*Russian authorities/media deny early reports (Russian state-run news channel Rossiya-24) that a girl was killed in the attack. Mind you, they deny a lot of things… Avtonom has an English translation of an account published in local media here.
- you have to treat them nice & gentle
do nothing rash, they’re sensitive
you must be somewhat sentimental
respectful of the way they live
don’t let your dogs attack them on the street
embrace the fascists where you may meet
if they should call for hate or violence
just let them talk, it is their right
& keep your protestations silent
you wouldn’t want to start a fight
for fighting is what they do best
embrace the fascists & you’ll be blessed
& if they fire their guns upon you
is life so precious in your eyes?
you would be sheep with wolves around you
why not be gladly victimized?
& if you feel inside your guts
the Nazi dagger’s blade
embrace the fascists that you have made
~ kurt tucholsky, 1931
Yeah so, during the course of an assault upon concert-goers in Miass (a city 1400km east of Moscow) a group of “bare-chested” boneheads in Russia have apparently injured scores and killed a 14-year-old girl. Some reports suggest that there may be moar victims, but accurate information will be difficult to obtain while the Russian state goes into damage control mode.
Report: 100 Russian skinheads attack concertgoers
David Nowak
APMOSCOW — Scores of bare-chested skinheads attacked a crowd of about 3,000 people at a rock concert in central Russia on Sunday, beating them with clubs, media reports said.
Dozens of people were left bloodied and dazed in the attack, television and news agencies reported, and state news channel Rossiya-24 said a 14-year-old girl was killed at the concert in Miass, 900 miles (1,400 kilometers) east of Moscow…
Not surprisingly — or incredibly, if you prefer — other reports suggest that police stood aside as the boneheads went about their bloody business:
According to local media reports, shooting was also heard as a crowd of angry bare-chested boneheads, armed with batons, sticks and iron rods, forced their way through security cordons.
“Police and security guards were either inactive or ran away. Some attackers snatched truncheons from police officers and started beating the visitors,” the Chelnovosti reported citing eyewitnesses.
Photos made by the portal’s correspondent at the event show police standing aside while people are being beaten up.
The non-intervention by police makes sense if the context for such (in)actions — and the long history of elites utilising violent, pea-brained fascists to crush dissent — is understood. So too, the hostility of police and other authorities to grassroots resistance to fascist violence (which violence includes hundreds of extra-judicial executions over the course of the last few decades). Thus the attack upon the Tornado rock festival in Chelyabinsk comes a month or so after another attack upon a protest camp near the Khimski forest in Moscow (The attack on forest defenders Khimki, avtonom, July 23, 2010). The forest is currently slated to be destroyed to make way for a road to Saint Petersburg, although the appearance of Saint Bono in Moscow has given Russian President Medvedev an opportunity to claim otherwise.
Fitzroy yuppies have expressed skepticism at reports coming outta Russia of fascist involvement in the cleansing of the camp. Spokesperson Dion stated that, even if correct, the environmentalists are liars, hypocrites and no better than the neo-Nazi elements that his Russian equivalents frequently employ to destroy their encampments. The Russians have also come to the attention of Freya Powell, who has conducted an interview with ‘Anarchist Street Artists’. The Artists singularly fail to understand the importance of shitting on anti-fascists, and are thus liars and hypocrites.
Above : Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasiya Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, murdered January 2009. Their alleged murderers are currently on trial.
Last weekend, activists organised a pop concert in support of the struggle to preserve Khimki forest. The attitude of authorities to the event was rather different to that adopted towards the event at which boneheads were given license to maim and kill children.
Battle of the bands
Andy Potts
The Moscow News
August 23, 2010Up to 3,000 people crowded onto Pushkin Square on Sunday for an environmental protest-cum-concert in defence of Khimki forest.
In a strange quirk of policing policy, the rally was allowed to go ahead but musicians were barred from using amplifying equipment – meaning the acoustic sounds of guitars had to compete with the noise of city-centre traffic.
The police’s door policy was as intimidating – and seemingly arbitrary – as at any Moscow nightclub, with burly uniformed officers ready to pounce at the first whiff of an amp.
They manned airport-style security scanners at every entrance to the square, and were eager to direct would-be protesters to any other way in, ideally the one from which they had just been turned away…
Earlier, Reporters Without Borders were shocked — shocked — to discover that Russia’s Interior Ministry had cracked down on independent media attempts to report on the struggle, and of damage to a Government building in Khimki following a protest on July 28 (see : Journalists interrogated, photos seized after protesters attack official building in Khimki, August 12, 2010).
See also : Unplugged protesters defy Moscow authorities [23/08/2010] | Banned bands will play on in Moscow [20/08/2010] | Protest gig aims to highlight discord over Khimki Forest plans [19/08/2010].
NB. Neo-Nazi skinheads will be assembling in Melbourne on September 25 to attend a pop concert in memory of dead bonehead Ian Stuart Donaldson. It will be the 17th year in a row that they’ve done so, apparently. On the same day, Canadian Holocaust denialist Paul Fromm and Australia First Party leader Dr James Saleam are scheduled to address a meeting.
Some disturbing stuff coming out of Russia atm.
i know it’s old hat, but jeez, the irony of neo-nazis in russia is gob-smacking.
As for the seeming incongruity of Russian swastika-lickers… they’re in Mongolia too. In Australia, Australia First is lead by a Lebanese fella, while Saleam’s former rival ‘Java’ Jack van Tongeren’s father was from Indonesia… oh, and word on the street is that van Tongeren may have recently re-joined his father in The Great Beyond.