Michael Nier

Michael Nier (* 1943 in Dresden ) is a German social scientist , journalist and politician .

Scientific career

Nier was formerly director of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Engineering University Mittweida and at times also worked as a university lecturer at the TU Dresden and at the Technical University of Chemnitz . Before the fall of the Wall, he last taught as a full professor of Marxism-Leninism . He now works as a car mechanic and freelance publicist.

Political commitment

At times Nier was involved in the board of the Freedom Party of Germany . In 1996/97 he was one of the founding members of the party-affiliated Johann Gottlieb Fichte Foundation of the party The Republicans . From the beginning of 1998 he appeared in public for the first time in the environment of the NPD , since June 1998 he has been a member of the economic policy working group of the NPD's party executive. In the Saxon state elections in 1999, Nier was number 2 on the NPD list, and in June 1999 he ran unsuccessfully at number 5 on the NPD list for the European Parliament. In the Lower Saxony constitution protection report from 1999, Nier's candidacy for the NPD is named as an example of the strategy of “German socialism ”. In a portrait of the German voice 9/99 it says about his candidacy: "As a self-confessed socialist he believes that only a national turning point can bring real changes."

Nier wrote for right-wing extremist magazines such as Staatsbriefe , Opposition or Nation und Europa and, before his extreme turn to the right, also for the newspaper Neues Deutschland , which is close to the PDS . In Nation und Europa (5/98, pp. 23-27) he explained to his sympathizers the choice of the PDS as a not absurd possibility or even suggested it : “One thing is certain, the PDS is currently the stake in the parliamentary flesh of the Federal Republic of Germany , and it is currently the only known party that opposes neoliberal global strategy. [...] One can probably say that the majority of the members and voters of the PDS are nationally oriented and they are of the opinion that international finance capital is working through the ruling system parties to destroy the welfare state and culture in Germany es Nier, who in the extreme right is promoting the combination of nationalist approaches with anti-capitalism from the right. He thus reflects a current trend of the NPD. According to Nier, “new interest fronts” have emerged. The rule of "transnational capital, ultra-free trade, the consistent capitalist transformation of the polities" allows only one conclusion: "The new political front will be drawn between the neoliberals and the anti-neoliberals." ( Nation und Europa 10/98 , P. 11)

After two and a half years of membership, Nier left the NPD in frustration in 2000 because he saw too little support for his "socialist" positions. Many party members and the executive committee accused him of wanting to turn the NPD into the "left wing of neo-Nazism". In the left, his strategy (Marx reception, partly positive reference to parts of left politics) was analyzed as a means to split and weaken the left in Germany through a kind of reverse (positively interpreted) totalitarianism doctrine. Nier is still campaigning for a right-wing reception of Marx and advocating anti-American positions. In May 2008 Nier was a speaker at the Deutsche Akademie .

Web links

• Jean Cremet: "The anti-capitalist longing of the German people ..." On the renewed boom of "anti-capitalism from the right" and the renewed confusion of the left on this occasion (www.trend.infopartisan.net)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Gottlieb Fichte Foundation About Us ( Memento from April 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive )