Spooky German mainstreet viral Racism : Pizza & Hitler a Miscellany

by Barry - 32 csm Sun Aug 26, 2007 01:24

Recently returned from a trip to Germany and a bit of eastern Europe were i had a couple of close encounters with the far right in the course of my meanderings. The far right are very definitely and very steadily on the rise and the previously widespread and determined anti fascist movement is sadly just a shadow of its former self . The progressive left has definitely lost its way. Seems to be mostly anarchist kids spoiling for a fight with the fascists rather than any coherent movement these days with a social purpose. The far right are now making appearances in parts of Berlin theyd never dared to have set foot in in the past, particularly around kreuzberg. East Berlin and East Germany is now firmly in their hands, they control the streets and nobody would disagree .
One little gimmick they've adopted is the anarchist black block uniform as a fascist uniform , which helps them blend in and move about previous no go areas . They've largely dispensed with the old skinhead gear and adopted death metal type "evil " music and the nordic looking heavy metal t shirts that go with that along with the black block hoodies and peaked hats. Sadly they are adapting and growing while the anti fascists appear to have stalled, grown stale and lost focus and vision. Even worse the previously close bonds that existed between the left and the immigrant communities in Berlin seem to have largely disintegrated too. The situation is definitely what you could call ominous and extremely dangerous .
Sorry for the pessimism but that was the general picture that i got on my travels. Dont expect this to get any better anytime soon.

by iosaf mac diarmada Sun Aug 26, 2007 21:10

Reflection of which allows us to draw links between several issues & themes.

1) the importance of manners & sensitivity of young Irish travellers whilst abroad, (citing a recent example) who rather than find themselves relying on the diplomatic service ought know that mooning at Senegalese is a no-no & likewise ought read the history section of their rough Guide or Lonely Planet to prepare themselves for any potential deep-rooted cultural or religious pitfalls.
2) the portrayal and trivialisation of the NAZI regime & that of its allies and collaboraters in modern Europe & following from that the role of sexual deviance, sado-masochism & marketing ploys dressed up as provocative pop-culture irony in the trivialisation of the Holocaust.

1: To my chagrin I have noticed in the last decade from a variety of homes on the European mainland the propensity of Celtic or Irish Republic FC squad t-shirts being worn by increasingly tubby people who out of earshot are otherwise indistinguishable from their palid pasty / pink & sunburnt neighbours in Scotland, Cymru, Cornwall & Engurland. I have put such assertions of team-spirit and tribal identity down to the same general psychological reasons which ensures that every Canadian (& more than a few US travellers) always put a little Maple leaf flag on their haversack. They don't want to be confused or identified with the foreign policy decisions of their rival states. Let me be honest - If at 3am down your street your open window or balcony whilst you try vainly to snatch some sleep in the humid night before work you are aroused by tourists drunkenly shouting or skateboard jumping the kerb or singing some poxy hen-night or stag-night anthem you really don't give a flying wank if that tourist is a Catholic or Protestant, Brit or Gael, Republican or Democrat. Likewise if the flats and residential spaces in your city are in such tourist "holiday home" demand that 40% or higher of ordinary workers may no longer afford them you really don't give one shit for the party shindigs you find yourself obliged to listen to on a regular basis. Thankfully at least petty crime has ensured that some of the prettiest quarters of several European cities keep their reputations as "dangerous for tourists". So if you go abroad, remember please that in most popular destinations your mean income is far higher than those of the locals and even if the street looks like a tourist non-residential paradise, there are in fact many more people than would be found in a similar urban density at home. Imagine in short that you are in fact though on holidays & having a good time, walking through a really rough housing estate at home. Keep your manners & let workers sleep. It is a general rule of thumb that dropping your kaks and bareing your pale hirsuite spotty botty at passerby's is a no-no. Only Engurlish gurriers would do such a thing. If you want to do it - go to sunny Croxteth or quaint Moss Side.

2) Which brings me to the trivialisation of the 3rd Reich and its allies. Many of us agree that the Israeli state and its allies in the USA have often abused the historical facts of the Holocaust either to justify or detract from totalitarian, apartheid or imperialist crimes committed in recent history. But there is no room nor should there ever be for denial of the Holocaust or Shoah. In the middle of the 20th century millions of people were progressively stripped of their civil & human rights, citizenship, then put to forced labour, many were experimented on, millions were sent to death camps, over 6 million were murdered. They were overwhelmingly selected on no other reason than their jewish ethnicity or religious practise. But many more suffered the same fate for their political beliefs, sexual orientation, ethnicity or membership of fringe religious groups or fraternal orders. The legacy of that crime is the world around you. The pharmacopia of drugs, the weapons, the instruments of propaganda, the globalised economic system of post Bretton Woods, the international institutions of arbitration and the transformation of the liberal empires into neocolonial exploitative trade relations all find their roots or first written chapters in the crimes of the 2nd world war and the evil which was the Holocaust & inability of Europeans & others in its aftermath to see justice done.

