 Europe's
biggest nazi event:
Hess marchers grow bolder
An on-the-spot report from Wunsiedel by Axel Hoffman for
Enough is Enough and Antifa-Net
THE ANNUAL DEMONSTRATION to commemorate the death of
Hitler's war criminal deputy Rudolf Hess has established itself as
Europe's biggest nazi event with more than 4,600 fascists marching through
the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel on 21 August this year.
 Nazis
march behind the slogan "Tel Aviv is not Berlin, Israel is not
Germany, and Friedmann [Jewish community leader] is not our friend >>
The mainly German marchers were joined by nazis from the
USA, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium,
France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Russia, Austria, Spain,
Italy and Croatia. As in past years, the nazi lawyer Jiirgen Rieger led
the rally, assisted by his fellow Hamburg hardline fascists Inge
Nottelmann and Thomas Wulff, who took charge of security.
The annual Hess demonstration, which has been held in Wunsiedel since
2001, is a major cause for concern because the nazis have succeeded in
putting their open homage to Hitlerism on a legal basis. They deny the war
crimes of the Hitler regime and present the Nazis as a "force for peace"
dragged into war by the "criminal" Allies.
As usual most of the marchers were nazi skinheads and
members of the so-called Freie Kameradschaften, marshalled into city and
regional formations. Many of these were older people from the "old Nazi"
spectrum. The Hess march has become of growing importance for the
development of a nazi movement that increasingly represents a broad
cross-section of age groups and is eliminating social contradictions
within the right wing.
The large-scale participation of foreign nazis, however, led to some
heated controversy. The Austrian nazis petulantly withdrew their platform
speaker after Russian Kameraden were allowed one, while Czech nazis were
banned from speaking because they had not dissociated themselves from
alleged Czech crimes against German refugees immediately after the war.
Rieger later justified the gagging of the Czechs on the grounds of the
"supremacy" of the Germans in the national socialist movement. Whoever
does not accept this, he suggested, should stay at home.
A frightening aspect of the day is that, anti-fascists
and municipal council representatives apart, hardly any indignation was
noticeable. A welcome feature was the active opposition to the nazis
displayed by the local council, which is led by the conservative Christian
Social Union. For the first time Rieger was refused use of the town's
festival ground, the entire town was festooned with anti-fascist posters
and banners and the mayor led a sit-down protest. The police,
unfortunately, reacted with less understanding, removing anti-fascist
banners and rigorously enforcing the nazis' bogus "right" to march.
 Top
and right: British fascists join the march
The nationwide anti-fascist mobilisation fell below
expectations. A large number of those who travelled to Wunsiedel confined
themselves to standing along the route of the nazi procession without
trying to engage in united counteraction. It is vital that the
anti-fascist turnout increases and that the different sectors of the
democratic movement start grasping the fact that the yearly Hess march is
a springboard for nazism that cannot be tolerated.
Hartz IV:
Nazis hijack
protests against welfare cuts
The extreme right in regions such as eastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommem
has faced little opposition over many years and is able to present itself
as a "radical solution"...
Nazis brauchen Zeichen:
Zeichen des
Hasses
Nazis brauchen Symbole, Tätowierungen, Parolen, Hierarchien,
Bosse, Unterwerfung...
NPD breakthrough in Saxony:
Nazi parties
turn popular resentment into votes
The vote for the fascists in eastern Germany's biggest
state was a shock for the mainstream Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social
Democrats (SPD)...
Searchlight 2004
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03-11-2004 |
