German Blogs Report: Germany's Diverse Anti-War Crowd

An excellent German-language blog named "GeistesWelt" recently posted an absolutely fascinating series of pictures and captions documenting the 2003 activities of one notorious group of anti-US, anti-Iraq War demonstrators still active in Germany today.

It turns out this particular group of peace-lovers all have incredibly short hair and a fettish for black clothing! Here is a sampling:

The Neo-Nazi Group "Kameradschaft Saarlautern" Demonstrates: "Fight US Imperialism through revolutionary Nationalism"

A Nazi Demo ala Greenpeace: Both Signs read "Please Stop the War" (in German on right)

"For Peace and free (Palestinian flag): Against Globalization"

"United against US-Israeli Genocide"

Two Neo-Nazis in front of a US Base in Hanau, Germany: "Stop the US War Madness!: Put Out the Bush-Fire!: Fight 'One-World' Strategies!"

"Against the US Tyranny: For the Freedom of Peoples"

Learning from the Left: Nazi Candlelight Vigil "as a sign of solidarity with the Iraqi people."

More Skins Against the US War!

Skinhead Banner: "Hey You! Today we are bombing Iraq and tomorrow your homeland too...In the name of US-imperalist Freedom!"

And here is some text from the Nationalists' website describing a demonstration held in front of a US military base in Hanau, Germany back during major combat operations on March 29, 2003:

"After about three and a half kilometers our demonstration reached the grounds of the United States Army Pioneer Kaserne in Hanau and our calls of "Ami go home" immediately got even louder. Behind the buildings stood the US mercenaries and gaped at our protests like monkeys. But so that even they could clearly understand that we certainly hadn't come to join their friendly afternoon of grilling, our speakers translated our main slogans into English at the Kaserne gate. So, for example, one speaker let the US soldiers languishing around know that they are no soldiers to us (you are not soldiers) but instead bestial murderers of women and children (you are killers). "Murderers - Murderers" - Calls boomed forth from over 250 throats across to the Kaserne grounds..." 

And make no mistake: The very same people are out there today actively agitating against the United States, Israel, globalization and the Iraq War. Hard-right groups have already won representation in the parliaments of two east German states and are busily exploiting Germany's economic stagnation and mass unemployment while they spread their ideology of hate. Sad but true...

Update: This blog has more on the topic.

Comments

[PacRim Jim]

What the article calls "hard-right" bears no resemblance to the American right wing, which is for minimal government and maximum personal freedom. The Nazi's were/are socialists, after all.

[RayD]

"Hard right" is the term typically applied in Germany and you are right to question the accuracy of the term. It is sort of like the term "civil war", there is usually nothing civil about it.

[Pamela]

Someone help me out here. I thought Nazis were illegal in Germany.

We've got our home-grown here tho'. Toledo Ohio was the most recent display I'm aware of.

Well, attempted display, I should say. I believe they failed to show up after the cops and counter-demonstrators arrived.

So, for example, one speaker let the US soldiers languishing around know that they are no soldiers to us (you are not soldiers) but instead bestial murderers of women and children (you are killers). "Murderers - Murderers" -

I wonder if they have any idea how little our military people care what these loons think. I have family (military) who have been stationed in Germany and subjected to this posturing. They just laugh and snort.

[Scout]

It's sad, but Germany certainly has enough representation on the Looney Left / Communists / Socialists / Journalists that they really don't need reinforcement from this crowd.
@Pamula: I guess your family members have thicker skin than I do. I certainly can't laugh and snort. Perhaps because I am living here and have a lot of time, energy, and emotion invested in the country, not to mention a German wife. I can't distance myself that easily.
I just retired from the AF and am now teaching in a German Gymnasium, and I would guess that 90% of my colleagues are of the GEW / Socialist persuasion, and I get earfuls almost everyday about the Evils of America, Bush, etc. And these are the ones teaching the next generation. Great, huh?

[Huan]

I think it is well past time we relocate all our military bases from Germany.

[Eg]

Huan

My sentiments exactly and not in the 5 to 10 year time-frame that's currently on the books. Now.

As Blair sublimely hinted of the EU and its constitution but also of a strategy some years past, 'Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not.'

[Zachar1as]

@Pamela and @Huan
No panic, Nazis are illegal in germany. You are not allowed to show the hackenkreuz in the public or call out nazi paroles.
But we have here in germany the freedom of expression... so if they say we want to germany for germans or we dont like america they can do it.
If they only talk and dont act they can try to find some stupid ppl who thinks it is good what they say.

