5,000 Neo-Nazis March in Dresden
Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, Germany by allied and U.S. forces in World War II. Look who showed up and grabbed the attention:
Waving black flags and banners, thousands of neo-Nazis marched through the heart of Dresden yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the city's destruction by British and American bombers.
In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history, about 5,000 people took part in a "funeral march" to mourn the civilians killed by the allied attack. The protest upstaged the official commemoration of the anniversary, during which the British ambassador laid a wreath at a cemetery where victims were buried.
They played the music of Wagner and Bach from their loudspeakers. There were "anti-fascists" who turned out to oppose them.
They crossed the Elbe towards the old city, they encountered several hundred anti-fascists. The organisers merely turned up the volume and played the Ride of the Valkyries....Several anti-fascists waved British, US and Israeli flags. Others chanted: "You lost the war" and "Stalingrad was wonderful". Confetti and pink paper aeroplanes with RAF markings were thrown.
As one elderly German woman remarked, "It's sad to see something like this happening in Germany again." Another said, "Look at them. You just have to look at their stupid faces. They do not represent us."
Unfortunately, that doesn't make them less dangerous. And apparently, they didn't spring up overnight.
The political establishment appears to have been taken completely unawares by the far-right's recent renaissance and the rise of the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD), which won 9.2% of the vote in last September's elections in Saxony.
Where did these neanderthals come from and what is causing their numbers to rise?
Support for the NPD appears to be rising, especially in depressed areas of the former communist East Germany, where unemployment averages 20%.m "My husband and I are NPD voters," said Anni Lutzner, who attended yesterday's NPD-organised rally in Dresden. "We believe that the German state favours foreigners and the Jews. She added: "There's no point in banning us - we'll simply find a new name."
Hundreds of young skinheads attended the neo-Nazi rally. But the marchers also included pensioners who were driven out, like vast numbers of German refugees, from East Prussia - now divided between Russia and Poland.
The NPD leader even blamed the U.S. and the war in Iraq.
Addressing the rally, the NPD's leader in the Saxon parliament, Holger Apfel, launched an attack on what he called the "gangster politics of the British and Americans".
He said: "They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and - tomorrow possibly - Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America."
What's next for the NPD:
NPD...is contesting elections in Schleswig-Holstein this week and hopes to enter the federal parliament in next year's elections.
Chilling.
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