Sometimes life imitates satire, or something like that.
(Those who don't understand German may still understand the content. Basically, in the video one can see two men from the "Office to protect the constitution" who are asked about whether Nazi-terror exists. They say no, having asked Nazis whether it is true. Therefore the office of "right-wing terrorism" is closed and "real" terrorism is then combated: "left-wing terrorism" and "Islamic terrorism".)
Following the, *ahem* revelations about Nazi terror in Germany over the past ten years things are sensitive in Germany. Now's the time for considering how the role of the state in recent Nazi murders should be deal with, and how the media reports were racist, no?
No.
Kristina Schröder has chosen this moment to remind us where the real danger lies. (Original in German here). Yes, the socialist newspaper: "New Germany"!
Who else to accuse, but a Protestant Youth Pastor! Lothar König was one a float the the anti-Nazi demo and did the dangerous thing of playing a traditional left-wing song from the early 70's that has been sung on demos ever since then and has been accused by the Saxony police of inciting to a disturbance of the police. The song with lyrics (with things like "I've been wounded a thousand times, I've been hungered a thousand times. [...] Come brother, come sister, come mother, write the words "No power for anyone!") was considered to be "aggressive" with a potential towards inciting violence. (Original text here.)
Zeitbild Stiftung's (it has to be noted here that the foundation is sponsored by the German state: The Federal Ministry for Families, Seniors, Women and Youth) website also shows what they consider to be most dangerous. On the left one sees two links to sites about "extremist violence", both in fact being "left-wing extremism". One also sees one for "hinder violence, advocate integration"; what is meant there is that it is "Turkish children and youth are the biggest group among immigrants with a very high level of violence". Note also that this initiative is partly sponsored by the EU.
Excuse me one moment while I take a pause to express my reaction.
Note also that the board of the foundation contains someone from one of the main newspapers of Germany, the president of German marketing federation, someone from German industry and a tax adviser (i.e. all are men with white skin and people who, I would guess, know more about being in a powerful situation than a weaker one in society). Note also that the symbols considered to be "left-wing extremist" includes:
...as well as the anarchist symbol. It's like in GB where the police have decided that the Occupy movement are terrorists.
I am beginning to think that Hermann Gremliza is right: There is no "left-wing extremism" and there is no "right-wing extremism". There are Anarchists who defend themselves from violent people with weapon, there are a few pieces of graffiti on walls and, occasionally, attempts to defend themselves from Nazis (with no help from the police). There are Nazis who kill immigrants from Senegal and of course Turkey and Greece; who do pogroms against Vietnamese immigrants, who set fire to houses where Romany people live, who scream abuse against people with dark skin on a trains and attacking someone with dark skin on a bus, who spray tear gas into the face of someone of a different "race", set fire to mosques, attack (as politicians) peaceful protesters or the police with pavement stones (from 4:30).
Perhaps Gremliza is right in saying that the term "right-wing extremism" is in fact false as it implies a left-wing equivalent. Certainly, some left-wingers (and anarchists; not all anarchists are left-wing) do do violent things; largely against people with batons, tear gas, water canons, armour and shields; largely when attacked. Nazis, however, kill people and their potential victims are a big group.
Perhaps the Munich-based Zeitbild Stiftung should concentrate on the Bavarian police ("the guarantee for your security"). Note the statistics for police violence and how they are much higher than "left-wing acts of violence". Or perhaps they should look wider at police brutality in the rest of Germany. I daresay Amnesty International would agree with me.
Keep in touch, either on Facebook or via the RSS Feed on the top right corner. Soon (probably early next year) I shall write a series on "Taboos and other subjects to piss people off", which will be dead good, I quite humbly tell you.