I dont like Bush too, but this wouldnt be a reason for me to join such dumpasses ;)

Notiz von David: Zachar1as, darf ich einmal eine Bitte äußern?
Sie verzieren unseren Blog seit einiger Zeit mit einer unsäglichen Anzahl von Schreibfehlern - nicht nur im Englischen, sondern auch im Deutschen ("Hackenkreuz"). Und leider werden Ihre orthographischen Fehler nicht durch die Qualität Ihrer Kommentare aufgewogen...
Es wäre schön - hier nun meine Bitte -, wenn Sie vor der Publizierung eines Kommentars den Text noch einmal auf Richtigkeit überprüfen könnten. Das macht jeder von uns so.
Sollten Sie sich diese Mühe in Zukunft nicht machen, setze ich Ihre Kommentare auf "Hold for Approval".

[J.T.]

"No panic, Nazis are illegal in germany."

No they are not illegal. It is illegal to show certain signs in public ( it would be legal to have a swastika on the wall in your living room) and it is illegal to deny the Holocaust , but it is not illegal to be a Nazi aka a Nationalsocialist. Nationalsocialism as a political ideology is perfectly legal in Germany.

[Zachar1as]

You have in every country nationalsocialist, germany, america, france, russia....
And everyone call them nazis becouse it is an popular term.
To be an nationalsocialist isnt illegal, it isnt illegal if you only demonstrate quit without violence.
You can read this in the german constitution:
Nobody may be disadvantaged or preferred because of its sex, its descent, its race, its language, its homeland and origin, its faith, its religious or political opinions. Nobody may be disadvantaged because of its handicap.

I think thats the price you must pay with democraticy, there are everytime such guys with different opinions.

[Sleepy]

That was 2003, when are they going to "Fight US Imperialism", it's almost 2006 already?

[Ray]

Reminds me of school yard antics. "You hit me first--no you hit me first". Problem is, this anti-American rabble have no punch.

Perhaps we should attempt to aggravate them even more. If we get them angry enough, perhaps they will get off the welfare gravy train and create a national defense that is something other than a farce.

[Zachar1as]

Mmmmh, I hadnt seen it that this is from 2003.... mmh, why is here such an old news?

[Huan]

Zacharias

It does not matter whether the NAzi party is legal in Germany or not. I do not want American troops to base and thus implicitly defend a nation who do not want nor welcome us. I have seen little to suggest otherwise from Germany.

[Pamela]

Thank you everyone for the clarification on the legality of Nazis in Germany.

Scout, my family members had seen some combat and just thought these guys were lame punks. Which they are. I don't know if this will be of any comfort to you in dealing with the socialist/utopian crowd but here goes: My favorite aunt and uncle were career Air Force. Uncle Guy was attached to NATO in France - Fountainbleu, I believe. They had lived there for 7 years when DeGaulle withdrew France from NATO and kicked everybody out. Well, all the French people that had become part of my aunt's daily life - the butcher, the hairdresser, etc., suddenly pretended they could not understand her French - and refused to speak English. They really enjoyed themselves. Until she started speaking to them in German.

BWAHAHAHA!

BTW, thank you, Sir, for your service.

[FranzisM]

There was a time when Nazis had their own foreign policy discourse, but with the war on terror they definitely became an appendix of the leftist discourse. This development cost the left some headaches to twist it into a crude theory that the Nazis were just out for "provocation."

This phenomenon is also a paradox illustration why the best thing about the left is its multiculturalism. The pictures above show what comes to the fore if the multiculturalism of the left is discarded while everything else remains: Inverted-reality Nazis that wish the terrorists to be their useful idiots.

[George M]

"No panic, Nazis are illegal in germany. You are not allowed to show the hackenkreuz in the public or call out nazi paroles"

The Neo Nazis are like rappers: they use symbols to declare their true allegiance. Rappers use items like their bling (jewelry if your German) and colors to declare their allegiance to a gang or another rapper. If a rapper declares allegiance to Tookie William's Crypts, he usually wears a blue do-rag. (bandana on your head, if you are German).

Things to look for when you are spotting Neo Nazis:

- Pre-WWI German flags. (Red white and black with a black Maltese Cross in the middle.)

- skin head (obvious).

- Army or engineer boots, laced all the way up, sometimes with the pant legs tucked in.

- Generous amounts of black leather.

- Generous amounts of piercings.

-Tattoos with the Maltese cross or soldiers in WWII uniforms.

My basis of knowledge: A German nephew who flirted with Neo Nazis after he got beat up in the Gesamt Schule (high school, if you are American) by Turks. Luckily, he grew out of it and is now a productive citizen.

