The New Nazis Speak

In this year of the 75th anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power in Germany, the new German Nazis -- "National Democratic Party of Germany," NPD -- seem well established in at least two of the provincial legislatures of the German Federal Republic: Sachsen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MVP). Both of these provinces were part of the former East Germany. In Sachsen, the NPD received 9.2% of the vote in the elections of 2004, and in MVP it received 7.3% in 2006. The NPD has seats in both of these legislatures and uses them with very considerable skill to advance its shrill xenophobic campaign.

The remarkable video below (in German only) was taken on January 31 in the legislature of MVP in the city of Schwerin. Its shows the NPD leader Udo Pastörs deliver a harangue against foreigners in Germany. He has it in mostly for the Turkish residents of Germany, but he also pays particular attention to Jews, their synagogues, and those who pretend to be Jews in order to benefit from German social programs. His biggest enemies, for all that, are the democratic parties (as they call themselves in this context) that form the majorities in both federal and provincial legislatures. The video should be studied not only for its particular content but also, at least as much, for the oratorical style of these new Nazis and also that of their enemies.

The democratic parties, it would seem, have done a good job at keeping these new Nazis at bay. In this video, we see Peter Ritter of the Left party, and, more tellingly, Sylvia Bretschneider of the Social Democrats (who is the president of the provincial parliament) deliver strong and effective rebukes to Pastörs and his message of hate.

[addendum, 2/11/08: The original video here, which had Pastörs speaking to the legislature in Jan. of 2008, with responses from the president of the chamber, no longer seems to be available. I have substituted another video, which has Pastörs speaking a few days later, to his party comrades, at another venue. Additional videos with this gentleman are available on YouTube.]




[addendum, 2/26/08: Here is another video. This is a revealing reportage by the German "heute-journal" ( Sept. 19, 2006) of the 2006 neo-Nazi victory in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Sorry, it's all in German.]

All the Jews Will Be Killed

All the Jews in the world, of whatever country, will be killed when Islam rules the planet. And, as is explained in a separate sermon, not by gunshot but by torture. This cheerful proposal comes to us from Sheich Ibrahim Mudeiris, speaking on the TV station of the Palestinian Authority on May 13, 2005. There are a number of his sermons that you can find on YouTube, but this one is the nicest that I found. He has a truly beautiful singing voice. Of course I have never heard an Islamic sermon before, so I cannot tell how this once compares. But the delivery here, at least, is beautiful.

Why does the Sheich talk like that ? The sermon, I was told by an American Arab, is of course hateful. But it is the "inevitable" result of Israeli policy in Gaza.

Addendum: The New York Times of April 1, 2008, carries a revealing, front-page article about the virulent anti-Semitism of Hamas.

Anti-Semitism: A new Gift of God ?

Well, here we have it: Monsieur Dieudonné ("Mr. Gift of God," or "Mr. G of G" for short). He's a super-sophisticated French comic, of mixed African and French background, and he has given a new voice and opened a new audience for extreme anti-Semitism. He does not like, it seems, the "Americano-Zionist Axis." But it's all in good fun, right ? His views sound extreme left-wing, but heck, hold on: his best friends, some of them, are in the Front National, and that includes the wife of Jean-Marie Le Pen. All this is told by Tom Reiss in The New Yorker of November 19, 2007. Read the whole article, and don't miss the last paragraph.

To listen to Mr. G of G in person is painful, especially if you can understand French. But, for those francophones out there blessed with a touch of masochism (or sense of humor, as G of G would no doubt have it), here is his sketch "Mes Excuses" that Reiss has described in his article: