April 20 is a very special date on the neo-Nazi calendar, and cause for very special celebrations. In Australia, it means that the usual motley assortment of racist losers — whether in Canberra, or Melbourne, or Perth, or Sydney, or elsewhere — will gather to make a toast to Der Führer… and to pray that Dane Sweetman doesn’t decide to gatecrash the party.
In New Zealand / Aotearoa, on April 21, Douglas Schott will be entertaining the volk of Wellington with his band, Blood Red Eagle (a band which, incidentally, Charter 77 gigged with in Sydney — which fact, in addition to The Birmy being the band’s favourite venue, helps explain why they regard opposition to neo-Nazi infiltration of the local music scene to be worthy of nothing other than derision, and have done since The Birmy’s (continuing) status as a neo-Nazi venue was first brought to their attention in 2002). Schott’s Viking-inspired warblings in praise of all things Nordic (like worshipping at the feet of deceased incestuous coprophiliac dictators while wearing funny hats) has experienced a slight hiccup, however, with members of the Satan’s Slaves MC apparently deciding that their clubhaus in Wellington is simply too sexy / too sexy for Blood Red Eagle. If correct, this means that the Beagle Boys (certainly not to be confused with Banda Bassotti) will likely be playing in someone’s backyard.
And as for the gig scheduled for Upper Hutt on April 20… who knows?
In Russia, April 20 means a sharp escalation in otherwise routine patterns of bonehead thuggery and murder. And when it comes to racist violence, according to the UCSJ:
…April 2006 will go on record as the bloodiest month in recent Russian history, with at least seven murders and more than a dozen assaults attributed to neo-Nazi groups.
Since the late 1990s, Russia’s homegrown fascists have spent the days surrounding April 20 stepping up their year-round campaign of violence against dark-skinned ethnic minorities, foreign students (predominantly from developing countries), and Jews…
Throughout April 2006, Russian neo-Nazi web sites brazenly called for more violence against minorities to mark Hitler’s birthday and even posted a how-to manual with advice on how to evade arrest afterward. At the same time, neo-Nazis interviewed by foreign correspondents in Krasnoyarsk and Moscow claimed that elements within law enforcement agencies are working to support, rather than suppress, their activities. This unconfirmed claim bolsters a conspiracy theory [?] circulated by many human rights activists and both liberal and Communist politicians, the gist of which is that the Russian government is secretly backing neo-Nazi groups and xenophobic political parties like Motherland and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR in order to build up a “fascist threat” that can be used at the end of President Putin’s term in 2008 to justify emergency measures to continue his rule…
Yeah. How outlandish.
In other news:
‘Hungarian motorway blocked by escaping rabbits’
April 16, 2007BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s busiest highway, connecting Budapest with the Austrian capital Vienna, was closed early on Monday after a truck carrying rabbits [to the slaughterhouse] crashed, letting 5,000 of the animals loose on the road, police said.
The M1 motorway was closed around 40 km (25 miles) west of Budapest and could remain closed for hours while police try to capture the escaped animals, highway police spokeswoman Viktoria Galik said.
“There are thousands of them on the road but they’re not using their newfound freedom well; they’re just sitting around, eating grass and enjoying the sun,” Galik told Reuters.
