[CreepingDeth]

International Herald Tribune.

HIPSHEIM, France Luis Branco, an artist in this small Alsatian village, realized there was something unusual about the young Germans partying at the local community hall two weeks ago when a conversation with one of them took a mildly racist turn. Then the man shot his arm forward in a Nazi salute and declared, "Ich Allemagne," a mix of German and French meaning "I Germany," before rejoining as many as 400 skinheads pogo-ing to heavy metal music nearby.

"They were very motivated," said Branco, standing this week outside the low concrete building that still bears traces of swastikas and the double lightning bolt insignia of Hitler's SS special police scratched onto the wall.

When he came to take a closer look that Saturday evening, he saw that the hall had been decorated with a 10-foot-wide red wooden eagle and a Gothic plaque bearing the inscription Elsass Beim Reich, a Hitlerian slogan declaring that this long-contested corner of France is part of the German empire.

A few days later, more than a dozen Muslim tombstones were painted with swastikas at a military cemetery on the outskirts of Strasbourg, the Alsatian capital, and several days after that, dozens of Jewish tombstones were scrawled with Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim slurs in the southern city of Lyon.

The desecrations were part of a wave of neo-Nazi acts that have swept France this year. Many officials suggest they are meant to repudiate the 60th anniversary commemorations of the Allied offensive that drove Hitler's forces out of France and into history's dustbin.

"They are dying and they have to prove they exist," said Thomas Milcent, a Strasbourg doctor who converted to Islam during a Soviet bombardment in Afghanistan when he was delivering medicine to Afghan mujahedeen. He said he receives regular death threats from neo-Nazis in the region.

Neo-Nazism, strictly repressed in Germany, has found breathing space in France, where the fringe movement, though fainter and abhorred by the vast majority of French, is nonetheless tolerated. That's particularly true in Alsace, a traditionally German-speaking region that was annexed by Hitler in 1940.

Adrien Zeller, the president of Alsace's regional government, said one or two neo-Nazi rallies were held in the area each year.

Observers trace the resurgence of fascist fashion among some French youth to the rise of the country's far right political movement in the early 1980s. The National Front, whose presidential candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, made it to a runoff election against Jacques Chirac in 2002, validated latent Nazi sympathies with its anti-immigration platform, according to many commentators. The party's security force, the DPS, became an inspiration for neo-Nazi youth who saw in it an echo of Hitler's private army, the brown-shirted Sturm Abteilung.

In the late 1980s, a member of the DPS formed a small neo-Nazi group called the Alsatian Patriotic Union and known by its German initials, HVE. The group, an offshoot of a larger, German neo-Nazi organization, was banned in 1993 after it was linked to a series of anti-Semitic acts in the region and some of its members were found in possession of explosives and other illegal arms.

Most of this year's neo-Nazi incidents have taken place in Alsace and at least two of the latest desecrations in the region have been signed "HVE Junior," an apparent reference to a new generation of Nazi sympathizers.

The fascist tendency of some Alsatian youths cannot easily be attributed to economic deprivation or a sudden influx of immigrants. Unemployment in the region is about 8 percent, below the national average. Its immigrant population, mostly North African and Turkish workers imported to meet labor shortages after World War II, has grown only incrementally in recent years.

Instead, many people here say that history is to blame. Alsace is the most heavily Protestant region of France, having embraced the teachings of Martin Luther in the 16th century. Because of past changes in its national identity, the region lacks the secularism characteristic of the rest of France.

With the region's religious and linguistic ties to Germany, Nazism spread easily through Alsace in the late 1930s, and thousands of Alsatians joined the Nazi party when the territory was annexed by Hitler in 1940.

"There was never a de-Nazification in Alsace, because the region was treated as a victim," said Georges Yoram Federmann, an Alsatian psychiatrist. He is the founder of a group that has worked to identify Jews whose bodies, found in Strasbourg after the war, preserved in formaldehyde, were intended for a Nazi medical museum.

