DORTMUND, Germany — He is known here as SS-Siggi, and with his bulky frame and “Germania” tattoos, he certainly looks the part.
For
30 years, which have included several brushes with the law, Siegfried
Borchardt — a.k.a. SS-Siggi and who can bear a passing resemblance to
Hulk Hogan — has been involved in the far right in this bleak city of
600,000, working from the political fringe. This month, to the horror of
the political establishment and many residents, he took his seat on the
94-member City Council.
His
ascent has punctured Germany’s image of itself as a country allergic to
the nationalism and populism gaining ground elsewhere in Europe. That
Germany — in Bavaria, in the southwest, around Frankfurt — is Europe’s
economic powerhouse, with low unemployment, booming exports and gleaming
stores oozing prosperity.
Dortmund
is another Germany: a run-down former coal and steel hub in the
industrial Ruhr heartland, with a scruffy north side, few jobs, higher
than average crime in some districts, and a large center for registering
asylum seekers, and where almost one in three inhabitants are of
foreign descent.
Mr.
Borchardt’s election in May both shocked and divided residents, and it
has helped lay bare a host of tensions — not just between native Germans
and more recent immigrants, but also among the city’s many immigrant
groups themselves — that have arisen from the city’s profound
demographic changes.
When
Mr. Borchardt and about two dozen neo-Nazis tried to gain entry to a
postelection party in May, it set off a brawl on the steps of City Hall.
“Foreigners out!” one group screamed; “Nazis out!” the other yelled.
Amid
a mist of pepper spray, 10 people were wounded, including Christian
Gebel, 38, a computer graphics designer and City Council member for the
Pirate Party, who still bears the small scar above his right eyebrow
where a flying beer bottle struck him.
When
Mr. Borchardt took his seat on the City Council last week, accompanied
to City Hall by 15 of his friends, the police were taking no chances.
“More police than politicians,” the local newspaper, the Ruhr
Nachrichten, concluded on its live blog, as Mr. Borchardt and his cohort
were greeted by 200 anti-Nazi protesters who had gathered to jeer him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/world/europe/a-neo-nazis-political-rise-exposes-a-german-citys-ethnic-tensions.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
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