Help! I've turned into a soccer mom!!!

written last week

There's a protest @ the Y on Lake Street tomorrow morning (10 a.m., if you're interested - the one near the Light Rail station). Some bunch of Nazis are planning to protest the Y's scheduled anti-racist seminar. (only 4 turned up) I asked Mr. Gopher if he wanted to go. The only reason I asked at all is because Jr.Gopher#1's soccer game is at 9:30. Political protest of right-wing assholes or our child's sports fun? Mr. Gopher replied with no hesitation that he didn't want to go, as he considered them a relatively harmless bunch of clowns.

I was quite shocked that he considered them harmless. Personally, while I don't see them as being an immediate danger to society, they present a real hazard. I didn't get a chance to ask if this was due to the fact we're in the States and not Germany. We see racism through different filters. The expression of racism has a very different history in our respective countries. The efforts chosen to eliminate it have also been very different.

His opinions on the NDP (the new incarnation of the Nazi party**) have been quite unambiguous about their potential danger to Germany being quite real. Maybe American Nazis aren't so much of a threat because the percentage of non-whites in America is so much higher than in Germany? Or just the specific and significant place in their history is absent here.

It seemed to me (filtered through a cultural chasm as well as trying to read a newspaper in a foreign language) that people in Germany seemed to be shocked that the NDP managed to get a few people elected recently. Whereas, I personally would not be surprised at all if quite a lot of people here got elected on a euphemistically defined platform of racist nationalism. (They're pretty much all called Republicans - not that Democrats aren't racist, but they tend not to be as nationalistic.) Why would I not be surprised? Because I can look at the government & see it has already happened. What else would one consider the last 8 years' policies, if not nationalism? Well, I guess arrogantly self-centered and self-righteous would be equally valid labels. I would sincerely like to believe that a group publicly espousing white supremacy wouldn't be able to be elected.

People like this are out making noise for self-serving attention-seeking purposes to just piss off sane people. Would it manage to undermine them if they got no attention? No media coverage; no counter-demonstration; no acknowledgment by passersby? I can see how it would fuel their ego if only a handful of people showed up, letting them try to paint their ideology as unassailable. If dozens show up (as I expect tomorrow) (it turned out to be about 200), it lets these social retards pretend to be some oppressed minority struggling against The Mud People or Race Traitors. But with no audience ...? How can they create some mutual self-identity without a social mirror?

I once heard a suggestion for deporting them all to Germany, if they're so much in love with the Third Reich's policies. Of course the same person was intending these people to run into a government who would - unlike ours - smash them like sociopathic cockroaches they are. Let them go see what oppression of their political opinions really is. I personally wouldn't wish it upon the German people.

Michael had fun at the soccer match. See photos here.

** thinking of providing a succinct explanation of this, I went to Der Spiegel's English pages; as expected, there's a page explaining the different major parties' platforms. There is no entry for the NDP - only the big 5 (CDU, FDP, CSU, & Greens). I guess they've taken the "ignore them" position due to their real minority.