Fascists – Page 2 – Wis[s]e Words

Sueing nazis told to fuck off

Published on August 11, 2010

The owners of the extreme right clothing brand Thor Steinar have lost their court battle against anti-fascist parody brand Storch Heinar:

Media Tex had alleged that the brand had been damaged by the humorous label. But Judge Horst Rottmann said there was no danger that the two could be confused.

Furthermore, Storch Heinar creator Mathias Brodkorb, an MP for the centre-left Social Democrats in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, was protected under the country’s freedom of speech laws, the court said.

Sehr gut.

Better not laugh at nazis – they might sue

Published on July 27, 2010

What do you do if your clothing brand, ever so slightly tweaked to appeal to neonazis though you swear that’s not your intent, is parodied? You appeal to the decadent weakling courts of course to stop it:

Storch Heinar has been around since the winter of 2008, and is the brainchild of a left-leaning youth group called Endstation Rechts — which translates as “last stop for the right wing” — set up to combat right-wing extremism in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony. As members of the groups discussed the opening of a “Nazi shop” selling, among other things, Thor Steinar in the middle of Rostock over a bottle or two of wine one night, they decided to respond by starting their own clothing label. And so the tale of the unhappy stork was born. “We were not drunk though,” Mathias Brodkorb, a Social Democrat and member of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state parliament, one of the people behind Storch Heinar, told the daily Die Tageszeitung.

Storch Heinar’s popularity has increased over time, no doubt due partially to increased local media coverage of the brand — the range of goods available via their website is now large enough to include baby bibs and Frisbees and the brand has around 4,000 fans on Facebook. The label has sold “more than we thought it would,” Brodkorb told news weekly Focus. The profits fund the work of Endstation Rechts. Storch Heinar is only a small, and relatively uncomplicated, part of their work, Brodkorb, 33, who studied philosophy and classics, explained to Die Tageszeitung: “We are all fixated on neo-Nazis and often we overlook more subtle opportunities for people to be inhumane and right wing extremist.”

[…]

Unsurprisingly, Mediatex GmbH, do not like any of this. The owners of Thor Steinar are known for their litigiousness and, as one local commentator put it: “Right wing extremism and humor go together like combat boots and Birkenstock sandals.”

Brodkorb told local media that the day after Storch Heinar was founded, the company that owns Thor Steinar tried to copyright the avian name. They were rejected. Mediatex then filed a complaint against Brodkorb, saying that Storch Heinar was injuring and “disparaging Thor Steinar.” The case went to court on Wednesday in Nuremberg. The small group behind Storch Heinar has been raising funds to fight the case — they even have a new T-shirt for sale that boasts the garment’s owner is part of the rescue team for the beleaguered bird.

Germans do have a sense of humour, but those who hanker back to the good old days of the Third Reich? Not so much.

Your happening world (9)

Published on March 22, 2010

Your monday slice of linky goodness:

Don’t be mean to squid (Kate Beaton rules ok.)
How the media portrays both the EDL and the antiracist counterprotestors as violent. This is largely due to overreliance on police statements — first priority to them is “maintaining public order” and they blame the counterdemonstrators for making this difficult. Having racists march through their cities in an attempt at intimidation is not a problem as long as nobody tries to stop them. Because that’s when you get riots. Like in Stoke.
Not a new phenomenon of course. Remember the Battle of Cable Street.
Despite police resistance however, the UAF protesters still managed to drive the EDL off the streets.
It’s teh gays what caused Srebrenica! Umm, no. But Christ, what an asshole.
That odious little twrp Kammmm tried to smear Kurt Vonnegut’s reputation again. On the whole I liked Flying Rodent’s response more than Chris Bertram’s.
Your slice of comic book history for today: The DC Ratings Scandal of the mid-eighties, when the rightwing political climate and several high profile “smut busts” of comics retailers scared DC into self-censorship, as told by somebody in the frontlines back then: Stephen Bissette. (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8, more to come. Whew.)

Antiracism is a crime in Bolton

Published on March 20, 2010

From Socialist Worker’s rolling update on the anti-EDL protests:

1.10pm: From Bolton, Victoria Square

Police have broken up an entirely peaceful UAF rally in the square and seized organiser Weyman Bennett. Trade unionists are trying to speak but have been stopped.

12.55pm: From Bolton, Victoria Square

Police are preventing hundreds of anti-fascist protesters from entering Victoria Square. Those inside are chanting “Let them in”. They have had to link arms to block the police and defend the UAF speakers. Riot police have repeatedly pushed into the crowd.

Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism address the crowd, saying, “Police are rioting and are out of control.

“Anti-racism is not a crime, and it’s about time the police stopped treating it as such.

“I say to the police, if you can turn this number of officers out here today, why could you not stop the EDL running riot through Stoke last month?”

The EDL, the socalled English Defence League is the sort of acceptable side of the BNP, supposedly non-racist but just concerned about the “loss” of Englishness. In practice of course they are a bunch of white racist thugs just using the fact that mainstream politics has made islamophobia largely acceptable. The constant stream of scaremongering news items and editorials about the danger of “Muslim terrorism”, combined with the lack of the same sort of attention for “white terrorism”, has lead to a climate where Paki-bashing has become acceptable again. Everytime the EDL gets to march through a city unopposed helps strenghtened this climate, especially when it’s the police who make it possible by attacking the antifascist, antiracist counterdemonstrations.

The police of course always present that as a neutral problem of keeping public order, with the argument that allowing counterdemonstrations would lead to violence, yet as Weyman Bennett points out, where were the police when the EDL rioted in Stoke, unopposed?

Antifascists are the real terrorists!

Published on February 10, 2010

With local elections to be held early next month, the AIVD, the Dutch security and intelligence service warns about an insidious new threat in the runup to these elections: the threat of antifascist demonstrations (Dutch). In a letter sent to all mayors in the Netherlands, the AIVD describes the sinister group responsible for this threat: AFA, Anti Fascistisch Actie and its methods. It makes for chilling reason the way this group is in the habit of contacting local governments to advice them on racism, organises counterdemonstrations against nazi intimidation and even organises within local communities to defend against racist aggression! Worse, they even deliberately cause the racists and fascists they organise against to attack them and beat them up.

Ironically, the AIVD even accuses AFA from infiltrating rightwing groups in order to gather intelligence on them — something the intelligence services have never done themselves, at least succesfully.

This piece of fearmongering, silly at it is, does show the mindset of those supposedly guarding us. Rightwing, racist and even fascist intimidation is not a problem, but attempts to defend against it are beyond the pale. This is of course neither new nor surprising, considering the rightwing sympathies of most intelligence services. As long as rightwing violence doesn’t threaten the state directly it’s tolerated, even encouraged, while leftwing activism is always a threat, no matter how legitimite or innocent, even in supposedly democratic states. What is new is how blatant this warning was, something we have not seen in a while. A more paranoid person might wonder about possible connections between this, the economic situation and the way this is used as an excuse for the drastic budget cuts the government wants to force through parliament…