RAGGACORE

It´s not only the adresses of left antifascists they collect, but also the ones of judges, teachers, scientists, jewish people and politician acting against the far-right

Some commentators mention that the adoption of left symbols by the right isn´t a historical new phenomenon: the Nazis in the pre-fascist Germany in the 1920s already adopted the red flag by the communists and re-coded symbols and ideology of the worker movement for their purposes [13].
The intention behind this is clear: to make symbols useless for the left and to transport their racist/ national-socialist agenda with (former) left symbols.

Adopting Left Phrases
Of course this isn´t all about clothes only. Nationalists also try to win supporters of the left e.g. with claiming "we want national socialism" pretending their concept of "Volksgemeinschaft" (roughly translated as "people´s community") is socialism [14].
This follow the logic to canalize popular political issues for their purposes. They were
sticking themselves to social protests by joining the "Anti-Hartz IV" - protest against the merging of unemployment and social benefit in autumn 2004 [15].

Of course the fascists don´t demand a free, equal society. They simply have a "shortened" criticism of capitalism. For them it´s not capitalism itself to blame but the influence of some "evil" people and groups like "bad capitalists only speculating with money" (dividing capitalism in a "good" sphere of work and in a "bad" sphere of speculation), migrants (for "taking away german labour") and of course Jews (for "controlling the world" et cetera). Instead of abolishing capitalism, they want a hierarchical "Volksgemeinschaft" following racist criterias. They are not criticizing unequality but the imaginary exploitation of the german, white, able to work man by foreign forces [16].

They also adopt views (formerly) carried by left-wing "anti-imperialist" groups: against the (jewish) occupation of Palestine and the US-led invasion of Iraq.
This a, helps to relativize the role of (Nazi-)Germany and b, fits in their anti-semitic / anti-american concept: each "people" should have it´s own state at it´s "origin" place while the USA and Israel are blamed for not being "authentic cultures" but undermining and suppressing all other people worldwide [17]. Of course the concerns of the people in Palestine don´t matter: the whole "solidarity" of the german right goes to the fact that they interpret the situation as a struggle against the jews [18].
In this picture also fits that some left-wing songs are played at far-right demonstrations like the song "Yankees raus" (Yankees go home) of german political punkrock band SLIME (which were very popular in the 1980s) [19].

So the far-right is trying to take over more and more formerly left-wing dominated political issues like social protest. And the results are frightening: the extreme right party NPD could get 9,2% (former 1,4%) of the votes for the regional parlament of Saxony in september 2004 with an election campaign focussing only on social protest [20].

So the strategy of nationalists seems to pay off for them: occupying formely left dominated political issues and strategies to gain popularity.

Advanced Copying in Progress: The Black Bloc of the Far-Right
One example for an advanced adoption of left strategies is the strategical concept of a right-wing black bloc. "Autonomous nationalists" are trying to form a black bloc on demonstrations [21]. This causes a lot of confusion at the police and at protestors- it´s not easy to distinguish between nationalists and antifascists.

But the far-right didn´t get the ideas behind of the black bloc. In the left version it never was a purpose but an aim- to avoid that individuals were caught by the police mainly as a form of protection.
So in the mid-90s the german police was able to cope with the black block in tactical terms. So this concept was abolished and was wandering through the media to denote all kind of left-wing activities.

Autonomous Nationalists in Cologne on the 16.10.2004