Riots in Germany by Neo-Nazi group

Recently we posted items about the potential chances of violence because of a march by a neo-nazi group in Germany. The group who wanted to remember the allied bombing of Dresden has been a controversial issue. Today the neo-Nazi group proved why they should not been allowed to march.

As posted by the BBC
More than 1000 neo-Nazis were confronted by around 10,000 of their left-wing opponents as they protested in Dresden on the 65th anniversary of the Allied bombing at the end of World War II.

More than 5,000 police were dispatched to try to prevent the groups from clashing but there have been scuffles on the streets and damage to property.



BBC

Are the UAF effective in their opposition of the BNP?

An article appeared in the Telegraph newspaper’s online site yesterday (12th February 2010) questioning how effective, and even necessary, the opposition to the BNP is by United Against Fascism (UAF).

Andrew Gilligan makes some very valid points about the BNP needing media attention to increase both their numbers and their credibility, and how this was impressively achieved during the 'Nick Griffin on Question Time' fiasco by members of the UAF and other protestors staging a huge demonstration outside the BBC. Having said that, the media were already in a frenzy over the rights and wrongs of the situation long before UAF members got dragged out of the BBC building by their feet. The BNP are controversial, and controversy sells newspapers; the BNP makes headlines whether the UAF are involved or not. The UAF cannot be blamed for that.

I completely agree with his assertion that the best way to combat the BNP and their vile policies is with reasoned argument and discussion with people in areas where there are high levels of BNP support, as Searchlight do so well.

But I cannot help thinking that allowing Nick Griffin and other BNP members to speak publicly with no visible opposition sends a clear message to the people Searchlight do not have time to individually canvas. Surely ensuring the BNP are always surrounded by controversy and opposition is a good message to send to the citizens of the UK??

There are many ways to oppose racism and bigotry, and while the UAF may not be to everyone's taste, they are always there to highlight the hypocrisy of the British National Party actually standing for a small minority of British people's beliefs.

UAF website.

Europe is winning the fight against fascism – BNP take note!

In an interview on Russian TV Dr Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter and historian, states that fascism and racism is not as much of a problem now as it was 30 years ago. He repeatedly reassures the reporter in the interview below (which is conducted in English) that far-right groups are very much marginalized and hold no political power within Europe.



It can appear, looking at the stories that surface on a daily basis from around the world that fascism is on the rise everywhere, especially here in the UK with media coverage being given to the controversial and abhorrent British National Party (BNP). But the truth is we just have more access to the information. The Internet and an ever increasing number of news networks ensure we are fully informed in a way previous generations could not have imagined.

A recent documentary on Channel 4 (Young, Angry and White) followed a young British man who was openly racist and considering joining the BNP. In the program he takes part in a National Front march, stating that 30 years ago this march attracted 1,500 people. Today they get maybe 150 (the documentary can be seen on the on the link below for the next 4 weeks only). Our societies are becoming increasingly multi-racial, and most of us are happy with that, with an increasing number of mixed race families and children in all walks of life. In any community the racists and bigots are in the minority but they are the ones that shout loudest and make the most sensational headlines on TV and in newspapers.

Of course this does not mean we should rest on our laurels after a job well done. Since the Race Relations Act was passed in the UK in the 1970’s there have been massive improvements in attitudes within the UK both on a personal and governmental level but there is still more to do. We must make sure our children are not taught it is OK to hate people because of their colour, sexuality or other arbitrary differences.

Most people have access to the internet, and can see for ourselves the horrors of the Nazi regime in the Second World War, not to mention the atrocities carried out in many countries since then in the name of ‘ethic cleansing’ or genocide. And decent people reject this version of the world, preferring to stand up for equality of human rights and the freedom to practice any religion people chose to follow, providing it does not cause anyone else harm.

We are wining the fight, but have to accept that we will never wipe out racism and hatred entirely however we must continue to do everything we can to make sure bigotry stays in the shadows and never becomes accepted in any society.

Young Angry & White Channel 4

RT

Turning a blind eye on the campaign trail as BNP targets prize seat (UK)

British National Party activists are gathered outside the Underground station, smirking and smoking. A black man spits, twice, at their feet. “Yeah, I know who you are,” he says accusingly.

Does that happen a lot? “What’s that?” asks Richard Barnbrook, a big wheel in the party and an elected member of the Greater London Authority. That man just spat at you. “No! Deliberately?” Yes.

“I didn’t notice,” he mumbles, with a little shake of his head. “We actually get a very positive reaction from many older ethnic minority people here.”

Such a claim can soon be tested. Mr Barnbrook parades along the streets in his “trademark” beige suit which, he thinks, “adds to my charisma — everybody knows who I am”. An Asian woman shudders and moves off the pavement when she sees him approaching. A black father grabs his toddler’s hand and guides her to the other side of the road. A group of teenagers ride by on bikes, yelling obscenities. “Maybe I get a few funny looks, every now and then,” Mr Barnbrook concedes cheerfully.

Welcome to Barking, a suburban town that the BNP wants to make its own, where truth — as well as whole sections of the local population — can be just inconvenient obstacles to be sidestepped or swept away.

