaper): People are without jobs, without hope of getting a job anywhere in this country.
HARRIS: Young men in particular, he says, and other people who haven't made it in the 16 years since German reunification. There's a specific German word for this - a vendefellur(ph) is someone who that enormous change made into a loser.
Mr. SHUNCK: They see themselves as losers. I'm not sure whether they must be losers.
HARRIS: Unemployment breeds resentment toward immigrants, a sentiment the NPD focuses on. And social organizations such as churches or labor unions that would point their members to the mainstream parties are weak in the former east says political science professor Juergen Falter. He calls the NPD a real, true, right-wing extremist party.
Professor JUERGEN FALTER (Professor of Political Science, University of Mainz, Germany): It's a mix of nationalism and socialism with a few, well, ingredients of neo-Nazism. Many ingredients, actually. And the strategy is being bourgeois at the one time, and neo-Nazi/skinhead oriented at a street level on the other hand.
HARRIS: The German government tried to ban the NPD, but lost in court three years ago. Government informants were among the high party officials testifying, and the court decided it wasn't clear what evidence was real and what was part of the government's infiltration.
Prof. Falter says Germany's political class is divided on whether to try again.
Prof. FALTER: I myself am in favor of the banning or outlawing the party, but then it would mean that you have to draw back all your moles, your secret agents within the party. So you don't have any information any longer of what's going on inside the party. And that's why our minister of the interior for example, Mr. Schäuble, is strictly against another attempt of banning the party by legal means.
HARRIS: The NPD isn't in charge now in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, far from it. It's the smallest party in parliament with no chance of being a coalition member. Constitutional law professor Orech Battis(ph) says that's important to remember.
Professor ORECH BATTIS (Professor of Constitutional Law): It's not good for us. It's not good for the image of Germany and I don't like it. But it's no question that if you compare it with old Germany, it's really unimportant.
HARRIS: Unlike other European countries, including Austria, Denmark, Italy and France, he says no far-right party in Germany has had a following on the national level since the end of World War II.
Last year, the NPD got about 1.5 percent in federal elections here.
Emily Harris, NPR News, Berlin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