[FranzisM]

@George M - A Nazi detector that takes fetish clothing as an indicator of its owners political views will ring many false alarms, and entirely miss the fashion-neutral professional leadership echelon of the Nazi subcultures. On the streets of Berlin, your average pierced black-style skinhead is likely to be somebody living out a sexual fantasy who has little interest in politics other than thinking he is spotted by a Nazi.

[George M]

"On the streets of Berlin, your average pierced black-style skinhead is likely to be somebody living out a sexual fantasy who has little interest in politics other than thinking he is spotted by a Nazi."

@Franzis

Check out the weird sexual proclivities of the original Nazis: Ernst Roehm, Horst Wesel, Herman Goehring and even Hitler himself. It as a freaking fas(chist)hion show!

Ernst Roehm, who founded the SA (Brown shirts), was murdered by Hitler in the "Night of the Long Knives." Roehm and his upper echelon staff were having a man/boy night at a Hotel the night that the SS was dispatched to terminate him.

Horst Wesel was a street pimp before he joined the NSADP. He was killed in a street melee with Communist early in the movement. He became a noted martyr and had an infamous song named after him.

Hermann Goehring hat a fetish for make-up and pastel colored uniforms that would have made Truman Capote green with envy.

Hitler himself, was attracted to women younger than 16 years old. His first love, his Second Cousin, Geli Raubel, daughter of his 1st Cousin, Angela Raubel committed suicide rather than being forced into a relationship with "Lieben Onel Adolf."

Sexual fetishes and sexual fantasies have always been an undercurrent of Nazism. People, who in the USA normally would be listed on a "Sexual Offenders List," are lovingly embraced by main stream Nazism.

[FranzisM]

@George M - Certainly the Nazis were children of the Weimar Republic and its urbanisation of sexuality, even when they later turned against their own heritage. The notorious Röhm campaign is the decisive turning point when the wrecked communist party passed over its old "decadence" psychosis to the Nazis, with the result of such abominations as Heinrich Himmlers interpretation of human sexuality on the model of chicken breeding, or the pink triangle.

You're right, in the stylish uniforms of the Nazi death squads there still was the undercurrent of private sexual fantasies that had been collectively politicized to a suicidal degree. I presume that's how cultural suicide would be expected to look like when a culture's most thrilling fantasies are of sexual nature. What got lost with the Weimar Republic was the understanding that there is no such thing as victimless sexual offense, or as Klaus Mann said at the time, a Röhm cannot outweigh a Da Vinci, and the benefit of the doubt is always with the individual.

Recently filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim produced a documentary Heroes and Gay Nazis about the current-day subcultures in the borderlands between sadomasochism and politics, and the Mayor of Berlin had to sit out a political controversy over his friendly welcome letter to the "decadent" Folsom Street Fair festival.

I've seen this phenomenon having been taken to the extremes, such as in the myth of a "Pink Swastika" conspiracy in which anti-communist Americans paradoxically arrive at the "decadence" psychosis of Maxim Gorki who believed if you root out homosexuality you root out fascism. This is just like the irrational fear many Europeans have of Disneyland, because we have a tendency to mistake the entertainment fantasy America invented to heal itself from the Ku-Klux-Klan with the object to which it stands in paradox relationship.

[Pamela]

@FranzisM
we have a tendency to mistake the entertainment fantasy America invented to heal itself from the Ku-Klux-Klan

America invented the entertainment fantasy?
To heal itself from the KKK?

Please tell me you're joking.

@GeorgeM
His first love, his Second Cousin, Geli Raubel, daughter of his 1st Cousin, Angela Raubel

I thought Angela Raubel was his half-sister? Same father, different mother?

[FranzisM]

@Pamela - I am serious, the most thrilling fantasies of the American culture can be found in entertainment, says R. James Woolsey.

[Pamela]

@FranzisM
Interesting - ah - entertaining - piece by Mr. Woolsey. But it is ludicrous to maintain America invented the entertainment fantasy in order to heal itself from the KKK.

I think Shakespeare would side with me on this. :-)

[Pamela]

There's an interesting blurb in today's Washington Times about the German gov'ts statistics on these groups
Neo-Nazis step up propaganda via music

BERLIN -- Neo-Nazis increasingly are using music to spread their message, particularly among the unemployed youth of the former communist East Germany, said specialists on extremism.
Last year, neo-Nazis applied for permission to hold 137 concerts, mostly in the poor eastern provinces of Saxony and Thueringen, show figures released by the federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Well, the good news is that they're not banning music like that genocidal maniac in Iran.