The good thing about having a vaguely negative view of political developments is that one doesn't have to wait long to have ones negative view confirmed. Just over a month ago I wrote this article (which actually reflected my views from June) where I said, to summarise:
The media and liberals focus so much on so-called 'left-wing extremism' that they take away their focus from right-wing extremism. Right-wing extremism involves things like attacking and killing people and the is no (or there is only very rarely) a left-wing equivalent; certainly, there is no equivalent to attacking and killing people due to the colour of their skin or religion. One should therefore focus on the extreme right-wing danger. The state focuses its surveillance on 'left-wing extremism' and Muslims and therefore it misses real violent threats elsewhere. Any narrative on 'left-wing attacks against the police' should be seen in light of police brutality against peaceful protesters. Therefore, a focus on right-wing extremism, state violence and mainstream racism is needed.
Then, lo and behold, this news comes from Zwickau, Germany. Before reading further, please read that article.
"It can't have been German Neo-Nazis, it must have been the victims themselves"
It is a cliche to say "I don't want to say 'I told you so', but I told you so", so I won't say it. As I say, it is a grim satisfaction to see that things are as bad as one thinks. Let's go through this step by step (from this from taz, here in English):
On the 9th of September 2000 the florist Enver Simsek was shot in Nuremberg; a tailor called Süleyman Tasköprü was then shot on the 27th of June in 2001, followed by the shooting of the grocer Habil Kilic on the 29th of August, 2001 in Munich. A Nuremberg newspaper suspected that the killings remind one of 'brutal work of Albanian gangs' who have 'Turks working for them'.
On the 25th of February 2004 the doner seller Yunus Turgut was shot in Rostock. Then again in Nuremberg on the 9th of June 2005 the doner seller Ismail Yazar was shot. After that the Greek Theodorous Boulgarides was shot in his locksmith in Munich. Die Welt spoke of 'the work of a gang from the Anatolien mountains'', and later spoke of an 'Istanbul export firm which deals in the smuggling of drugs and people throughout Europe'. A special commission was set up by police called "Bosporus". (This is also the name given to the murders on wikipedia.) Finally, on the 6th of April 2006 Halit Yozgat was shot in an internet cafe in Kassel.
In the same month Das Bild spoke of a "Drug mafia, organised criminality, silence-money and money-laundering". Focus interviewed the "Bosporus special commission" leader Wolfgang Geier, who spoke of his dismissal of a "Xenophobic background" to the murders. In the May of 2006 the Hamburger Abendblatt complained that investigators received "perhaps a tea with mint but no answers" from the Turkish community. The Spiegel spoke ofthe "parallel world of the Turks that is difficult to get into which protects the killers". The senior prosecutor of Bavaria spoke of the Turkish friends of the victims "knowing more than they say", while Geier spoke in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he faces a "wall of silence" and he had the impression that "Turks still haven't properly arrived into this society". The moderator of the programme "Aktenzeichen XY...Ungelöst" Rudi Cerne spoke of three possibilities: "Organised crime", "Contract killer" or "did the victims work in criminal business?"
In the August of 2006 the criminal profiler Alexander Horn theorised that the perpetrators had something against people who look like Turks, though he said that he ruled out any right-wing extremist act. Then on the 25th of April 2007 the policewoman Michele Kieseweter was shot in Heilbronn; though no connection was guessed to the other executions. The Spiegel spoke of the connection between the killings and "German and Turkish gamblers". Then on the 21st of February 2001 Spiegel guessed that the acts was made by a "powerful alliance between right-wing nationalist Turks, the Turkish secret service and gangsters".
...and there's more
So, here we have the scapegoating mechanism that blames the victims themselves for them being killed.There's more to this, though. Someone from the German domestic intelligence was present at the murder in the internet cafe in Kassel. Notice that still right-wing extremism was not considered by the police. From here we have the quote:
Kerim Simsek, whose father Enver was shot down on 9 September 2000,
claimed police said his father "was mixed up with the mafia and smuggled
drugs – no one even mentioned a rightwing extremist motive," he told
Bild.
Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of the parliamentary committee which monitors Germany's secret service agencies said that Germany's elite had totally underestimated the threat of rightwing
terrorism.
