>--- jf noonan <jfn1 at msc.com> wrote: >
>> Don't forget banning anti-McDonald's literature --
>> that's pretty
>> kewl too.
>
>I don't think that's a valid objection. If you look
>at the anti-Nazi statutes of France and Germany,
>they're very closely worded with regard to the events
>of 1934-45. It's the Nazi Party which is banned, not
>any particular viewpoint or set thereof. The idea
>that all anti-Nazi laws will eventually be used
>against people who aren't Nazis isn't as easy to
>sustain as one might think.
Though I have no comparative stats at hand, it seems that there are more Neo-Nazis in Germany than in the USA, and they present a far larger danger there than here (in America, the main organized far-right threat has come from anti-abortion terrorists). So I gather the "banning" had no anti-Nazi effect in reality. Besides, post-WW2 Germany coddled "ex-Nazis" while post-unification Germany has discriminated against ex-East Germans.
Good news is that targets of Neo-Nazi violence in particular & anti-Neo-Nazi Germans in general are fighting back, or so says The Scotsman:
***** The Scotsman December 19, 2000, Tuesday SECTION: Pg. 12 HEADLINE: HOW SOME GERMANS ARE LITERALLY FIGHTING BACK AGAINST RACISTS BYLINE: Allan Hall In Berlin
VICTIMS of neo-Nazi aggression are no longer turning the other cheek in Germany. They are fighting back. At the weekend the far Right did something it was unaccustomed to doing -- burying one of its own after he was stabbed to death by a Vietnamese asylum seeker he had been harassing and taunting for months.
Matthias Fischer, who signed himself Odin, was a typical "Deutscher Dieter" as his skinhead-ilk are often called; tub-thumpers of the "Germany for the Germans" variety who praise the policies of the defunct Third Reich while bemoaning the "mongrelisation" of the Fatherland. In most cases the skinheads have things their way.
But not this time. Mr Fischer's 21-year-old hate-filled life in the town of Bernsdorf came to a violent end when he picked on the 15-year-old Vietnamese youth one time too many. After he and his cronies chased the boy through the Christmas market in the town, yelling obscenities, the cornered youth turned and stabbed Mr Fischer twice in the stomach.
He died from internal bleeding less than an hour later. The boy is in custody, and 16 members of his extended family have fled to town fearing revenge from the skinheads loyal to Mr Fischer. But the torment, and its violent curtailment, is part of a trend in Germany that bodes ill for the far-right in future.
Skinheads have been attacked by those they were themselves attacking; in Duesseldorf, Munich, Berlin and Hanover there have been reports recently of the hunters becoming the hunted, receiving the kind of beatings that they, too often, have been only too happy to mete out.
Mr Fischer was buried with all the solemnity his friends could muster. There were black armbands, red roses, cards to a "true German hero" and a selection of Prussian military tunes played in honour at the graveside. While the militant right could claim a triumph, having driven his extended family from the town into police protection, the attack served as a wake-up call to politicians and minority leaders that 2001 might see more of the same retaliation.
This year was Germany's most violent on the neo-Nazi scene for decades. Four people died, dozens more were wounded as the extreme right became more organised along military lines. In October the government was briefed of extremist plans for terrorism of the sort practised by the left in the 1970s, after the discovery of a huge weapons cache in eastern Germany.
But for the most part the harassment has been of the cowardly type; the firebombs against asylum seekers, the mob against one, the midnight fight in railway stations and immigrant bars before fleeing when the police arrive. Now it seems it is no longer going all their way.
In Hanover, two skinheads had to call for police protection after several Vietnamese youths armed with cleavers chased them down the street. In Munich two were beaten up by Asian youths they insulted on the street. In Berlin a skinhead was glassed in a bar as he insulted homosexuals. Meanwhile in Duesseldorf, a far-right sympathiser was badly hurt in a confrontation with Indian youths.
"There is a feeling among some of the immigrant youth that enough is enough," said a Berlin artist, Matthias Hickl, who meted out his own rough justice to two drunken louts at Hanover railway station.
"I was about to board a train on a very crowded platform when I saw these two skinheads abusing a young Pakistani girl who was being held by her scared father. 'Paki, N-word, Black whore' ... these were some of the more printable statements from these two drunks. 'Remember it's Germans first when the train comes in you blackies', they said.
"I helped the father get on board with his child. 'What are you, some kind of n-word lover?' I heard behind me and at that time sent my elbow back with all my force. I heard a cry and the guy went down gushing blood with a broken nose. His friend swung for me but I put him down too. I knew I would be in a lot of trouble with the police," said Mr Hickl.
"But when they arrived minutes later a funny thing happened. People who never wanted to get involved before suddenly did. About ten people stepped forward as witnesses, said I had saved this man and his child from a beating or worse. The police took my name but called me a day later and said there would be no charges against me but that they were booking the skinheads for racist abuse and public drunkenness.
"It makes me happy when I see that people are fighting back. Of course violence is not the solution to anything but these people are cowards and if they think they will get hurt they will think twice. I am also glad to see a shift in the public reaction; not all Germans are Nazis and most decent people are now willing to take a hand in fighting this menace."
Turkish community leaders are cautioning against turning to violence as a solution against the far-right but there is a palpable sense of change in the air. At Riemanstrasse in Berlin, often referred to as "Little Istanbul" due to the large numbers of Turkish immigrants who live there, youths no longer walk around alone at night -- but neither do they walk around in fear.
"We gave some skins a right good kicking when they came up here late one night in November," said a youngster only identifying himself as Ali. "Their ideas of white supremacy evaporated when we fought back with sticks and baseball bats."
Petra Schlagenhauf, the lawyer for the Vietnamese juvenile who will stand trial for the manslaughter of Mr Fischer, said: "This kind of provocation cannot be taken by everybody all the time. He and his friends were shouting 'foreigners out' and other racist insults all the time, chasing him, threatening him. They threatened the lives of his family.
"In circumstances such as these, it is little wonder that people are finally fighting back." *****
Yoshie