From: rrizzo@star-trek.bbn.com (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: German Neo-Nazis bomb Holocaust memorial
Keywords: Neo-Nazis, Germany, Holocaust, Berlin
Date: 31 Aug 92 22:47:41 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: archive.bbn.com



			NAZIS BOMB HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL


I just heard on NPR that neo-Nazis bombed a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Germany.

This is not a Usenet prank.  It really happened.  Today.  Monday, August 31,
1992.  Another gift from our new world order.

The blast tore away much of the monument, which depicts German Jews boarding
trains to Auschwitz.

Helmut Kohl* was heavily criticized in the Bundestag today for not stemming 
the wave of neo-Nazi violence.  Jewish groups in Germany issued a "bitter 
warning" that the bombing may mark the beginning of a wave of violent racial
intolerance throughout the country in a now-united Germany.  The German press
has been reporting in great detail the neo-Nazi riots of the past week in Rostock
as a "nightmare of persecution."

Much of the blame has been laid on Kohl, with his recent and now rather fatuous
assertions that all is well.

This last weekend alone saw 20 violent neo-Nazi attacks on immigrant housing
across Germany.  A counter-demonstration in Rostock to protest the attacks on
a shelter for Romanian gypsy and Vietnamese refugees there last week was itself
attacked, and neo-Nazi attacks on the shelter continued the next day. Throughout
the violence in Rostock since it began last week hundreds of local people of all
ages cheered the neo-Nazis on, declaring "Germany for the Germans!" and "Kick
the immigrants out!"

The neo-Nazi violence seems clearly coordinated, orchestrated, and on a national
level.  The Rostock riots drew on skinheads and neo-Nazis from across Germany.

A half a year ago I thought that most neo-Nazi activity and sentiment occurred
in the former East Germany, with its 50% unemployment, relatively miserable
living conditions, legacy of Communist rule, and refusal except on the most unreal
ideological level to confront its Nazi past.  But statistics have shown that in
numbers of neo-Nazis and their organizations, frequency and location of violent
acts, and particularly in the heinousness of their crimes (eg, throwing acid on
an elderly Vietnamese man, trying to set people on fire) West Germany has propor-
tionally just as big a neo-Nazi problem.  

A year ago it was common to observe that neo-Fascists, neo-Nazis and other ideological
racists seemed busier and more numerous in France, Italy, even Britain, than in Germany.
But if you compare incidents in Germany with those elsewhere, the German outbreaks are
on average more vicious, more violent and betray perhaps a rawer form of bigotry.

It may be easier to get civilians to cheer on grotesque acts of racial and ethnic
persecution from the sidelines in the morally bankrupt east, but west German skinheads
frequently participate in rioting in the east.  Neo-Nazism in Germany is not a problem
of the east or of unification, but of age-old German racism and xenophobia, precisely
what Hitler manipulated.

The odd part is that Germany is now one of the most influential and respected of
nations and the richest country in the West, and in its western 3/4s the affluence
is widely enjoyed, with the possible exception of gastarbeiter ("guest workers", 
mainly Turks, North Africans, Jugoslavs and Italians) and refugees.  In the early
1930s the German economy had virtually collapsed and many Germans harbored a bitter
grudge against Europe for the Versailles treaty that followed WW1.

The extreme act of trying to destroy a Holocaust monument, especially a day after
a weekend orgy of violence in Rostock, may prove to be a grave tactical blunder on
the part of organized neo-Nazism in Germany.  It may dislodge Kohl and force the
gov't to engage in a general repression of the extreme rightwing.  Only time will
tell.

Regards,
Ron




* This sounds exactly right.  I've wondered why the German gov't has had so little
  success in containing and stopping far-right violence; both the West and East
  German police have a reputation for brutality and authoritarian effectiveness.
  One factor is that the Rostock police, as in much of the former DDR, are the
  Stasi, the Communist police.  But why the impotence at the top?  Kohl is in a
  number of ways comparable to George Bush:  considerably to the right politically,
  nationalistic and "conservative", wedded to the "free market" at all costs, with
  Bavaria's Franz-Joseph Strauss or his successors (I don't remember if that mali-
  cious clown of a politician is dead or retired) to his right playing the role of
  a Pat Buchanan or Jesse Helms.
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