Adolf Hitler – Faith Matters

Police officer who laughed with bystanders at Hitler lookalike may face action

Faith Matters — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 20:25:16 +0000

German police have said they are considering disciplinary proceedings against an officer who failed to step in when an Adolf Hitler lookalike showed up at a motorbike meeting in the eastern state of Saxony.

State police said the incident is being investigated because the man dressed as the Nazi leader – sitting in a Wehrmacht-style sidecar – may have broken German laws on the use of illegal symbols.

A video posted on social media shows laughing bystanders, including an officer in a police van, photographing the biker and his pencil-moustached passenger.

In a post on Twitter, Saxony’s governor Michael Kretschmer said “the appearance as a mass murderer is more than tasteless”.

Mr Kretschmer said he hoped the biker meeting in Augustusburg, near the eastern city of Chemnitz, would take place again next year but that “first it needs to be clear: such behaviour is unacceptable and won’t happen again”.

Authorities in Saxony have struggled to combat the state’s image as a hive of neo-Nazi activity.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party received more than a quarter of the vote in state elections there last year.

Teenager Praising Adolf Hitler Tells Fellow Pupils He Was Going “On a Rampage” to “Kill Many People”

Faith Matters — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 19:13:00 +0000

A teenager charged with terror offences told police that being arrested was “cool” and he would show off about it “forever”, a court has heard.

The 16-year-old boy is accused of accessing bomb-making instructions on the internet and making a potential bomb filled with shrapnel, but denies intending to harm anyone.

The trial at Leeds Crown Court heard that he told fellow pupils at his school that he was going to “go on a rampage” and “kill many people”.

The jury was told that the teenager also told students he was going to carry out a school shooting and had praised Adolf Hitler.

Paul Greaney QC, prosecuting, read out statements from the boy’s interview with the police following his arrest in August last year.

The court heard he said he would be able to show off to his friends about being arrested “forever”.

Mr Greaney said he told police: “When I have kids I’ll probably still talk about this.”

He described being in the cells as “wicked” and said the situation was “cool and funny”, the court was told.

But the jury heard he told police it “wouldn’t be a joke any more” if he was charged with offences.

The trial has heard that the boy developed an interest in extremist far right ideology and accessed videos and information about murder, torture and mutilation on the internet.

When asked about the violent material, the court heard he told police:

“I find that stuff cool like any teenager would.”

The teenager said he was bullied at school and would say and do “stupid stuff”, the court was told.

Mr Greaney said the boy told police he talked about bombs because:

“Bombs sound cool and will make me sound cooler. It makes me stand out and I look more cool.”

The barrister said the boy added: “I know in my head I wasn’t going to do anything, or haven’t really been doing anything wrong, so it’s cool to me.

“I know I wasn’t going to do anything bad or harm to anyone.”

The court has heard that a search of the teenager’s home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, found a device made from two carbon dioxide canisters joined together and filled with metal tacks, which could have been a “viable CO2 bomb” with the addition of gunpowder and a fuse.

Talking about the device in the interview with police, the court heard that the boy said: “If I was a terrorist, do you think I would leave the device on the bedroom floor?

“If I was a terrorist, I would hide it to the best of my abilities. Why would I have it in my bedroom just sitting on the floor?”

He denied planning an attack on anyone or any place.

The boy denies one count of making an explosive substance with intent, one count of making an explosive substance and three counts of possession of a document likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The case was adjourned until Tuesday.

Far-right party likened to Nazis to shake up German parliament

Faith Matters — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 16:02:49 +0000

The first far-right party set to enter Germany’s parliament for more than a half a century says it will press for Chancellor Angela Merkel to be “severely punished” for opening the door to refugees and migrants.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has also called for Germany’s immigration minister to be “disposed of” in Turkey where her parents come from, could become the third largest party with up to 12 percent of the vote on Sept. 24, polls show.

That is far less than similar movements in other European countries – in France far-right leader Marine Le Pen won 34 percent of the vote in May and in the Netherlands far-rightist Geert Wilders scored 13 percent in a March election.

But the prospect of a party that the foreign minister has compared with the Nazis entering the heart of German democracy is unnerving the other parties. They all refuse to work with the AfD and no one wants to sit next to them in parliament.

Leading AfD candidate Alexander Gauland denies they are Nazis, saying others only use the term because of the party’s popularity. It has won support with calls for Germany to shut its borders immediately, introduce a minimum quota for deportations and stop refugees bringing their families here.

“We’re gradually becoming foreigners in our own country,” Gauland told an election rally in the Polish border city of Frankfurt an der Oder.

