It would be nice to think we left this back in the 1930's/1940's, but we know that's not the case.

Why do you think this hatred is still with us? Are at least some children born with a natural tendency to dislike those they perceive as being different? If not, why do some come to see it as reasonable why others find it disgusting? Is this due more to our environment than anything else?

I think that people often need an outlet for their anger and dislike regarding their own lives. The German people were struggling in the aftermath of WWI and Hitler channeled that into hatred of Jews, but history if full of mistreatment of those that are seen as different.

Are we all capable of such hatred, we just need the right circumstances? I like to think I would never be capable of such views, but what if I had been born in another time or place?

What do you think?

Seven decades after Holocaust, neo-Nazis use soccer to preach Hitler's hate


Alex Grimm / Bongarts via Getty Images

Fans of the German soccer team Kaiserslautern hold up Israeli flags to protest against anti-Semitism prior to the Bundesliga match between FC Kaiserslautern and VfL Wolfsburg in March last year.
By Donald Snyder, NBC News Special Correspondent

Nearly seven decades after the Holocaust, young soccer fans in Germany have become targets of neo-Nazis who preach the hatred of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

“Again and again we see neo-Nazi presence in [sports] fan clubs and my office asks that action be taken against them,” said Winfriede Schreiber, head of the Brandenburg branch of the German government’s intelligence service. “For example, we see the fan club in [the German city] Cottbus consisting of a lot of neo-Nazis. We asked the football club to do something about this.”

At her office in Brandenburg, a state in eastern Germany, Schreiber monitors extremism and reports evidence of hate crimes to prosecutors.

“The neo-Nazis now look like everyone else,” Schreiber said. “Gone are the jackboots and black leather jackets that used to make it easy to expose them. Now they blend into the local population.”

According to Schreiber, the neo-Nazis subscribe to Hitler’s views and extol his one-time deputy, Rudolf Hess.

“The danger the neo-Nazis pose is that they are against democracy and they work to alienate young people from democracy,” she said. “They have made ‘Juden’ [Jews] a curse word even if there are no Jews playing on the soccer field.”

Jens Teschke, a spokesman for Germany's interior ministry, which is responsible for domestic security, said neo-Nazi activities are visible throughout Germany, but strongest in the country's east.

“Neo-Nazis take young soccer fans to homes built in the Nazi times as holiday retreats for elite members of Hitler’s party,” Teschke said. “They laud the Nazi era and the legacy of this era.”

According to Teschke, the German government launched programs in January 2011 to make soccer coaches more aware of neo-Nazi tactics.

The problem is not limited to Germany.

In England, fans of London-based Tottenham Hotspur -- which boasts a strong Jewish following -- have been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse for many years. In November, supporters of West Ham United "hissed on several occasions, mocking the mass execution of Jews during the Second World War," the U.K.'s Telegraph newspaper reported. "While the hissing, shamefully, is nothing new, Tottenham fans were also subjected to a chant of 'Adolf Hitler, he's coming for you.'"

Only days earlier, an American college student suffered a foot-long stab wound and a punctured lung when a mob of up to 50 masked men armed with knives and baseball bats attacked Tottenham Hotspur fans before a Europa League match in Rome.

Witnesses told local media that the attackers shouted "Jews, Jews" as they laid siege to the bar.

"The coordinated attack ... appears to have been motivated at least in part by anti-Semitism," the Telegraph reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center also recently highlighted the issue's growth. "The problem of anti-Semitic abuse at soccer matches which until recently has been limited to Eastern Europe, has been revived in Western Europe," it said in a report.

Prime targets of anti-Semitism on the soccer field are the Makkabi teams, Jewish athletic clubs located in 15 German cities.

“Every Makkabi team in Germany is confronted with anti-Semitism, as are teams with Jewish roots,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Berlin, an advocacy group.

Soccer coach Claudio Oppenberg, who is Jewish, said his team also faced anti-Semitism from Muslim immigrants.

According to Oppenberg, who’s coached Tus Makkabi Berlin for seven years, only two members of the current team are Jewish. The rest are from North Africa and Turkey.

During a game last March, Oppenberg said members of a Turkish team shouted at fellow Turks on the Makkabi team: “How can you play for these damned Jews?”

The Turkish team beat the Makkabis 1-0. Oppenberg said the Turkish coach confronted him after the game and said: “We f---d you Jews.”

Oppenberg filed charges with the German Football Federation and the Turkish coach was suspended for a year.

“If you have racism and anti-Semitism in society, then you will have it in football too,” said Alex Feuerherdt, a soccer referee and freelance writer.

Donald Snyder, a veteran NBC News producer for more than 25 years, is a special correspondent for NBCNews.com.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013 ... -hate?lite

I believe a LOT of knee-jerk hate is based in fear ~ and a LOT is based in ignorance ~ fear and ignorance of the unknown, of the different ~ and I am a firm believer that hate must be taught/learned ~ babies are not born with the capacity to hate ~ they will respond to anyone, black/white/yellow/red/polka-dotted, who feeds them when they are hungry, changes their diapers as needed, and soothes them when they are fussy ~

I'm also convinced that people who accept/endorse diversity [whether it's race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, culture] soon learn that we are basically more alike than different ~

Sooz

Bitterness over high unemployment, looking for scape goats, history repeats itself.
What I'm pissed off about is that especially in that region the neo nazi scene is blossoming while the State interior ministry and the "Verfassungsschutz" is closing their eyes and the left gets harsh treatment.

"Verfassungsschutz"

Say, what?
Does it have winter tires?

Department to protect the constitution.
Usually keeps an eye out for the left, ya know, the communists etc who want to overthrow Germany's government. Notoriously blind to the workings of rightwing radicals.
Oh yes, they also monitor emails, phone calls and anything else they've learned from their American occupiers.