Because France was concerned with reintegrating the region after the war, more attention was paid to Nazi conscripts than to Nazi members and their sympathizers. Fourteen Alsatians convicted of participating in the massacre at Oradour, the war's worst atrocity on French soil, were given amnesty by the state to placate Alsatian anger. The region's former Nazis melted back into Alsatian society without the scrutiny reserved for German collaborators elsewhere in France.

"There's a lack of vigilance," said Pierre Levy, a local member of France's Representative Council of Jewish Institutions. He worries that French society's tendency to trivialize such acts could eventually lead to a resurgence of fascism, he added.

Many of the recent desecrations have targeted military cemeteries, suggesting that they were prompted by the 60th anniversary of the Allied offensive that ended the European war.

On Aug. 6, swastikas were painted on the tombstones of members of France's North Africa Battalion, whose Arab volunteers were part of the Allied invasion of southern France in August 1944. Those buried at the cemetery died fighting the Germans in Alsace.

The Hipsheim rally took place over 48 hours, with dozens of cars lining the road to the village's community hall and tents spread across the neighboring fields.

Unlike in Germany, such gatherings are legal in France and neo-Nazi groups have little trouble finding Alsatian villages willing to act as hosts. The woman whose husband runs the community hall said a young Alsatian rented the space and paid by check weeks ago.

According to local press reports, police alerted the mayor to the neo-Nazis converging on his village Saturday. By Sunday, few in this village of 700 were unaware of the festivities.

"The day I see a mass movement or the beginning of a mass movement, I'll worry, but it's not there," said Zeller, the president of Alsace's government.

The New York Times

Anyone remember than episode of Law & Order with the skinhead wrestlers? Or the one with the KKK-Nazis asses? Or the increase of skinheads awhile back in Portland?

Communism dies, Fascism replaces. Easy transition. Sharon was right about France.

[CreepingDeth]

That's right. "France's many cases of anti-Semitism do not reflect the country."

[Atomic Rooster]

Look in your own backyard buddy.

[Zimphire]

Yes it's everywhere. But France seems to be getting a "boom" of it lately.

[MindFad]

They have neo-conservatives in France now? God damn.
................^

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by MindFad:
They have conservatives in France now? God damn.

No, the "Right"

Which is much different than "The Right" in the US.

Just like their Left is different from ours.

[CreepingDeth]

I'm a neo-con and I support Israel 100%. Logic and LBK don't.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:
I'm a neo-con and I support Israel 100%.

A lonely fantasy world it must be. Or at least fun on the Internet.

(I get bonus points for guessing what you'll spout next.)

[CreepingDeth]

Will you shut up. I support Israel because the Islamo-fascist called terroirsts (freedpm fighters for Logic) are killing innocents. Every conservative I've met says we need to be tougher on the Palestinians scumbags and put more weight behind Israel. Every talk show web site, book, etc., supports Israel. Do you support Israel's attacks on terrorists, Big-N boy?
No bonus point. You still lose.

(I get a bonus point if he says conservatives are Nazis and/or hate Israel)

[MindFad]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:

Will you shut up.

No.

I support Israel because the Islamo-fascist called terroirsts (freedpm fighters for Logic) are killing innocents.

So is it OK when Israel attacks and kills innocents?

Every conservative I've met says we need to be tougher on the Palestinians scumbags and put more weight behind Israel. Every talk show web site, book, etc., supports Israel.

Every conservative/neo-con I've met has been a childish imperialist moron who would rather wallow in his/her own ignorance than actually look at the world around them. The "pick a team and stick with it" mentality, I guess you could say. There is only one argument, one way about things in their worlds. But these are just the idiots I've met.

Do you support Israel's attacks on terrorists, Big-N boy?

Booya. Bonus points, baby.

No bonus point. You still lose.

Insert Coin

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Every conservative/neo-con I've met has been a childish imperialist moron who would rather wallow in his/her own ignorance than actually look at the world around them. The "pick a team and stick with it" mentality, I guess you could say. There is only one argument, one way about things in their worlds. But these are just the idiots I've met.

[CreepingDeth]

Okay so I've compiled a conclusion:
1. You don't support Israel.
2. You support Palestine.
3. You are a Nintendo fanboy
4. If imperialism is getting rid of a mass murderer, dictator, terrorists, etc., then so be it. To bad we don't take over Iraq and make it a colony ala India. That sounds like imperialism.