The decision by Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, to stand as a parliamentary candidate in Barking has inevitably brought the poison of racial politics ever closer to the surface of an already pockmarked eastern outpost of London.
At the general election in 2005, Mr Barnbrook was only 27 votes away from claiming second place ahead of the Tories. In the following year the BNP grabbed nine of the 30 borough councillor posts in the wards that make up the seat. The party secured an average 41 per cent of the vote in seven contested wards, compared with 33 per cent for Labour.
This is why Mr Griffin abandoned the North West, where he was elected as an MEP last year, and elbowed Mr Barnbrook aside for the chance to stand in Barking. It is where the BNP believes that white working-class alienation can be best exploited to gain a first crucial foothold in Westminster.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for almost 16 years and veteran of many battles in a political career stretching over four decades, recognises that she is in the fight of her life. “We face a real threat from the BNP,” she says. “Griffin is here because he thinks he can win.”

She has, in the past, been criticised for relying too heavily on the black and Asian vote. There have been complaints that she has amplified “BNP propaganda” with efforts to address white voters’ sense of unfairness. Last week she called for immigrants to earn the right to benefits or council housing over several years so that “local people” have higher priority.

Ms Hodge’s campaign has not been helped by an often dysfunctional relationship with Jon Cruddas, the MP for neighbouring Dagenham, who argues that Labour’s appeal should be around shared economic interests, not racial identity. But she has been more visible lately than before, opening a campaign office after the council elections and doubling party membership locally to about 400. Although a number of the party’s older councillors have been purged and are threatening to run as independents, Ms Hodge says Labour has been revitalised. “I’m so proud. We have all had to raise our game.”
Differences within Labour have been put aside because they are far outweighed by the need to “lance the boil” of the BNP. “I am really fearful that if they get a hold here, Barking would become a no-go area for the rest of Britain,” Ms Hodge says. “They bring division and violence.”
There has been talk of Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates pulling out of the election to present a united front against racism. The consensus among them, however, appears to be that this would merely reinforce Mr Griffin’s claims that the Establishment is ganging up on him.
A greater concern for Labour is the candidacy of the Rev George Hargreaves, leader of the Christian Party, who has strong links to the big Pentecostalist churches proliferating in the area and who may shave away significant numbers of black voters from Labour. “I would much rather he was not standing,” Ms Hodge says.
Barking’s menagerie of candidates will also include Frank Maloney, the former boxing promoter, who is standing for the UK Independence Party. He launched his campaign by challenging Mr Griffin to a fist fight and with a poster that spelt Britain as Britian. The BNP enjoys pointing out that error, but should not laugh too loud. Mr Griffin launched his own campaign for Barking last year in Dagenham, having got confused about the constituency boundaries.
There is much to ridicule about a party that has only recently started wearing suits in an effort to be taken seriously. Council meetings here have descended into farce on occasion. Some BNP councillors — the official opposition — have fallen out among themselves, walked out or been thrown out for misconduct.
On the doorstep Mr Barnbrook mixes talk about wheelie bins with a promise to put immigrant families in tower blocks because, he alleges, they got homes in a Labour plot to flood the constituency with non-whites. Has he got any evidence? “Yes, through our freedom of information requests. But I can’t disclose it at this time because of data protection laws.”
Outside his house, easily recognisable by the St George and Union flags, Mr Barnbrook insists — a little unconvincingly — that he is not bitter about Mr Griffin taking over as parliamentary candidate.
“Only Nick has got an ego big enough to deal with sitting alone in the Commons,” he says. “And, anyway, to control the council would be far more prestigious. I’m better with people, I have more charisma.” So how does he get on with his neighbours? “Great,” he replies. “We have black and Muslim families living here. I get on with everybody.”
A few inquiries at homes nearby suggests that this is not quite true. One black man says that he feels uneasy leaving his young family on their own because “a lot of people come to that house, I don’t like the way they look at my children”. A few doors down, a woman says: “I’m scared of them. Please don’t print my name.”
Mr Barnbrook may try to be nice. He clearly believes in the powers of all that charisma and his special suit. The BNP is ridiculous — even pathetic. But when fomenting such fear and loathing, it is not funny.

Times Online

Germany: How to fight neo-Nazis?

BERLIN, Germany — The government of the state of Bavaria has said it will soon request that Germany's highest courts ban the country's largest far-right party, the National Democratic Party (NPD), for subverting the tenets of the national constitution.

It's a policy that is popular among most of the public, and has earned backing from both of the country's major parties. But it's also a course of action that most political elites acknowledge has little chance of success.

“There's very little chance of the courts accepting this argument,” said Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, a former justice on Germany's Constitutional Court.

This is not the first time the German government has considered how to position itself toward the crimes of the country's past. Indeed, the history of post-World War II Germany is fraught with morally dubious decisions toward the legacy of Nazism — from Konrad Adenauer's choice in the 1950s to avoid a thorough de-Nazification of his government, to the Red Army Fraction's campaign in the 1970s to purify West Germany of its Nazi-era sins by means of terrorism and murder.

