Brutal Neonazi Attack in Berlin
schalom libertad
libcom.org
Jul 20 2009
Q: On Sunday [July 12] in the Berlin-Friedrichshain neighborhood [a formerly East Berlin district with a strong left, antifascist, punk, alternative, international, and hipster scene] there was a brutal attack from Neo-Nazis. What happened precisely?
A: Sunday morning around 6 o´clock, near the Frankfurter Allee subway station, Neo-Nazis first attacked leftists and then also randomly a group of passerby, who luckily were able to flee. As an uninvolved person crossed by, the Neo-Nazis attacked him until he lost consciousness. One of the Nazis dragged him onto the sidewalk, laid his face on the curb and kicked him in the back of the head with all of his might.
The victim is in the hospital in the intensive care unit with major injuries including cerebral bleeding. The Berlin police, who are not known for their sensibility to Right-wing attacks, said it is a wonder that the victim even survived. The four Nazis who were still at the crime scene, were arrested and remain in police custody.
Q: In which context do you see the attack?
A: The attack makes us first of all furious and shows us how important antifascist defense is precisely on these focal points like the subway station Frankfurter Allee. We´re reminded of the attempted murder there in March of last year, as a racist shoved a black person in front of the subway train. Also, guests of the club “Jeton” have for years been attacking alternative people, migrants, as well as gays and lesbians. The attacks occur mostly spontaneously and with very serious brutality. Also with the opening of the Thor-Steinar-Laden [a neo-Nazi clothing store and hub] in the Petersburger Straße [also in Friedrichshain] there is an ever-increasing number of Neo-Nazis strolling through the neighborhood.
Q: Berlins Senator Erhart Körting (Social Democratic Party) condemned the act. He said, it shows, where it can lead, when violence is brought to a political dispute…
A: With his statement, Körting tried to relativize the Neo-Nazi attack and to equate it with antifascist engagement. With it, he suggested and constructed a peaceful societal middle, which simply doesn´t exist. The fact is, if the leftists, who were attacked first by the Nazis, had rendered the latter unable to act, this grave attack would have been prevented.
Antifascist Protest: Saturday, July 18, 2009, 6:00 pm, Bersarin-Platz, www.antifa.de and www.antifa-fh.de.vu
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schalom libertad notes that “The title of this blog is lifted from Arno Lustiger’s book “Schalom Libertad!: Juden im spanischen Bürgerkrieg” (Hello Freedom! Jews in the Spanish Civil War).”
Speaking of Spain, the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of civil war and social revolution in that country has been noted by some bloke from Boston called Julius Purcell. He writes (‘The Memory That Will Not Die: Exhuming the Spanish Civil War’, Boston Review, July/August 2009):
I live in Barcelona, whose leftist regional government is one of the few in Spain to have enthusiastically embraced historical memory. Payne’s warning note strikes a chord here, in a city with its own historical taboos. As Catalan separatism grows, and with it the tendency to lay all blame at the door of reactionary Spain, certain things are best not mentioned. The brutality of Barcelona’s anarchist mobs during the Republican era itself, for example, is rarely discussed in liberal dinner party conversations. Likewise, the violent anti-clericalism and church-burnings.
The ‘liberal’ account of those years was famously dissected by Uncle Noam in ‘Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship’, parts of which were originally “delivered as a lecture at New York University in March 1968 as part of the Albert Schweitzer Lecture Series”, and published in the collection American Power and the New Mandarins, Penguin, 1969.
With the crowd of commonplace chatterers, we are already past praying for: no reproach is too bitter for us, no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjects find that abuse of anarchists is an unfailing passport to popular favour. Every conceivable crime is laid to our charge, and opinion, too indolent to learn the truth, is easily persuaded that anarchy is but another name for wickedness and chaos. Overwhelmed with opprobrium and held up to hatred, we are treated on the principle that the surest way of hanging a dog is to give it a bad name. ~ Élisée Reclus (March 15, 1830–July 4, 1905)
In Oh Canaduh:
White supremacist had ‘lethal’ weapons cache in his Bay Street condo: police
Rob Roberts / Michael McKiernan [?]
National Post
July 20, 2009…The search of his home turned up the weapons and an array of white-supremacist paraphernalia, including a neo-Nazi style flag with a swastika and skull and a number of white power publications. One of the pamphlets, entitled “Did six million really die” was signed by the notorious Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel…
‘Did Six Million Really Die?’ and a tonne of other anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi material is available for download from Holocaust denialist and ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ member Martin Fletcher’s site ‘Australian Nationalist Resource’ (nee ‘Downunder Newslinks’). Given that there is a ding-dong battle going on between Darrin Hodge’s APP and arch-rivals Dr. James Saleam’s ‘Australia First Party’ as to which Party can save White Australia from drowning in a cesspool of muds and Third World filth, it is reassuring to this White Man that there still remains some common ground between the two Parties with regards the perils of not only chinks, dagos, slopes and wops, but Blood-suckers, Christ-killers, Heebs, Jew-boys, Kikes, Kosher-vampires, Shylocks and Yids.
Sieg heil!
And finally, in the UK: Anyone for tennis?
White supremacist planned racist bombings, court told
Press Association
The Guardian
June 30, 2009
“Old Bailey told Neil “I’M HEAD OF WAFFEN SS UK AND I WILL BLOW UP ALL NON BRITS” Lewington had ‘unhealthy interest’ in bombers Timothy McVeigh, David Copeland and Ted Kaczynski”!
…He said he was a member of the National Front and wanted the Ku Klux Klan brought back, it was alleged.
Another woman said he bought a child’s chemistry set from Toys R Us and told her he could make explosives using it and household items, said Altman. “He said he had made tennis ball bombs and taken them to the woods to explode them. Lewington was found in possession of three tennis balls and a diagram showing how to convert them into shrapnel bombs.”
Another girlfriend said he spoke of making bombs and asked at which house in her street an Asian family lived.
“He explained how he could throw a tennis ball bomb or place it somewhere and then run away,” Altman said.
See also : Guilty… neo-Nazi ‘twit’ who plotted deadly campaign, Belfast Telegraph, July 16, 2009 | Know your enemy, Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman, July 9, 2009: “Why isn’t the trial of a man charged with preparing for terror attacks using tennis-ball bombs being reported? He’s not a bearded Muslim.” | Bomb seizures spark far-right terror plot fear, July 6, 2009 | Martyn Gilleard : RAHOWA!, June 26, 2008.