[Zimphire]

Imperialism is just a word he heard being thrown around a lot. It wasn't used correctly.

[CreepingDeth]

imperialism

\Im*pe"ri*al*ism\, n. The policy, practice, or advocacy of seeking, or acquiescing in, the extension of the control, dominion, or empire of a nation, as by the acquirement of new, esp. distant, territory or dependencies, or by the closer union of parts more or less independent of each other for operations of war, copyright, internal commerce, etc.

The tide of English opinion began to turn about 1870, and since then it has run with increasing force in the direction of what is called imperialism. --James Bryce.
[Free Trial - Merriam-Webster Unabridged.]

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

imperialism

\Im*pe"ri*al*ism\, n. The power or character of an emperor; imperial authority; the spirit of empire.

Roman imperialism had divided the world. --C. H. Pearson.

[Zimphire]

Fad just likes to "play the game"

Nothing wrong with that.

He even lets out some funny ones once in awhile.

You take the good with the bad.

[MindFad]

Mental circle-jerk time! Hey, why don't you guys read that definition a few times, and then what I was talking about, and look at US foreign policy, and then think about it a little. I'm fine with disagreeing with people, as long as they put a little thought into their arguments.

Too bad I will miss the responses.

[Zimphire]

Mind you aren't the first to make such comments.

[PacHead]

Originally posted by MindFad:
So is it OK when Israel attacks and kills innocents?

Israel does not attack civilians intentionally. They go after terrrorist killers, and all civilian casualties are the fault of the PLO and their terrorist friends.

[Troll]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:
I'm a neo-con and I support Israel 100%. Logic and LBK don't.

You read the part about a MUSLIM cemetry having been vandalised right?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Troll:
You read the part about a MUSLIM cemetry having been vandalised right?

Gamepoint Troll.

Losing neo-con parties -

Continue to next round: yes/no?

Please insert coin.

[sanity assassin]

We just had an incident where a Muslim cemetary was vandalised. Among the usual Nazi emblems spray painted on to the headstones, some fanny tried to paint an American flag, lmao.

Such things aren't so common here and it's usually the misguided fools that belong to the BNP that do it.

[sanity assassin]

In God we trust!!!!

[phoenixboy70]

In God we trust inc.

[sanity assassin]

Originally posted by phoenixboy70:
[B]In God we trust inc.

[RonnieoftheRose]

Check the redneck cowboy reaction to anti-Semitic songs.

http://pokernoob.com.ip01-web21.net/...ownthewell.wmv

Why is the Christian rightwing trying to make France look like Nazi Germany? I know the answer. They want Jews to be scared of Europe, for them to flee to Israel and for rightwing Republicans, who helped create jihadis, to look like their lone saviors. The End of Days is coming, right?

[sanity assassin]

Originally posted by RonnieoftheRose:
Check the redneck cowboy reaction to anti-Semitic songs.

http://pokernoob.com.ip01-web21.net/...ownthewell.wmv

Why is the Christian rightwing trying to make France look like Nazi Germany? I know the answer. They want Jews to be scared of Europe, for them to flee to Israel and for rightwing Republicans, who helped create jihadis, to look like their lone saviors. The End of Days is coming, right?

Spot on. Those same Christian fundies were the ones who genocided Jews, and Muslims for over a thousand years. But now, this new breed of right-wing Christian groups who unwaiveringly support Israel have only one agenda here, it's self-serving, and has nothing to do with supporting Jews.

Jews will find out one day when their paymasters come back to bite them on the bum.


As my grandad used to say, 'I'm a Jew, Jesus was a Jew... but these Christians are bastards'.

Never forget my friends, never forget.

[angaq0k]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Yes it's everywhere. But France seems to be getting a "boom" of it lately.

You mean you gave more attention to the articles mentionning that topic suddenly.

Or You have been looking more at France since it has opposed the U.S. foolish plan to invade Iraq, and can't accept they were right, so you have to get back at them.

