Germany's far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) knows there is no such thing as bad publicity. That much was clear when the party's 12 MPs in the Saxon state parliament walked out on Friday rather than participate in a minute's silence for Holocaust victims.
For years the NPD has been the elephant in the corner of German public life, ignored by politicians and the media when possible.
But the NPD's stunt, and the apoplectic media reaction since, has pointed to the flaws of this strategy and shown that the neo-Nazi party will no longer be ignored. "I have to admit we were surprised by the strength of the reaction but we look forward to future political debate," said Mr Holger Szymonski, the NPD press spokesman.
"We weren't in a parliament before. Now that we are, we will use the podium to push our manifesto through."
The manifesto is an amateur document shot through with the racist wishful-thinking of a party that knows it may occasionally get into parliament but will never get into power. It calls for a crackdown on immigration, an end to foreigner entitlement to social welfare, or to a German passport. It does not recognise Germany's borders and calls for a revision of postwar border treaties.
NPD parliamentary leader Mr Holger Apfel gave a preview of what is to come in his speech on Friday when he accused German politicians of forcing their "guilt neurosis" and "anti-German historical lies" on the public.
The party will do its best to hijack next month's 60th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden. NPD leaders are the self-proclaimed champions of Dresden's dead, accusing the German establishment of treating them as second-class victims next to European Jews murdered by Nazis.
It is a dirty political tactic, parasitically drawing life blood from the recent taboo-breaking discussion here about German civilian victims of war, another stage on Germany's road to normalisation.
"We didn't invent the taboo or the taboo-break. We're just taking advantage of it," said Mr Szymonski.
Politicians in the Saxon parliament are perplexed over how best to react, or whether to react at all. "It's a real problem. You don't want to react to everything they say and let them provoke you. But what is the alternative? Letting their hate-filled speeches stand unchallenged?" said a leading Social Democrat in Saxony.
"We're already spending half our parliamentary time dealing with the NPD, which is probably exactly what they want." But there are signs that German politicians are slowly learning to play the NPD's game. The parties in the Saxon parliament have agreed a common line on how to deal with the NPD in the future.
"We will act and not just react," said an SPD spokesman.
The first example of this was when SPD parliamentary leader Prof Cornelius Weiss countered the NPD on Friday with an eloquent speech on behalf of all the other political parties.
He reminded the NPD that the fire that engulfed Dresden in 1945 began with the 1933 book-burning which then engulfed German synagogues, British cities, and the murdered millions in concentration camp incinerators. "But in the end the fire returned to the country of the arsonists," he said.
Political observers have urged German politicians and journalists to resist the NPD provocation. "Hysteria and alarmist reactions don't help. They are just a sign of helplessness," said Prof Eckhard Jesse, a political scientist and neo-Nazi expert.