[Roncesvalles]

"I just retired from the AF and am now teaching in a German Gymnasium, and I would guess that 90% of my colleagues are of the GEW / Socialist persuasion, and I get earfuls almost everyday about the Evils of America, Bush, etc. And these are the ones teaching the next generation. Great, huh?"

During the Iraq war, the son of friends of mine was taken to a peace rally together with his classmates by their teacher without informing the parents. They (the parents) were not happy but that was that. And who would dare to launch a "Dienstaufsichtsbeschwerde" against a teacher?

[George M]

@Pamela

"I thought Angela Raubel was his half-sister? Same father, different mother?"

Angela Hitler was his half-sister. She never married. She lived an obscure life in Austria after the war.

Hitler's oldest brother, Alois, immigrated to Ireland when it was still part of the UK. He married an Irish woman and had one son...I believe his name is John. John Hitler and his mother moved to the UK before the war when Alois died. John hid under a rock while his country was at war with his uncle. Later, he moved his family to Canada.

To this day, there are Hitlers living in Canada. I don't know if they are active in the Canadian Liberal Party ;-)

[George M]

@ Francis M.

According to your link on Disneyland: Anaheim, California was supposed to be a KKK model city in the 1920s. It also declares that hot rocker Gwen Stefani is a hometown girl.....Do you think that Gwen maybe the off-spring of Grand Keegel Robert Byrd and Madonna?

[FranzisM]

@George M - Frankly, I don't give a damn. If this wasn't a thread open to such ludicrous thought experiments as spotting Nazis from fetish clothing, I wouldn't even have mentioned that turning Anaheim into a hero themepark went right into der Kleagle's face. So the best way to make my point was to give an example that replacement fantasies aren't alien to America either, but I already STFU what they have replaced.

Though, if America as a culture ever had a temptation of suicide, such as in Germany it would have a sexual undercurrent, in America it would have an entertaining undercurrent. It would probably look like a Michael Moore movie.

[George M]

@FranzisM

"if America as a culture ever had a temptation of suicide, such as in Germany it would have a sexual undercurrent, in America it would have an entertaining undercurrent. It would probably look like a Michael Moore movie."

You need to expand your horizon of American cinima. You need to watch the Three Stooges....perferably without your wife or girl friend.

Durka Durka!

[tioedong]

huh...
But you should have been around when Ronald Reagan was president...it was probably worse then...
He was an evil cowboy--polls said he was more evil than Hitler--- destroying the peace with the wonderful communists, and there were huge demonstrations against him...
Unfortunately for the PC in West Germany, there were also millions in Poland demonstrating...and with Reagan's help, and the help of a bigoted narrowminded anti progressivist religious leader from Poland, voila, the Germans got stuck with no more Berlin wall and trying to rejuvenate a moribund economy in that socialist paradise of East Germany...
So it really IS our fault for setting Eastern Europe free...

[FranzisM]

@George M - Of course I've tried it, but the cinema is not my cup of tea, neither ours than yours. For those who like it, yours is bigger though.

[FranzisM]

@Pamela - "I think Shakespeare would side with me on this. :-)"

Fascinating thought experiment. I think if Shakespeare could afford to take a break from his analysis of the American imagination of Europe, and wanted to enjoy some fine American entertainment, he would share a jazz record with me. :-)

[Doug]

@David -
I can speak only for myself, but I don't have a problem with Zachar1as' comments. Yes, his English is pretty shabby, but I think I understand what he's saying with each comment, which is all that I care about.

@George M -
Do you think that Gwen maybe the off-spring of Grand Keegel Robert Byrd and Madonna?

I will never, ever forgive the mental picture you just gave me. You've redefined "thought crime".

Durka Durka!

Pak sherpa sherpa! Muhammed jihad!

[George M]

@Doug

"I will never, ever forgive the mental picture you just gave me. You've redefined "thought crime"."

I am shocked to find out that Gwen is 36 years old. Madonna alleges that she is 48 years old. Unless the Grand Kleegel got to Madonna when she was twelve years old, it would be a stretch to speculate whether there is mother/daughter consanguinity between the two!

[Doug]

@George M -
Just when I thought it couldn't be worse - now the image has Byrd with a 12 year-old. Burrrrn, evil man

[FranzisM]

LOL, your "thought crime" is just like the legend of the guy who built a model of the Church of Our Lady of Dresden from some thousands of matches. Don't they sell any better toys for adults where you live?

[Doug]

Ouch, that's awful.

There are lots of toys for adults here, but I can't think of any flammable ones offhand. Rubber and leather aren't really flammable, are they?

[FranzisM]

Not really, but be careful with the poppers if you are a smoker.

[FranzisM]

What am I saying, be careful with it in any case.