Backwerk runs hundreds of bakeries across Germany and neighboring countries – a McDonaldization of the beloved German Bäckerei. And it really is convenient! As you would expect, Backwerk is controlled by a faceless corporate structure: It was bought by the the Swiss holding company Valora in 2017, which was in turn bought by the Mexican beverage conglomerate FEMSA in 2022.

The bakery chain has been in the news recently, and not because of bread. The company was founded by Hans-Christian Limmer – he didn’t open the first location, but like Ray Kroc of McDonald’s fame, he turned single locations into an empire. Limmer sold his shares in Backwerk in 2013 for an estimated 100 million euros.

Limmer is not just a serial entrepreneur in the food service industry, but apparently also a supporter of right-wing structures: Last November, he invited an elite group of right-wing politicians to an exclusive Potsdam hotel to discuss “remigration” with the right-wing extremist Martin Sellner. In a statement to the business newspaper Handelsblatt, Limmer claimed that he signed the invitation without looking into the speakers. He didn’t attend the meeting and later distanced himself from the content of the meeting in which he had “played no role” in the planning.

According to Wikipedia, Limmer grew up in a household full of Holocaust deniers and Nazis. He has been involved in the right-wing extremist association Gedächtnisstätte which aims to build a private memorial for German victims of the Second World War.

Limmer is no longer an investor in Backwerk, and his new company, the burger chain Hans im Glück, asked him to leave when reports of the Potsdam meeting went public. So, if you buy a coffee or a burger, you don’t need to worry about directly supporting fascism.

Yet Limmer is no outlier. What happens when you get a yogurt drink from Müllermilch? I had never tried one before because of persistent rumors this would support the Nazi party NPD. I had never seen any evidence. In November of last year, however, Handesblatt revealed that Theo Müller was meeting regularly with Alice Weidel, the head of the far-right party AfD. This was about the same time that one of Weidel’s top advisors was talking with Sellner about deporting millions of people.

This list could continue. I’ve written before about how realty speculators have an affinity for the Far Right. Some of the richest capitalist dynasties in Germany today are the heirs of Nazi war criminals who supported Hitler. But the problem isn’t just with German oligarchs, either. Elon Musk spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories and uses his vast wealth to help Nazis get their message out.

There is something about billionaires, amassing vast power without any democratic legitimacy, that makes them incline toward a Nietzschean world view. Especially if all that money is inherited, the benefactors almost need to believe a select few are born to rule and the rest of us can only serve. It’s no coincidence that so few billionaires donate money to advance the cause of proletarian revolution. As one author put it, the ultra-rich are ultra-conservative.

In the last month, hundreds of thousands of people have been taking the streets to protest against the AfD. That’s great. If only racism were limited to that one party! The government (SPD, Greens, and FDP) is calling for more deportations. The opposition (CDU) is trying to outdo them with racist agitation. While the AfD is getting all the flak for the Potsdam meeting, there were as many CDU members present to listen to Sellner. The owner of the hotel is a local CDU official. There was an unsurprisingly large number of ‘entrepreneurs’, i.e. capitalists.

Some people suggest a boycott. But the only way to prevent capitalists from supporting right-wing politics is to put their wealth under democratic control. Expropriation would protect democracy.

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s article which originally appeared in his Neues Deutschland Red Flag column.

On February 19, 2020 nine people were shot and killed by a neo-Nazi in the German city of Hanau: Ferhat Unvar, Hamza Kurtović, Said Nesar Hashemi, Vili-Viorel Păun, Mercedes Kierpacz, Kaloyan Velkov, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Sedat Gürbüz and Gökhan Gülteki.

The perpetrator had expressed extreme hatred of foreigners, women, muslims, and jews in posts online. He carefully chose the locations, a shisha bar and a betting shop, to target people with a migration background, who he believed should be ‘completely exterminated’ from Germany.

Deadly Failings

In the four years since the attack a series of investigations has uncovered major failings in the authorities’ response. Initiative 19. Februar Hanau, a group representing survivors and victims’ families, has questioned why after identifying the perpetrator, it took the police five hours to arrive at his nearby home. And why, after they finally did arrive outside the house, they claimed not to hear gunshots when the perpetrator shot his mother and then himself.

There are many more serious questions. The perpetrator was known to the police but never had his gun licences revoked. Emergency calls on the night went unanswered. Families were not properly informed of their relatives’ deaths, and autopsies were performed without their permission. They have subsequently faced countless indignities including delays in financial support and continued racist harassment from the perpetrator’s father.

A year later it was revealed that 13 of the police officers working in Hanau that night had been subsequently suspended for being part of racist, far-right group chats.

We can never know to what extent far-right sympathies combined with institutional discrimination, incompetence and apathy determined the course of what happened that night, and the response that followed but as Dimitra Andritsou from research collective Forensis, summarised: “Much like the shots around the perpetrator’s house, the state’s refusal to hear — on the night of the crime, and for many years afterwards — is a political choice, and indicative of deeply entrenched racist structures within the German state.”

Dangerous Rhetoric

Despite the shock and outrage expressed by German politicians and media outlets at the time, there has been a continual normalisation of extreme right-wing views in the years since the attack. Mainstream parties, including the governing Social Democrats, have increasingly taken on xenophobic talking points. In October chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared on the front cover of magazine Der Spiegel alongside a quote from his interview: “We must finally deport people on a large scale”. As austerity policies begin to take hold, and the German economy dips into recession, the ground is ripe for scapegoating immigrants and other minority groups.

The far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), some of whose leading members have called for an end to commemoration of the holocaust, has been comfortably polling as the second most popular party, at around 20% for months now. The opposition CDU has also begun to break the long held taboo of cooperation with the AfD, voting with them on both a local and state level.

The past decades have seen dozens of neo-Nazi attacks and murders in Germany, and these incidents are on the rise. There have also been numerous revelations of far-right networks made up of police and members of the military. Like the families of Hanau, many of the targets of these terror attacks have experienced a serious mishandling of their cases by authorities.

The recent revelations of a meeting between senior AfD members, business leaders and neo-Nazi groups to plan large-scale deportations of immigrants have been met with huge protests across Germany. There has also been widespread condemnation from mainstream parties. But these statements feel hollow when politicians readily take on anti-immigration talking points and have made few serious attempts to tackle structural racism. Lip service is paid but policies and language often tell a different story.

Memorial Events

There are many events planned in the coming days across Germany to commemorate the nine who lost their lives in Hanau and to call for serious action on structural racism and extremist groups. A statement from Initiative 19. Februar has called for people to come together, support each other, and to demand proper investigations into right-wing murders and violence.

In Hanau a memorial demonstration will take place on Saturday 17th February at 14:00.

In Berlin there are two events planned on Monday 19th February:

oplatz4hanau

17:00 – 19:00 at Oranienplatz, Kreuzberg. More information here.

Vier Jahre Hanau – Die Konsequenz ist Widerstand

Memorial at 17:30 and march at 19:00 starting at S-Bahn Sonnenalle, Neukölln. More information here.