"They have been determined to play it down. Just a few weeks
ago, Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister, was saying there was
no rightwing terrorism in Germany," he said. "They are always very quick
to jump to conclusions if they think leftwing terrorists or Islamist
fundamentalists are responsible for a crime and yet they didn't want to
believe there could be a serious problem with neo-Nazis." Ströbele
said that 160 officers worked on Operation Bosphorus, investigating
11,000 people "Why didn't they follow the trail to rightwing radicals?"
he said, as he called for a thorough investigation to discover how the
terror cell managed to evade capture.
Well bloody hell, he speaks like I do.
That the Neo-Nazi cell group (Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe) had connections to the NPD is causing many to call for the party to be banned. In fact I am against this, for democratic reasons. For me calls for them to be banned are symbolic and serve to take attention away from police and media mainstream mistakes. The media continued their (let's face it) racist and xenophobic tendencies after the Nazi group was discovered, calling the murders the 'Doner murders' (thus dehumanising those who were killed). The *ahem* Spiegel contains this excellent article which contains the line:
The term "doner killings" represents a radical ostracisation of
immigrants. It provided distance, allowing Germans to sit comfortably
and be creeped out by reports they read in the newspaper about the
series of gruesome murders.
Indeed, the head of the sister party to the government CSU Horst Seehofer said in the March of this year that "We will defend ourselves against immigration into the German social system -- until the very last cartridge." (NEWS JUST IN: The secretary of the Kassel-Nord CDU Daniel Budzynskiis a Nazi. Of course, the left-wing Piraten also contain one or two Nazis; it seems the difference is that they as a party with recent success have received new members with dodgy backgrounds. I am unaware of any of them being put in relatively powerful positions like Budzynski. I am grateful to this news from Netzgegennazis on Facebook).
It's mainstream racism and xenophobia that gives support to the far-right; they are more dangerous than any so-called "left-wing extresmism".
In other news
Here's a round up of other stuff:
In Denmark (in English: Intelligence warns of "race war") the intelligence services are warning of a 'Breivik-style attack in Denmark", though they are not totally aware of the threats of the far-right due to their putting together of "Left-wing extremism" (the article's inverted commas, not mine), Islamic and Neo-Nazi terrorism in one category. It's left to the left-wing monitor group Redox to raise concerns of groups not known by the intelligence services who are against immigration and contain Neo-Nazis, who also have contacts to businessmen and women and members of the police and military.
In Bavaria (in English: Police under suspicion of violence) a 15 year old boy was kicked in his knees and had his head banged repeatedly against the wall by members of the police. According to Amnesty International 385 accusations of violence or abuse were made against the Bavarian police in 2009, though it is unknown how many led to a prosecution. (Remember that is the Bavarian police who set up the 'Bavaria against left-wing extremism' website, who claim that 371 acts of such extremism took place in 2009, of which 200 were minor offenses like graffiti.....Perhaps we need a 'Bavaria against police brutality' link.)
In Austria (in English: Police trade union sees themselves as Nazi-slave workers) complains that their work standards are like that of Nazi slave workers. Furthermore they complain that the cost of the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial site, the new state department for integration and also the care of asylum seekers are a burden to the financing of security.
While in the US we have examples of, if you believe conservatives and certain liberals, violent left-wing protestors getting what they deserve/getting nothing as bad as their like used to get in the past.
84-year-old Dorli Rainey, a retired schoolteacher, being helped after
receiving a blast of pepper-spray by Seattle police on October 15.
While here we see people rushing to help Scott Olsen (who had just been wounded by being hit by a police tear-gas canister) and having a stun bomb thrown at them by a member of the police for their troubles.
This excellent article contains many other examples of police brutality at the Occupations in the US.
Indeed, this article shows that the police in the US are moving (and even attacking) journalists who wish to report such cases. The attack on Occupiers in the US is co-ordinated and violent and is caused by the fact that the Occupiers are speaking out against Congressmen and women profiting from congress decisions being made about industries they work in, as well as other measures. Thing is, in the US people are becoming more supportive of the Occupiers.
In GB as well, people are getting more behind actions against the Tory/Lib Dem government (note the public sector strike in GB this Wednesday.)
People are certainly waking up to the abuse by those in power.
I wish you a blessed Advent.
Oh, and if you want to keep in touch with this blog blah blah blah.