Sorry, jabra, but I have to ask. Since when do the Germans need to learn from anyone else how to violate civil rights?

Adolph was Austrian, wasn't he?

One day Germans will be judged without the events of those twelve years. Sigh.

Raisting, a huge listening station, was an American installation. They handed it to the Germans a few years ago.

Sorry, jabra, just considering the op and that you appeared to blame the US for current violations (learned from the occupying Americans), I felt the need to ask the question. I am half German myself.

Anti semitism was around before Hitler and is still around, in Germany and in many other places, including here.

Some. I still stand to it. Of course it's all in the name of the eternal battle against communism.



Yes, it is, and as I said it pisses me off that the radicals from the right, who btw are not just anti-semites but also go with vehemence after muslims, foreigners and the left, are pampered and the left get's the treatment. After the latest murder spree on Turks by some nazi cell it seems that even the conservatives had an awakening to the real danger.

Could this kind of hatred have to do with the good versus evil that we seem to hear about all our lives? The Bible, cartoons, movies, "you're a good little boy", etc. If I am good does that mean anyone not like me is evil?

I forgot
I really look forward to articles about the huge movement in Germany of non-anti-semitic groups which are numerous but tend to be a non theme in other countries reports about Germany.

Ha, I know you won't be holding your breath. It does suck when the bad exceptions are the only ones who make the news.

From my personal experience I've known some guy named Dr. Gerhard Frey, the publisher of a neo nazi magazine. For him it was a lucrative business model to play on the fears of foreigners, the bitterness over the lost war and of course the remnants of anti semites. Damn great man to squeeze old widows who lost their husbands in the war out of their meager retirement funds in order to finance the "good cause" to rid Germans of evil jewish/foreign blood.
I know for a fact that most of those donations went into large run-down appartment complexes in Berlin where he also got special government subsidies and a much shorter time for depreciation to save income tax. His office burned out coincidentally right before an audit. Those crazy retirees basically financed the assets of one of the largest slum lords in Berlin.
And then he became a politician.

There were always a few left over nazis after de-nazification who just couldn't believe that someone really wooped their asses and destroyed all their hopes to be members of a regime with absolute power over others. No more shined boots and elegant phantasy uniforms even for a little desk clerk.
During the German Wirtschaftswunder in the late 50s to the 80s employment was great (at least in the West) and right wing paroles fell on deaf ears, so the nazis kind of disappeared into the dust bins of history.
Then came the re-unification and all of a sudden, the marode economy in the former East just fell apart, unemployment rose, there was nothing for them to do but search for scape goats.
Hence the neo-nazi movement took off again, blaming as usually the foreigners, the muslims, the Jews, homosexuals, environmentalists, the communists, basically anyone who doesn't have blond hair and blue eyes like their dear expired leader Adolf.

Soccer fan clubs are a perfect environment for such idiots. They meet often, can scream as loud as they want, get drunk into a stupor, get to beat people up and feel really really strong in large groups of other drunks.

As soon as the economy improves in the former GDR you'll see their membership dwindle again, down-sized to those idiots who are prevented to get a decent job due to their swastika tatoos in visible parts of their body.

Not gonna change in my life time.

Wow, this thread really took off since I last checked.

Thanks for the comments, especially Jabra.


It's always amazed me how Nazism has remained in Germany, given what they brought upon the country. But then I remember that the same applies to Confederates here.

You raise an interesting question I hadn't thought of, jeanne ~ that would be a nearly "perfect" subliminal message ~

Sooz

Absolutely!! I didn't raise my children to hate others. However, since their "enlightenment" via religion (Southern Baptists), they have learned to hate. However much they want to "hate the sin, not the sinner", it really doesn't happen. It breaks my heart.

First off, it's a relative small part of the German population. You simply forget about "the bad stuff" the nazis did and make it more appealing by claiming that "at least back then a woman could walk home from work through the inner city without getting attacked by todays bad guys". (actual saying by my dad! He was still a little brainwashed from his Hitler youth days although as a later lefty he would have had a few stints at Dachau)
The law and order thingy is still ingrained into the mind of many Germans.

That reminds me of John's gun threads where gun nuts quote the huge numbers of guns in Germany. I estimate that out of the millions of guns in German households 90% are non-functional historical weapons owned by collectors with no way to purchase ammunition and another 9.9% are gas hand guns for personal protection. They hurt a bit but don't kill and can be legally purchased. The remaining 0.1% belong to registered folks who can show a reason for the need of a weapon like judges, bankers, the wealthy etc.
We have some gun clubs with very restrictive rules.

Right. It just sounds so fake.

I'm not defending any "dark side politics" ~ but can anyone name any government anywhere that does NOT have a dark side?

Sooz

Nope. The sun sets everywhere.

"Are some people just predisposed to hate those that are different?"

Some people - yes. Others can be easily persuaded - that's all the more frightening.

Lol--I'm Southern Baptist but was unaware I had learned to hate anymore than the next person...but if I was to write as many comments against other groups of people as the slant/bias of comments I read against "Christians" (and admittedly that name includes a multitude of people of all types) I would be judged/condemned/despised...

Just as Jews seem to be fair-game to the Neo-nazis, it would seem Christians are fair game to the non-believers....hate is hate. I don't see a whole lot of difference in the hates....one perhaps is more subtle and outwardly tolerant, but the dislike is still there...

I don't think it's just the Christians who teach about good and evil. I don't even think it's just the religious who do the good vs bad teaching.

However, Christianity does stand out because it is based on a book that is full of condemnation and violence against those who are different. Follow me or go to hell. Are all Christians hated? No, you go by the individual. That's the whole point. I do say the teachings from the Bible, Old
Testament especially, do add to the problem of people hating those who are different.... especially sad considering the good Jewish man they named themselves for.