[angaq0k]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:

Will you shut up.

Isn't this the Famous "O'Reilly evasive manoeuver" #3?

I support Israel because the Islamo-fascist called terroirsts (freedpm fighters for Logic) are killing innocents. Every conservative I've met says we need to be tougher on the Palestinians scumbags and put more weight behind Israel.

Neo-Conservative rationcination #56?

Every talk show web site, book, etc., supports Israel.

FoxNews Realm.

Do you support Israel's attacks on terrorists,

Basic strategic attack #5

Big-N boy?
No bonus point. You still lose.

(I get a bonus point if he says conservatives are Nazis and/or hate Israel)

Bullying warmup # 57?

[gerbnl]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:
... are killing innocents...

guess what country as dropped the most bombs on another country?

Have you seen them land/explode or where you protected from that sight by fair and balanced media?

[sanity assassin]

And after they bomb every nation on earth, are these countries any better after being bombed back into the stoneage?

Afghanistan, where art thou?

[Spliffdaddy]

Japan - where art thou


*SMACKDOWN*

[Troll]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
... and it's usually the misguided fools that belong to the BNP that do it.

Those bastards at the Banque Nationale de Paris!

They arrested some guys this morning who are accused of a whole host of these incidents.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Japan - where art thou


*SMACKDOWN*

True, true.

And thankfully, Afghanistan's exports are actually HIGHER than they were before the war!

You really got their economic motor running!

-s*

[gerbnl]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
True, true.

And thankfully, Afghanistan's exports are actually HIGHER than they were before the war!

You really got their economic motor running!

-s*

Yeah, thank gawd! There's nothing better that afghan poppies!

Can't wait for that afghan heroin to arrive on the market and bring prices to an all-time low!

[angaq0k]

Originally posted by gerbnl:
Yeah, thank gawd! There's nothing better that afghan poppies!

Can't wait for that afghan heroin to arrive on the market and bring prices to an all-time low!

Which, in no time, will justify this.

Thank you Georges!

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by gerbnl:
Yeah, thank gawd! There's nothing better that afghan poppies!

Can't wait for that afghan heroin to arrive on the market and bring prices to an all-time low!

It already is.

Afghan was back up to its former glory as the world's #1 opiate-producer within a few short months of the invasion.

It has since surpassed its pre-war export levels, IIRC.

Hey, people bombed "into the stone age" gotta make a living *somehow*.

-s*

[sanity assassin]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Japan - where art thou


*SMACKDOWN*

Japan became great solely cause you nuked them? Actually, that's a rather romantic and utterly aplogetic way of viewing things.

[sanity assassin]

Afghanistan - the coalition of the gullible have done their duty in securing the flow of drugs to the West. Of course, you would know this, that the Taliban chaired a motion for international help on destroying all drug producing land in their country years ago, but hey, the US couldn't stand back and allow such a thng to happen. Oh wait, or was it the oil pipeline from the Russian states to the Indian Ocean. See, it's so hard to know what the reason was for invading Afghanistan, was it for Bin Laden? Nah, the Talibam offered to hand him over on the basis that the US hand over all relevent evidence that he was behind 9/11. Did they? Nope, that would fal under international law, but the US doesn't like to abide by that.
Where are the promises of re-building the country? I'l tell you , nowhere, so long as the country is neutered, and the oil, and drug flow is secure, that's all that counts.

Is this a myth? Nope, simple observation of what is happening as of now.

[vmarks]

These French Neo-Nazis are as uneducated about Nazi history as most others. The Nazis actually liked Islam and collaborated with Muslims in the killing of Jews.

The Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini becomes close friend of Heinrich Himmler, Head of SS (Nazi Officers). Amin Al-Husseini is given a private tour of Aushwitz death camp by Himmler, where he insists on seeing first-hand the murder of Europe’s Jews.

Head of Nazi SS troops Heinrich Himmler stated to Chief of Nazi propaganda Josef Goebbels:

“ [I] have nothing against Islam because it educates the men in this division for me and promises them heaven if they fight and are killed in action. A very practical and attractive religion for soldiers.”