Nonetheless, the contemporary German state has mostly tried in good faith to feel its way toward an ad hoc accomodation of its Nazi past, one that acknowledges the unique scourge of the Third Reich, while protecting the core freedoms of a liberal democracy. Symbols from the Nazi-era, such as the swastika or the “Heil Hitler” salute, are illegal in Germany, but far-right political groups have also been granted equal right to hold demonstrations to air their views. Holocaust denial is punishable by imprisonment, but neo-Nazi parties have been tolerated as long as they draw no explicit links with the Nazi regime.

The policies might sometimes may seem contradictory, but they are meant to hang together as a carefully managed compromise, one that pays respect both to the tragic origins and the decades-long success of the modern, democratic German state.

But, when it comes to the NPD, the country's largest far-right party, many Germans insist that the government redraw the boundaries between freedom of expression and historical deference. Indeed, the calls for action against the NPD have gotten louder in recent years, a development coincident with the party's increasing successes, especially in eastern Germany.

The party has earned seats in a number of state legislatures by winning more than 5 percent in several state-wide elections, which has also given it the right to receive government campaign financing. Charlotte Knoblauch, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, supports the renewed effort to ban the party, insisting that it's unacceptable that the party receives tax money to spread its “racist propoganda.”

However personally sympathetic German judges may be to such pleas, they say they can't do anything about the party unless the state can conclusively prove that it is explicitly subverting the German constitution. That sets the bar very high: Party leaders would have to be documented laying out plans to install a dictatorship, or belittling the victims of totalitarianism. Gathering such evidence in the public sphere is a madenning process, as NPD lawyers carefully monitor party rhetoric so that it tiptoes up to, without crossing, the legal boundaries.
The German government has tried other methods to gain damning evidence against the NPD, but those have only led to other legal difficulties. Indeed, an attempt by the federal government in 2003 to ban the party relied heavily on evidence gathered by government agents who operated as undercover spies within the NPD organization. The Constitutional Court claimed it couldn't distinguish between the government agents' observations of the NPD activities, and their own participation and possible instigation of those activities. Legal experts, including former justice Hoffmann-Riem, have suggested that the very fact that undercover government agents are still in force in the NPD organization means that any legal case against the party would be weakened from the get-go.
Interestingly, it's primarily politicians from eastern Germany, where the NPD is strongest, who have most strongly resisted calls to ban the party. They argue that the only sustainable way to combat neo-Nazi radicalism is through the normal channels of the liberal state — namely, open debate and argument. “Even if you banned the NPD party, they would just rename themselves and come back the next week,” said Andreas Adammer, a resident of Potsdam in the state of Brandenburg, where the NPD has enjoyed success in past elections.
Of course, the contrasting strategies for dealing with the NPD can and will most likely be pursued in parallel. Indeed, while Bavaria pursues its case against the NPD, some 8000 neo-Nazis are expected to gather in Dresden Saturday to mark the 65th anniversary of the Allied bombing of that city in the final year of World War II. A police presence will be on hand to ensure that the Nazi sympathizers have the opportunity to air their slogans, which compare Allied firebombing to Nazi atrocities. But, they are also expected to be met by a group of counter-protesters whose numbers will double their own.
 
originaly posted by By Cameron Abadi at globalpost.com

Editor of Antisemitic Paper Sentenced to Prison Colony on Incitement Charges (Russia)

A Russian court sentenced the editor of an antisemitic newspaper to three years in a prison colony on charges of inciting ethnic and religious hatred, according to a February 3, 2010 report by the Regnum news
agency. Konstantin Dushenov, editor of "Russ Pravoslavnaya" ("Orthodox Rus") was also forbidden from publishing for three years. He plans to appeal the verdict.

Two other staffers at the paper received suspended sentences on the same charge. The defendants got into trouble for distributing an antisemitic film around the country entitled "Russia With a Knife in the Back." Although not mentioned in the report, that film is on the federal list of banned extremist materials

ucsj.org

Nizhny Novgorod Court Sentences Neo-Nazi Gang Leader to Prison (Russia)

A court in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia sentenced a neo-Nazi gang leader to eight and a half years in prison, according to a January 25, 2010 report by the local NTA news agency. The defendant, a 19 year old man nicknamed "Fritz," headed a group of at least six teenagers, who were charged with inciting ethnic hatred. "Fritz" himself was convicted of organizing an extremist group, which carries stiffer penalties. He founded what he called "The National Socialist Workers Party of Russia" with the goal of driving all non-Russians from the city. "Fritz" drew up a charter for the party, acquired a Nazi flag, and trained his followers in combat skills. He also hoarded weapons and constructed bombs, all the while extorting money from victims.

On April 29, 2008 he threw a grenade at a car that he thought was owned by an Azeri man, blowing it up. A passerby was injured in the explosion. He and his followers then attacked a building where many citizens of
Vietnam lived. Wearing masks and armed with clubs and knives, theytried to break into the building, but police arrived in time to stop any possible bloodshed. They detained some of the gang as suspects, and
this led them to the defendants, two of whom received prison terms of 6 and 5 years, respectively. The remaining defendants got off with suspended sentences.
ucsj.org