20,000 anti-fascists against Nazis

Mounting many varied blockading actions, 20,000 anti-fascists from all over Germany and other European countries prevented a planned large-scale Nazi march in Dresden on Saturday 19 February.

There were massive clashes with police acting extremely brutally. They attacked the blockers with batons, pepper spray, water cannons, armoured vehicles and newly acquired pepperball guns. Several people were seriously injured. But the brutal police violence didn’t stop the broad spectrum of activists who’d travelled to Dresden from making its centre impassable for the fascists. In addition to mass squats, in the old quarter there were also many barricades.

Only about 2,000 fascists of both sexes had dared to go to Dresden and failed with every attempt to carry out demonstrations. Even a spontaneously demonstration called by them in nearby Leipzig ended on the rails of its main railway station before it even began.

All in all a very successful day for the anti-fascist movement in Germany.

Naturally not everyone is happy about that. While the Nazis are sulking, the Saxony police are also proving sore losers and on Saturday stormed the press office of the “Dresden Nazi-free” alliance. The alliance people present were forced to strip naked and submit to a registration of personal data.

Information available so far is that they’ll be charged with conspiracy and public incitement to criminal acts as well as breaches of public order. The raiding police took all computers and storage media. That has led so far to 79 arrests of anti-fascists.

Indymedia

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

German riots on 65th anniversary of Dresden bombing

Neo-nazis beaten back by anti-fascists at Dresden

More than 1000 neo-Nazis were confronted by around 10,000 of their left-wing opponents as they protested in Dresden on the 65th anniversary of the Allied bombing at the end of World War II.

More than 5,000 police were dispatched to try to prevent the groups from clashing but there have been scuffles on the streets and damage to property.

Tristana Moore has been tracking the day's events from the German capital Berlin. Watch the BBC report here.

Thanks to Sue for the heads-up. :-)

German Boys Join Anti-Immigrant, Neo-Nazi Groups, Study Shows

A study funded by Germany’s Interior Ministry showed that more than twice as many German boys belong to anti-immigrant or neo-Nazi groups than claim membership of the major political parties’ youth organizations.

Out of more than 26,000 youths surveyed in 2007 and 2008, 4.9 percent of boys said they belonged to a “right-wing group or ‘Kamaradschaft’,” the study by Hanover-based research institute KFN showed. That compares with as many as 2 percent that belong to youth organizations for established parties.

“It’s shocking that these right-wing groups can be more successful at mobilizing our youth than the established parties,” KFN Director Christian Pfeiffer told reporters today in Berlin. While a comparison between such groups is inexact, since many established party youth clubs charge membership fees, Pfeiffer said it was instructive.

Last month, about 6,000 German skinhead and neo-Nazi groups in the eastern city of Dresden staged one of their biggest demonstrations since German reunification in 1990. The groups, mostly made up of youths tied to the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party, used the 64th anniversary of the 1945 firebombing of Dresden on Feb. 14 to hold a “mourning march.”

Speaking alongside German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble at a press conference, Pfeiffer said he didn’t know whether the 4.9 percent figure had increased, since a comparable number wasn’t available from previous studies. Some 2.6 percent of girls said they belonged to anti-immigrant and neo-Nazi organizations.

Kamaradschaften are clubs that offer a forum for symbols and songs that often recall Germany’s Nazi past. The display of Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany.

The study also revealed that 29.7 percent of youths agreed with the statement that there are “too many foreigners in Germany;” another 34.8 percent tended toward that position, according to the study, Youth in Germany as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence.

Bloomberg

On Dresden Anniversary, Massive Protest Against Neo-Nazi March

Thousands turned out in central Dresden to protest a march by far-right supporters on the 64th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the city. Police clashed with left-wing protestors, who threw stones and bottles.

Organizers of the alliance that formed as a counterweight to the neo-Nazi march through the eastern German city said around 11,000 people participated at several demonstrations. Police put that number at just under 10,000.

They were protesting a "mourning march" held by members of the extreme-right in the capital of the state of Saxony. For a decade, anti-immigrant and skinhead groups have marked the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden by Allied air raids, which took place Feb. 13-15, 1945, at the end of World War Two.

Many of the groups marching were affiliated with the National Democratic Party (NPD), a far-right political party which entered the Saxony state assembly in 2004.

This year’s event was organized by a group known as the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, supported by the NPD. The far-right marchers totaled around 6,000, according to police, about a thousand more than gathered in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing.

Many in the far-right scene call the widespread destruction in Dresden a "Holocaust," and attempt to paint Germany as a victim of the war. The firebombing killed an estimated 25,000 people, mostly civilians, and wiped out the city center.

Eyewitnesses on Saturday said several hundred leftists who objected to the far-right procession tried to attack neo-Nazi participants, hurling bottles at the police cordon and damaging parked cars. Witnesses said several people were injured, although police have not confirmed this.

Clashes between left-wing and far-right groups are common on the anniversary. This year, police forces numbered around 4,000, some brought in from neighboring states.

Commemoration

Separately, thousands of pacifists took part in processions to both denounce the neo-Nazi threat and remember the city's dead.

On Saturday morning, peace services were held in churches and a synagogue. Afterwards, thousands of Dresden residents went to a central square, the site where numerous victims of the bombing were burned to death. Also participating in the commemorations were politicians from Dresden and Saxony as well as representatives from the United States and Great Britain.

Many mainstream Germans say that the huge loss of life must be remembered as a warning against war.

On Friday, the bell of the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, rang out in their memory. The church, one of the symbols of Dresden, collapsed two days after the raids. It remained a pile of rubble for decades until US and British donors helped pay to rebuild it in a gesture of reconciliation. It reopened in 2006.

Deutsche Welle

Neo-Nazis release school newspaper

Germany's main neo-Nazi party has launched a youth propaganda campaign by distributing newspapers in schools that portray Adolf Hitler as a Second World War peacemaker and the Allies as warmongers.

State prosecutors in the east German city of Dresden said yesterday that police had confiscated some 150 of the offending newspapers circulated by the country's neo-Nazi National Democratic party (NPD) at schools in the region.

They said the newspapers, entitled Perplex, carried a seemingly harmless front page picture of two hands about to join under the slogan "Young, Cheeky and German". However, inside pupils were encouraged to turn their schools into German-only institutions and to despise foreigners.

Christian Avenarius, a spokesman for the state prosecutors, said: "The newspapers are clearly designed to influence young people. Hitler is portrayed as somebody who tries to negotiate peace during the Second World War. By contrast the British, Americans and Russians are depicted as warmongers."

Dresden's state prosecutors said they would bring charges against the NPD for inciting racial hatred and for being in breach of youth protection laws. The party has been prosecuted for distributing racist CDs in schools in the past.

German intelligence officials said the newspapers were part of a far wider campaign by the party to distribute tens of thousands of similar documents at schools nationwide.

The newspapers mark the latest attempt by the NPD to broaden its support in eastern Germany where the party holds seats in regional parliaments in Saxony and in Chancellor Angela Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania.

Mrs Merkel is under pressure to ban the NPD after an incident last month in which eight Indian market traders were beaten up by a mob screaming racist abuse in Saxony.

Independent