PERSPECTIVE ON GERMANY : Some Myths About Right-Wing Violence : Officials must come to grips with a rightist problem that is not, contrary to illusions, exclusively eastern.

As if to mock the tougher line German officials have been hinting at, extremists pounded Germany this week with one its worst weekends of right-wing violence since unification. The terror peaked early Monday when neo-Nazis firebombed two apartment buildings in a North Sea town, killing a Turkish woman and two girls, ages 10 and 14. More lives have already been taken this year by right-wing radicals and skinheads than the notorious Baader Meinhof gang was able to extinguish at the height of its activity in 1977.

The ghastly spate of violence has left Germany’s leaders frustrated, disgusted and remorseful. But they will never muster the political will to smash a dangerous movement if they don’t explode myths about the roots of the violence shaking the country and fraying its relations with the world.

First is the wishful illusion that Germany’s right-wing problem is primarily an eastern phenomenon. Although proportionately higher in the former German Democratic Republic, there were more acts of right-wing violence this year in western Germany, where, despite the burdens of unification, the poverty line has been decreasing and per capita earnings are up. In fact, the largest number of suspects were from North Rhine-Westphalia, with the affluent southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg not far behind.

The latest rampage claimed three lives in the North Sea village of Molln in western Germany, not in the east. Last August, attacks on a hostel for refugees in the eastern German port city of Rostock horrified the world. But Rostock thugs were not operating alone. Right-wingers from the west came by bus to assist their comrades-in-arms--CB radios, baseball bats and Molotov cocktails in tow. Many eastern German rightists claim inspiration from neo-Nazi strategist Michael Kuhnen, a west German agitator who died of AIDS last year.

No, it’s not just an “Ost” problem, as some have wished to believe. Nor is growing right-wing sentiment exclusively tied to the disenfranchised and jobless. Gainfully employed Bundeswehr soldiers are currently under investigation for involvement in three murders, at least 20 attacks on refugee centers and the spreading of neo-fascist propaganda. In the west German city of Bielefeld, extremism is stronger among young people with jobs than it is among the unemployed, researchers have found. In the east German city of Cottbus earlier this month, police found submachine guns, carbines, tents and payroll records during raids on one ultrarightist group. The violence, officials still unconvincingly insist, is random and largely unorganized.

The biggest and perhaps most dangerous myth is that the growing right-wing movement is attributable to the increasing presence of foreigners and abuse of the country’s liberal asylum policy. It’s true that nearly half a million refugees have poured into Germany this year. But eastern Germany, scene of much of the most hideous violence, is home to only 120,000 of Germany’s 6 million foreigners. In fact, the east has fewer foreigners today than during Erich Honecker’s Communist rule.

While it’s true that extremists across Germany are singling out foreigners for violence, they’ve also been busting up brothels, desecrating Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials and storming hangouts frequented by gays and leftists. Of the 15 people killed by rightists this year, eight have been Germans. One German was beaten to death by neo-Nazis in Buxtehude last March for making anti-Hitler remarks. A 53-year-old man was murdered by hoodlums in Wuppertal north of Bonn two weeks ago, reportedly because he was a Jew. Germany needs to reform its asylum policy. But foreigners will not go away--the German economy needs some 300,000 a year to keep the wheels of industry moving. Neither will targets for right-wing radicals.

The roots of xenophobia, social aggression and criminal violence are complex, and Germany’s democrats have profound matters to ponder these days. But meanwhile, the responsibility of the democratic state is clear. Kurt Biedenkopf, the governor of the east German state of Saxony, warned an interviewer recently that “repression alone” was not the answer. Perhaps not. The state has the monopoly on the use of force and it’s not repression to crack down on violent anti-democrats. Nor will anyone question Germany’s democratic ethos if it starts to enforce laws that ban propaganda and symbols of any “former National Socialist organization.” The caller that phoned in the deadly arson attack in Molln hung up with a confident “Heil Hitler.”

In the 1970s, authorities launched a war on terror from the left. It’s urgent that Germany come to grips with a far more serious threat today.