Germany: 10,000 mobilise against nazi Mayday march
01 August 2008
1 May, International Labour Day, is celebrated in Germany not only by the Left but is exploited by neo-nazis and far-right parties to mobilise for nationwide demonstrations in support of nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist causes. This year, around 1,000 neo-nazis travelling to march in the Hamburg district of Barmbeck, were met by 10,000 counter-demonstrators aiming to stop the march. Whilst the high turn out was evaluated as a success by the anti-fascist Left, the rise of violent "autonomous nationalists" who imitate the fashion codes and symbols of the anti-fascist and autonomous scene, is viewed as an increasing problem.
The mainstream media focussed on violent confrontations between neo-nazis and anti-fascists and anti-fascists and police, and thus obscured the fact of one of the biggest anti-fascist demonstrations in post-war Germany. The anti-fascist network
Avanti reports that thousands of demonstrators, including many local residents, blocked streets on the route of the march throughout the day, forcing it to finish early. However, nazis travelling to the demonstration created unpleasant and dangerous scenes in and around Hamburg: in one instance 60 neo-nazis temporarily took control of two train carriages and its loudspeaker system, announcing that German Railways had begun transporting Germans and foreigners separately and that foreigners would be transported in cargo carriages, invoking images of the train deportations of victims of the Nazi regime to concentration and death camps.
Police arrested around 50 counter-demonstrators. The relatively low number is explained by the failure of a High Court order to redirect them to a different district on security grounds. The court permitted the defensive blockades to take place on the grounds that they were local, with businesses and neighbourhood committees actively involved. Police were unprepared for the number of demonstrators in the Barmbeck district, where the march took place, and could not control the street blockades or carry out mass arrests. Police, as well as anti-fascists, reported unprecedentedly high levels of organised violence from nazi marchers: ranks of them launched attacks on anti-fascists and retreated back into the march. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that some of the nazis were dressed as activists from the autonomous left, making it difficult to distinguish between them. For some years now, the organised far-right in Germany has changed its recruitment strategy by making the nazi scene appeal to youth with "cool" paraphernalia copied from the left cultural scenes and by distributing CDs of nazi bands at high schools. As a result a commercial industry distributing nazi material has developed over the past decade. The internal security service (Verfassungsschutz) estimates that in 2007, Germany had 4,400 Nazis, 200 more than the previous year.
http://www.avanti-projekt.de, www.taz.de (2.5.08, 15.5.08), Suddeutsche Zeitung 3/4.5.08