Cottbus, Germany - The song blaring from the loudspeakers on the election campaign car is deceptively soft and melodious - matching the sleepy atmosphere in the main square in Cottbus, a small city in former east Germany. The lyrics, however, strike a different note: "When a refugee or a foreigner counts for more than a German, I ask myself, what's going wrong here?".
The singer is an artist named Annett - featured on several far- right German websites listing "Ballads of National Resistance", where she appears alongside bands called "Blitzkrieg" and "Brown Brothers".
The small group of around 50 activists playing her music at their rally belongs to Germany's largest far-right party, the National Democratic Party (NPD), which is running in Germany's general election on September 27.
"Foreigners are taking away German wealth," says Ronny Zasowk, the 23-year-old NPD chairman in the nearby tourist region of Spreewald, adding: "They didn't help to create it. It's also selfish of them with regard to their own countries. They should be working at 'home'."
Zasowk, a politics student in nearby Potsdam, takes it in turns with two other men to rouse the group, made up mainly of young men in jeans and T-shirts. They are carrying black-and-red flags and banners with slogans such as "Germany's fate is your fate."
At the 2005 general election, the NPD polled 1.5 per cent nationally, well short of the 5 per cent needed to be represented in parliament. But in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the capital Berin, it nearly doubled its vote to 3.2 per cent.
The party has traditionally been stronger in former communist East German than in the West, capitalizing on high unemployment and social alienation since German reunification in 1990.
It has six representatives in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and at regional elections in August the party won re-election to Saxony's federal state parliament. It also tripled its vote to 4.3 per cent in the state of Thuringia, though ultimately failed to win a seat.
In Cottbus, passers-by appear less impressed. "Pigs!" shouts one man on a bicycle as he rides past.
Jan Duong, a German-Vietnamese waiter, sits outside the cafe where he works in the city's main square. The 28-year-old says that though he has had insults shouted at him in the street he has never felt afraid of the NPD.
While the demonstration in Cottbus remained peaceful, however, the Federal Office of the Protection of the Constitution in April reported a general rise in violent crime committed by the far right.
In July, a man who had previously declared his allegiance to the NPD stabbed an Egyptian woman to death in a Dresden court room.
In August, an Angolan-born black activist working for the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) party in Thuringia received special police protection after the NPD openly threatened him.
However, efforts to ban the party have been met with criticism even among anti-fascist activists and other political parties.
Banning the party would not get rid of the extreme right in Germany, says Volker Beck, leader of the Green Party parliamentary group: "I strongly advise against a new procedure (to ban the party)."
Zasowk - who refers to eastern Germany "Middle Germany" following the former Nazi claim to a greater Germany including parts of Poland and former Czechoslovaka - say any effort to ban the party would be "the last frightened cry of the state."
Young people in particular would be driven to the NPD as they were hit by the global economic crisis, he told the German Press Agency dpa. Over the last 12 months, the number of unemployed under 25 years old has risen by 17 per cent to 451,000 in Germany.
In 2008, the NPD claimed to have over 7,000 members. With an average age of 37, it is Germany's youngest political party, according to "Netz Gegen Nazis" - an internet-based anti-Nazi group sponsored by the German Champions League and other organizations.
"Young people have little voice in politics," says NPD stalwart Peter Naumann, who's been a member for 40 years. "They are losing their jobs and apprenticeships. Older people are maybe more resigned to the situation and feel they have more to lose if they vote for a radical party. But young people are willing to take risks."
In a bid to establish itself at grassroots level and shed its image as a party of thugs and skinheads, the NPD has started football clubs and organized camping trips. It has also encouraged its members to join local organizations such as the voluntary fire service.
Nevertheless, the party is expected to fail in its quest to enter the German federal parliament in the 2009 elections - a prospect simply shrugged of by the NPD in Cottbus: "You shouldn't take polls at face value," says Zasowk.
A 20-year-old member of the NPD youth group added: "We don't even want to be part of the system. It is sick and needs to be got rid of."
During their demonstration, the black-and-red did not even appear to make canvass local residents. No leaflets were haned out, and no activists appeared to talk to local voters in what appeared, instead, to be a defiant show of strength.
Only Annett's lyrics betrayed her soft voice as her songs were played across the square: "I am a member of the NPD. Noone bribed me or broke my will."
