Welcome to an irregular series of a look at the notion of “extremism”, whereby I look at the notion that “the extreme left are just as bad as the extreme right”, looking at different issues. Just so you don’t get surprised, I reckon that this notion is wrong.
Some of these issues are in Germany, a place where I occasionally work, a place where I speak with many young people who are concerned with various problems within capitalist economic systems and states, but see no alternative. Therefore outright racist murders get explained away by talking about those dangerous anarchists who throw stones at armed and armoured police.
There’s a lot of bad things happening in Germany, no doubt, but here I will point out that the reason I know these things is because of the excellent Germany media like konkret, Jungle World, ak, Junge Welt (a newspaper I like with reservations) and many NGOs.
Anyway, back to those racist murders (which continued over six years, known by the German state, let’s remember that). I present you André Eminger.
There he is. He’s one of the people facing prosecution in the Munich trial regarding the “NSU-murders”. He co-founded the “White brotherhood” (Weiße Bruderschaft), editted a newsletter called “The Aryan Law and Order” and within this newsletter demonstrates his support of a “Holy Racial War”. He had a close connection to Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt (who both carried out racist murders) und Zschäpe (a helper). He may have had a connection to the Cologne nailbomb of 2001.
This article isn’t about that, however. I put that in just to show a bit of context.
He has the words “Die, Jew, Die!” tattooed on his chest. This hasn’t been shown during the trial. He chose, however, one day, to wear the top you see in the photo above. It is the cover of an album by Satanic Warmaster, a Nazi satanic band from Finland. The album is called “Black Metal Kommando/Gas Chamber”.
One of the lawyers complained about this top, saying he should remove it, saying, “It’s a declaration of sympathy for the murders that are being dealt with here”. Herbet Delmer, a state prosecutor, ruled on this. Herbert Delmer, who works as the head of “terror detection” in Karlsruhe, has a background prosecuting Russian spies, “left-wing radicals” and members of a left-wing “Militanten Gruppe” in Berlin. He ruled that the top was “irrelevant” to the trial.
A few weeks later someone who wanted to watch the trial wasn’t allowed into the court, as the words “No human is illegal!” (Kein Mensch ist illegal!) was on his T-shirt.
In case the moral of this story isn’t clear, here it is: It seems that the German state is OK about Nazi T-shirts, but not ones that could be seen as being left-wing.
Not that the German state is the only one having a not-particularly-reflected position about such matters, of course.
Czarny kapturek 