German radio host: ‘Holocaust invented as PR’

A popular German radio host is slated to return to his program on Sunday, after being temporarily pulled from his post for writing an email denying the Holocaust and spreading conspiracy theories against the US to a listener earlier this month.

Ken Jebsen, who is a host at the publicly funded “Jugendwelle” music program aired by Radio Fritz, wrote, “I know who invented the Holocaust as PR.”

n his crude e-mail, Jebsen said Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels implemented the public relations plan of the Holocaust and the Americans provided fuel for the entire Nazi bombing campaign, citing Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller, the American businessman. The rambling e-mail is filled with grammatical and spelling errors.

In a separate comment, which was voiced before the published e-mail, Jebsen termed the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 a “warm demolition.”

The listener sent Jebsen’s email to journalist Henryk M. Broder who published Jebsen’s convoluted diatribes against Jews and the United States on his website.

Broder, who writes for the daily Die Welt paper and has testified as an expert on modern expressions of Jew-hatred in a Bundestag hearing, told Bild newspaper on Friday, “This is clear anti-Semitism.”

After the scandal surfaced in early November, Jebsen was removed from the program but will now return to his large youth audience.

Jerusalem Post attempts to reach the 45-year-old Jebsen were not successful.

Jebsen denied that his email was anti-Semitic, and he wrote on Fritz’s website that “my biography and my background obligate me to advocate for international understanding, peace and democracy.”

Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), Fritz radio’s parent company, defended Jebsen’s continued employment.

“The accusations against the moderator that he spreads anti-Semitic ideas and denies the Holocaust are unfounded,” wrote the RBB management on Fritz’s website.

In a phone conversation with the Post on Saturday, Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal center’s director for international relations, said Jebsen’s statements are “unadulterated anti-Semitism. The program has to be defunded.”

Speaking from Paris, Samuels said Jebsen and the radio’s management has “to understand their legal responsibility,” adding that Jebsen is “not competent to run a youth program.”

He called on the authorities to “take legal steps against” the Holocaust revisionism of Jebsen.

Germany has a hate-crimes law barring incitement against Jews and Holocaust denial. It is unclear at this stage if a criminal complaint has been filed against Jebsen or RBB.

Jerusalem Post

Hackers link MP's aide to neo-Nazi site in member list leak (Finland)

The parliamentary aide to a right-wing Finnish MP has offered to resign after the Anonymous hacking collective published what it said was a list of applications to join a local neo-Nazi party.

Hacktivists broke into the website of Kansallinen Vastarinta, the magazine of the Suomen Vastarintaliike (Finnish Resistance Movement), before extracting and publishing what it said was the party's membership application database at the end of last month. The local cell of Anonymous warned of future internet-based attacks on its websites and forums unless Suomen Vastarintaliike (Finnish Resistance Movement) is disbanded.

Among the list that allegedly contained the names of hundreds of would-be members of the neo-Nazi group was Ulla Pyysalo, aide to Finnish MP Juho Eerola of the True Finns. Pyysalo told local media that she is offering to quit her job by the end of the year, providing she finds alternative work in the meantime, because she wants to avoid damaging the True Finns. Pyysalo maintains that she never actually joined Suomen Vastarintaliike, which espouses a confrontational anti-immigrant agenda and runs training camps in the Finnish countryside.

This item continues at The Register

Neo-Nazi terrorism sparks calls for NPD ban (Germany)

As more details of an extreme-right terror cell continued to emerge on Monday, German politicians promised a full investigation into a series of murders and renewed calls to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

nterior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich admitted gross failures by the security services after revelations of a decade-long killing spree by neo-Nazis.

"It is deeply troubling that there was no connection made between the murder series across Germany and the far-right scene in Thuringia," the east German state where the trio was based, Friedrich told the daily Bild. "State interior ministers are calling for better coordination between police and domestic intelligence on the state level. I strongly back that."

Friedrich said it was still unclear whether a group of extremists who admitted gunning down nine businessmen of foreign origin and a policewoman had a larger network behind them.

“The loved ones of the victims can be sure that (Germany) will do everything to get to the bottom of this affair,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told the ARD television network late on Sunday.

Four suspects – two of whom killed themselves last week – are suspected of involvement in a series of killings, including foreign shopkeepers from 2000 to 2006 and a policewoman in 2007. The two living suspects have been arrested and are currently in police custody. They were all allegedly part of a subversive group called the National Socialist Underground (NSU).

There have been suggestions that the suspects had connections with domestic intelligence agencies and Thomas Oppermann, the head of the opposition Social Democrats' parliamentary grouping, told the Bild newspaper he was seeking a special meeting of the parliamentary committee overseeing the secret services.

"I want to know what the authorities knew and how such criminal acts can better be prevented in future," he told the paper.

Friedrich described the so-called "döner kebab murders," as "new form of extreme-right terror" and said all unsolved crimes in Germany since 1998 suspected of being xenophobic should be reviewed to see whether they can be connected to the group.

Meanwhile Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann called for officials to discuss how to ban the NPD, despite there being no apparent direct link between the suspects and the party.

"I am for setting the NPD ban back on the agenda,” Herrmann said.

Discussion of the issue comes at a critical time for the NPD, which over the weekend ousted long-time leader Udo Voigt from the party chairmanship. Instead, 40-year-old Holger Apfel, head of the party in the Saxony state legislature, has taken the reins of the party.

German authorities tried to ban the extreme-right party before but failed in 2003 when the Federal Constitutional Court determined that state-affiliated informants were playing major roles in the party’s leadership.

In order for a ban to be successful, the state would need to convince the court, which is the only body with the power to ban parties deemed unconstitutional.

The GdP police union said a ban could be helpful because it would prevent the party from openly organising congresses and strip it of its financial base.

But Cem Özdemir, the leader of the Green party in Germany played down the possibility of a ban, saying “we have to discuss how the NPD and right-wing extremists have become socially hegemonic, especially in the eastern part of our republic.”

The Local Germany