I hope you all had a great weekend. We sure did, so Monday was bound to suck. And so it did. What happend? Nazis, that's what happens. And not simply those nasty skinheads you see from miles away and can avoid. No, it was those even nastier kind, the pig-faced, suit-wearing kind of nazis that hide behind a fringe party that around here no-one wants to see or listen to. On their "March through Germany".
A little background info on the issue: Germany is currently taking in thousands and thousands of refugees from Syria. We are not really prepared to take in so many people. The refugee laws here need revision (especially when it comes to allowing the people to work) and many small back-country communities are hesitant (to be polite) to accept emergency quarters for those poor people being set up on short notice. A lot of prejudice still prevails, of an increase in crime, a lack of knowledge and a portion of hesitance meeting a completely foreign culture and traumatized people.
And this is when those pigs step up. Feed those fears, tell people that most of these refugees are not really fleeing for their lives but enter the country to feed off the social benefits, to have an easy life on our taxes, while German retirees are living at the poverty line, while our health system is crashing, and our jobs are insecure. Yeah right, morons!
So I arrived at about 7:30, just when the first police cars pulled up. They spent hours of putting up gates as more and more cops arrived. At the end there were al least twice as many cops a a couple of weeks earlier, when Chancellor Merkel was in town for a campain speech. Forty cops, a full intersection blocked off, our entire building locked up (not to forget cost of several dozens of our people getting coffee more frequently than usual to check on the progress out there). For the cost of this bizarre spectacle, they could have provided the necessities for at least a hundred refugees for a whole month.
And how was the demonstration? Well, a 5 ton truck with disgusting slogans, one moron blurting out his bs through a microphone, about 20 counter-protesters, a ton of noise of all the church bells in the area tolling to drown the nazi, and about 40 or so bored cops in full battle equipment.
Why do I feel so strongly about it? Because I am married to a foreigners, because my daughers have foreign passports, because their skinheads friends would gladly beat my entire family to pulp while the pig-faced suits are watching, just because they have different passports.
You will never hear me say that I am ashamed for being German, but today, I was ashamed of those barely-humans being Germans.
Sounding out for now, good-night everyone, and have a peaceful night.
How awful! It's so interesting to read so done from another country's perspective!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it? We had a very violent nazi group on a killing spree over the course of several years; they killed Turkish and a Greek small business owners, and all the cops did was investigating in which illegal affairs the victims might have been involved. Never once they looked at the big picture and investigated in other directions.
DeleteIt's definitely still a sensitive topic here, even though I feel as if there is a lot of pretending rather than honest caring.
I brush against Nazi wanna-bes here in the states. They not only admire the political ideals, but hold Germany on some kind of mis-understood pedestal. After I shake my head dumbfoundedly at them, I want to hit them over the head with an iron skillet. Thanks so much for sharing this.
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