Media : Neo-Nazi Tests Denmark’s Defense of Free Speech : American Gary Lauck, the ‘Farm-Belt Fuhrer,’ awaits extradition to Germany for peddling Nazi paraphernalia and periodicals.

Until this year, Gary Lauck was one of the leading lights of the international neo-Nazi movement, a successful publisher who, from a base in Lincoln, Neb., shipped racist and nationalist materials in 10 languages to eager readers around the world.

In Germany, where the dissemination of all forms of Nazi writings and paraphernalia is proscribed, investigators say Lauck has long been the leading source of such contraband as white-power T-shirts, swastika stickers, editions of “Mein Kampf,” taped storm trooper marches, and copies of the banned newspaper, “National Socialist Battle Cry.”

The Anti-Defamation League has called Lauck the far right’s most dangerous propagandist. His prominence, and his Midwestern roots, have earned him the nickname “The Farm-Belt Fuhrer.”

Today, though, Lauck is stuck in a prison here in Roskilde, fighting extradition to Germany, the country that his newspapers have so tirelessly celebrated. His arrest testifies to a newfound willingness in liberal Denmark to crack down on foreign extremists who exploit this country’s free-speech protections.

Denmark’s retreat from toleration has brought up short the members of its small neo-Nazi movement.

“It is just the same as if [Indian author] Salman Rushdie came to Denmark, and the Danish police arrested him and sent him to Iran,” complained Jonni Hansen, a heavyset former hospital orderly who at 29 leads the Danish National Socialist Movement.

“I know the conditions in Germany, and I know what sentences people get” for neo-Nazi agitation, said Hansen, who supports kicking all immigrants out of Denmark and turning his homeland into an all-white, agrarian nation. “Really, you can’t call Germany a democratic state.”

Danish police moved in on the 42-year-old Lauck in March while he was visiting Hansen and his soul mates at their fenced-in, graffiti-smeared compound in the town of Greve, south of Copenhagen. Until his arrest, Lauck had been printing the Danish Movement’s newspaper, Foedrelandet, o r “Fatherland.” And he boasted of slipping his German-language materials over the German borders through such ingenious means as carrier pigeons.

Even so, Lauck is not believed to have broken any Danish laws. In Denmark, almost as much as in the United States, freedom of expression is a cherished constitutional right.

It is Germany that is after Lauck, and even though the Danish authorities are slow to trim their country’s free-speech guarantees, they have been cooperating with their southern neighbor. They arrested Lauck on the strength of Germany’s international arrest warrant, and two lower Danish courts have already ruled that Lauck can, in fact, be extradited south.

Lauck, who started going by the name Gerhard at age 17 in what he calls “an act of cultural consciousness,” is fighting to stay out of Germany. He has filed an appeal with the highest Danish court. A decision on whether the court will take the high-profile case is expected any day.

Some Danish free-speech absolutists worry that by pursuing Lauck, their liberal homeland is caving in to pressure from Germany, their dominant neighbor.

“They did the same thing [in World War II], when a man named Hitler was leading Germany,” charged Lauck’s court-appointed lawyer, Erik Liisborg. “Then, it was the Jews who were sent back to Germany” when rounded up in Denmark.

But others argue that Denmark’s handling of the Lauck affair shows that it is possible to balance a proud tradition of free speech against a wish to keep foreign neo-Nazis away.

“We think we’ve hit a reasonable balance,” said Bjorn Elmquist, head of the Danish parliamentary justice committee.

Though Lauck is a particularly big fish, he is not the first foreign neo-Nazi to wash up in Denmark. Preceding his arrival was that of an elderly German publisher, Thies Christophersen, who fled here in 1986 when a German court found him guilty of propagating what is known in Germany as “the Auschwitz lie.” In Germany, it is a crime to deny that European Jews were systematically annihilated during the Nazi era.

Christophersen, who served as an SS officer and “farming supervisor” at Auschwitz, had been publishing a small magazine, Die Bauernschaft, in Germany; in its pages he claimed to have seen nothing amiss at Auschwitz and concluded that there must therefore have been no Holocaust. When the German authorities cracked down, he rushed to Denmark, pronounced himself an “exile,” and went about his business just over the border, in the Danish village of Kolland.

Before long, Christophersen was doing a six-figure business, and Danes were up in arms at the thought of a former SS officer using their peaceful, green countryside as a haven from which to rally the German masses. The Danish police arrested Christophersen in 1988, but he successfully fought extradition on free-speech grounds.

Then, as now with Lauck, the legal arguments revolve around Article 266b of the Danish penal code--the only statute on the books that permits limits on freedom of expression. Article 266b criminalizes racist remarks; it was adopted by Parliament in response to a 1968 United Nations convention calling on signatory nations to fight racism.

At the time of Christophersen’s arrest, Article 266b had little bite. The associated fines were small, the jail terms short. When it proved powerless to deport the likes of Christophersen, indignant Danes took to demonstrating in front of the former Auschwitz gardener’s house.

“Here’s the central question: Should we make our society into a more controlled society, as in Germany?” asked Elmquist, head of the parliamentary justice committee. “We think that it’s much better to have such stupid people [as Lauck and Christophersen] running around out in the open.”

But after extensive public hearings, the Danish parliament did amend Article 266b this spring. The new law is tougher, and Elmquist believes that if Christophersen were arrested again today, he would not be able to wrap himself in the Danish constitution as he did in 1988. (In practice, it’s a moot point: The former SS officer has reportedly sold his publishing business and retired to Switzerland.)

It remains to be seen whether the new, stricter law will apply in Lauck’s case. It wasn’t on the books yet when the Farm Belt Fuhrer was arrested. But Elmquist believes the Danish judges were heavily influenced by the detailed debate over free speech and Article 266b that took place during the amending process, just before Lauck was put in his Roskilde prison cell. The key question in deciding whether Lauck can be sent to Germany to stand trial is not only whether his newspapers contain illegal, racist statements, but also whether the punishments in Denmark are similar to those he would receive if convicted in Germany.

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And in fact, the sentences in Denmark are still lighter, even under the terms of the new law. In Germany, a neo-Nazi can be sentenced to five years imprisonment for dealing in Nazi paraphernalia, but in Denmark, the maximum sentence is two years. And in practice, Elmquist says, nobody gets that much time.

“I think the most anybody ever got in Denmark was 60 days,” said Elmquist approvingly. “I don’t believe you get better and better by sitting in prison. I believe you get worse.”

As it happens, Lauck has already served more than those 60 days, just waiting for his extradition case to make its way through Danish courts. It’s conceivable that his lawyers will convince the high court that Lauck has already served more time than he would ever have to serve on a Danish racist-speech conviction.

If that were to happen, Lauck could be released on a technicality, and Germany’s hopes of silencing the Farm Belt Fuhrer would be dashed. Lauck could travel freely back to Nebraska, to again fulfill the reading appetites of racists and anti-Semites around the world.