You can't trivialise that.

But oddly considering that Don's harmless antics which I imagine took place in a hostel dorm caused offense to the English present - it was in fact English popular culture which began the process of trivialisation of both Nazism and by effect the Holocaust. In recent weeks I wrote an obituary for Tony Wilson (c/f http://indymedia.ie/article/83757 ) an affable gobshite whose role in popular culture bridged the creation of the bands with such names as "joy division" ( in reference to the rape chambers in the death camps ) to the pandemic use of psychoactive chemicals whose use & research refinement had previously peaked during the war based in no small part on data provided by experimentation on human beings in the camps. But we can't blame Tony Wilson alone for what he justified as "irony". The English actress Charlotte Rampling found herself cast in a few cinematic roles in the early 70's most notably the '74 "Night Porter" by Italian director Liliana Cavani which also starred Dirk Bogarde which pushed the envelope of memory, sexuality & sadistic abuse to a point of no-return. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Porter http://www.othervoices.org/2.1/scherr/sexuality.html Interestingly that period in Cinematic history which overlapped with Wilson's first bands saw a plethora of Nazi imagery in Cinema and exploration of the "untied ends" of WW2 history by British authors or movies whose lead roles were played by the finest British actors of their time. Thus we see Mengele's legacy and that of ODESSA treated upon by Forsyth and Laurence Olivier whilst James Mason almost became the "poster SS guard". It might have been possible that such fiction & its trivialising effects would have ended in that generation as a final psychic exorcism of a generation of British (At least) soldiers who understood their roles in the war as contributing to the fall of Nazism.
But instead the trivialisation became even more low brow (I could suggest the stage persona of Freddie Star who billed against the xenophobic Bernard Manning), the distortion ever more twisted and most lately the internet has facilitated the mass market of memorabilia.

We have now entered a generation where a Croatian pop group may eulogise the Ustasi (the yugoslav allies of the Nazi's in WW2) wearing their uniforms on stage with the twin purpose of marketing to a growing a neo-nazi audience and provoking their Serbian neighbours. While now the skill of Marilyn Manson ranks him for the future on the level of such staggering intellectuals of US popular culture as Lou Reed in stocking feet.

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I have long argued that the failing point of EU expansion would be the levels of content felt in Poland, Roumania and the east of Germany. After long consideration of the challenges which lay and still lie ahead for the creation of true libertarian; or even just liberal values, of tolerance & proper reconciliation with the past on non-nationalist or non-ethnic lines - in short the challenges of the legacy of the 20th century, its war & the Holocaust - I was and remain more convinced than much else I hold firm that Europeans weren't ready. I've tried to put it so many ways. It was planned on the false notion that prosperity or market forces alone bring equality, liberty & what I term fraternity but others call solidarity.
If Northwestern citizens may count their cheap flights & booze, second or third holiday homes in the sun to the detriment of local residents' children, if they may employ eastern Europeans or slavs as cheap labour effecting brain and skill drains on those societies ever leaching those societies to leave jingoists behind (which clearly occured in Poland) - if the generation after of Ceaucescu's orphanages in Roumania are unwelcome anywhere and are seen by European media to be hounded off traffic islands in Ireland & out of flood channels in Madrid then in the 21st century we shall see the Europe which at end the Nazi project wished.

I'm sorry I can't argue all of this in a comment or even put it one indymedia ireland text. Of course many will thus find fault in the sentances above. The best I'd hope is that some day you just buy the book instead. But at end the rise of the far-right in the East of Europe, considering the East of Europe stretches to the Urals - is our future. I remain convinced that there were other and better ways to make the Irish rich.

the mystery of the Hegel's East

by reader Fri Aug 31, 2007 19:51

The Swiss Nationalist Party went for the' race card' to platform for the upcoming election
with promises to deport whole families if one 'black sheep' committed a crime. Interestingly
the Guardian and Independent who have covered the story say that such a law is unknown
in the EU, even more interestingly Michael Mc Dowell attempted to introduce a bill in
the Irish Parliament called 'The Immigration, Residence and Protection 'Bill, which would have
seen deportation for petty crime and of course the introduction of Data banking and bio-metric
ids here.
The UN intervened in this instance. Story London Independent/Guardian

Nationalist Party 'Election Platform' in Switzerland