Heinrich Himmler, Head of SS, and close colleague of Amin Al-Husseini, financed and established Islamic Institute (‘Islamische Zentralinstitut’) in Dresden under the Mufti. The purpose was to create a generation of Islamic leaders that would continue to use Islam as a carrier for Nazi ideology into the 21st century.

March 1, 1944. Amin Al-Husseini makes speech from Berlin addressing Muslim SS Nazi troops: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, History and Religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.”

So these French hate-mongers are as ignorant of the history of their ideology as they are of the failure of that ideology to take the world by storm.

Lastly, "oh shut up" is good advice. Oftentimes the person giving it might do well to follow it themselves, or attack the argument instead of telling someone else what they ought to do with their argument.


Edited for missing linking verb.

[sanity assassin]

Originally posted by vmarks:
[B]These French Neo-Nazis are as uneducated about Nazi history as most others. The Nazis actually liked Islam and collaborated with Muslims in the killing of Jews.

You just can't help it, Victor, can you? Your not so subtle attacks in Islam is quite the boring thing now, a bit tired.

Want to go through history and talk of the contradictions of cllaboration? How about the Serbs and the time we in the West was their allies during WW2? Yet, it didn't stop ud from seeing their horrendous Genocide against Muslims last decade. Times change, huh? So we have a Palestinian Muslim cleric who sides with the enemy of their enemies. The Palestinians seeing the illegal iflux of Jews into their land, so why not support the Nazis then? Anyway, is this indicative of Muslims today? Just like the Serbs of the past?

[CreepingDeth]

Woah. Hold up.

…so why not support the Nazis then?

That's priceless. *saved*
One of these days I'm goiong to have to write a report and debunk all the Nazi stuff. I'm tired of hearing this. "Jews! They're in Palestine! Ebil! EEEBBIIILLL!"
Not today. I feel like ****. Maybe Tuseday.
vmarks: Don't take that, respond. You live in the middle of this crisis.

[vmarks]

I did not point out the connection from Al-Husseini to today's current events, I simply showed the gross ignorance (that's 144 times the regular strength ignorance, naturally) of hate-mongers in France who associate themselves with an ideology and then vandalize the graves of a people who were partners, allies, in that ideology.

This thread isn't about contemporary conflict in Israel, it is about idiots in France who don't even know the ideology they profess to believe in at the very core of their being.

You ding me, but all I'm doing is elaborating on the correct point that Troll made, and cautioning certain other users that 'oh shut up' is a weak response.

[djohnson]

How quickly this thread was dereailed...

There is a reason that Israel exists. Ask any Israeli and see what they say...

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by djohnson:
How quickly this thread was dereailed...

There is a reason that Israel exists. Ask any Israeli and see what they say...

YOU just attempted to derail the thread, right there. Who said anything calling the legitimacy of Israel into question?

FWIW, I didn't see vmarks pushing an agenda here, merely expounding a historical irony that exposes those rank Neo-Nazis for even dumber than we might have thought possible.

[CreepingDeth]

^
^
Exactly.

[djohnson]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
...The Palestinians seeing the illegal iflux of Jews into their land...

Right there. A nice subtle way of saying Israel is an illegal state.

[CreepingDeth]

Yeah. Those Jews don't deserve it cuz they're jooze!

…so why not support the Nazis then?

I think that was more appalling than the illegal remark.

[Zimphire]

Reality is of no consequence on the Palestinian side. Make it up as you go along.

[Millennium]

Neo-Nazis are like cicadas. No matter how hard you try and eradicate them, they just go underground and emerge several years later.

The best way to get rid of them is to not try. Let them come; they will burn out soon. Give them an opportunity to prove their idiocy to the public and they will do it every time, 100% guaranteed. Let people see their stupidity, and their numbers will dwindle naturally.

It is a much slower process than simply trying to legislate them out of existence, but it works. Trying to crush them through law only breeds more of the resentment on which hate feeds.

[badidea]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Japan - where art thou

Now that's why Japan is technologically advanced to Germany!?
We only had carpet bombing...they had nuclear...hmmm...makes sense!