Right now, there are two German political parties that are growing at alarming rates. The neo-NaziNational Democratic Party made headlines recently as it quadrupled its party base in the former East German state of Saxony. Meanwhile, polls show that the neo-CommunistLeft Party has increased its nationwide support from 9 percent to 14 percent over the last three years. It is now Germany’s third-largest political organization.

More and more Germans are turning to either right-wing or left-wing extremism as high taxes, low wages, and high unemployment cause them to become disillusioned with their country’s current economic system.

Left Party co-leader Oskar Lafontaine has become so disillusioned with Germany’s current system that he has recently called for his party to adopt sections of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto as official party policy. In particular, he would like to include the section that reads: “For exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the bourgeoisie] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

In other words, Lafontaine and his supporters are primarily dissatisfied by what they perceive as capitalist exploitation of the German people.

The same disillusionment that is attracting Germans to the far left is also attracting other Germans to the far right. The reason for this seemingly paradoxical situation is that both sides of the spectrum espouse a socialist philosophy. Consider the following quote from Adolf Hitler’s air force commander, Hermann Göring, on what is National Socialism: “Our movement seized the concept of socialism from the cowardly Marxist, and tore the concept of nationalism from the cowardly bourgeois parties, throwing both into the melting pot of our worldview, and producing a clear synthesis: German National Socialism.”

Basically, Nazism is Marxism plus intense German nationalism. Both systems demand a strong, authoritarian, central government that actively manages the economy. Nazism is National Socialism, while Marxism is International Socialism.

Many Germans are turning to either right-wing or left-wing extremism, and they are doing it for the same reasons. They want a strong leader who will espouse both a more socialistic and a more authoritarian type of government. If such a leader were to emerge, he would likely draw support from both sides of the political spectrum. The discontent that Germany’s current economic policies are creating could very well be the catalyst that leads to the ascension of a second Adolf Hitler.

For more information on how Germany’s current economic policies parallel its 1930s economic policies, read “The 1930s All Over Again.”