A song with the lyrics “we’ll bring happiness back to your homeland” blared out of a blue campaign bus and the 76-year-old lawyer said Germany belonged to the Germans, Islam had no place here and the migrant influx would make everyone worse off.

Gauland provoked outrage for saying at another event that Germans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past and they should take pride in what their soldiers achieved during World War One and Two.

The Nazis ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, during which time they killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and invaded countries across Europe.

The AfD could end up as the biggest opposition force in the national assembly if there is a re-run of the current coalition of Merkel’s conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) — one of the most likely scenarios.

That would mean it would chair the powerful budget committee and open the general debate during budget consultations, giving prominence to its alternatives to government policies.

Georg Pazderski, a member of the AfD’s executive board, told Reuters his party would use parliamentary speeches to draw attention to the cost of the migrant crisis, troubles in the euro zone – which the AfD wants Germany to leave – and problems related to the European Union.

“We’ll have a voice when we’re in parliament,” he said. “We won’t be an easy opposition.”

He expects other parties will shun the AfD for a year or two but ultimately work with it, pointing to the regional assembly in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD and Merkel’s Christian Democrats voted to set up a committee to investigate left-wing extremism.

Gauland told Reuters the AfD would call for a committee to investigate the chancellor after entering parliament: “We want Ms Merkel’s policy of bringing 1 million people into this country to be investigated and we want her to be severely punished for that.”

For an interactive graphic on German elections click – http://tmsnrt.rs/2h0NqCT

SUITS, NOT SKINHEADS

MPs have already changed the qualification for the ceremonial post of doyen of parliament to the longest-serving MP rather than the oldest, likely to have been an AfD member.

Sahra Wagenknecht, top candidate of the radical Left party, told Reuters it was important to look at individuals for committees but added: “I won’t elect any AfD member who belongs to Bjoern Hoecke’s wing and who really represents Nazi views into any position of responsibility.”

Hoecke has denied that Adolf Hitler was “absolutely evil”, described Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial as a “monument of shame” and demanded a “180 degree turnaround” in the way Germany seeks to atone for Nazi crimes.

The justice minister said some of the AfD’s programme like its demand to ban minarets is unconstitutional.

Alexander Hensel, who studied the AfD’s role in regional parliaments for the Otto Brenner Foundation, said debates in state assemblies had become more polarised since the AfD arrived and some other MPs would not shake hands with the newcomers.

“The AfD’s aggressive right-wing positions have intensified the debates while the tone and way people deal with each other in parliament has become noticeably rougher due to the AfD’s tough rhetoric and targeted provocations,” he said.

Unlike previous right-wing movements in Germany the AfD – founded in 2013 by an anti-euro group of academics – has become socially acceptable so radicalised people from the middle class feel able to vote for it alongside classic radical right-wing voters, said Manfred Guellner, head of Forsa polling institute.

“You don’t vote for skinheads but you can vote for professors in suits,” said Guellner, referring to the likes of Gauland, who tends to wear tweed jackets.

The AfD is unlikely to gain much more support though, said Jackson Janes, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, predicting worsening infighting over whether to aim for government or stay in opposition.

“They’ll add to the yelling and screaming in the Bundestag,” he said, but added: “I don’t see them spreading like a cancer through society.”

Italian newspaper draws criticism with ‘Mein Kampf’ giveaway

Faith Matters — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 15:34:58 +0000

An Italian newspaper has been criticised for distributing free copies of an annotated version of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” with a paid supplement to Saturday’s edition.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Twitter that Il Giornale’s decision to give away the copies of the Nazi leader’s political treatise was “squalid” and expressed solidarity with Italy’s Jewish community.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was quoted as telling Corriere della Sera it was unprecedented for a newspaper to use “Mein Kampf” to boost sales, while the ANSA news agency quoted Israeli Embassy sources as expressing surprise.

But Il Giornale, a centre-right daily owned by the family of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, said the decision to distribute the edition of the text, which includes critical notes by an Italian historian, aimed “to study what is evil to avoid its return.”

Acknowledging the controversy in an editorial, editor-in-chief Alessandro Sallusti said nobody could suspect the move to be an apology for Nazism and the global Jewish conspiracy posited in the book written between 1924 and 1926.

“The concerns of our friends of the Italian Jewish community, who always have and always will see us by their side … deserve all our respect,” Sallusti wrote.

Il Giornale on Saturday started selling an eight-volume history of the Third Reich, with the annotated copy of Mein Kampf free for readers who buy the first volume.

A 70-year copyright on Hitler’s book held by the state of Bavaria expired at the end of 2015, prompting Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History to re-issue it as an annotated version earlier this year in an effort “to thoroughly deconstruct Hitler’s propaganda”