Thursday, March 25, 2004 German
Police raid 300 homes of Music Nazis BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) --
German police raided the homes of
more than 300 people Wednesday whom they suspect of
posting neo-Nazi music files on the Internet for
others to download, the Federal Crime Office said
in a statement.  David
Irving comments: LET ME JUST GET one small thing
straight here (as Monica L might have said
to President C): I can imagine nothing
worse than a Germany governed by people to
whose ears this kind of noise is
music.
But these raids on
private homes in Germany do seem to raise
questions at several levels; for example,
if it was really the violent nature of the
lyrics that upset the gentlemen in green,
are they also raiding the homes of
millions of downloaders who listen to
gangsta- rap: from what I have read, those
sings use pretty violent language too.
More ominous is the
question of how the German police
built up their "to-raid" lists: it is
unlikely that they carried out a monster
street-survey of every German town and
city asking, "Do you listen
to/enjoy/download neo-Nazi music? Download
it? If so please fill-in your name and
street address
HERE: ..." MORE likely is that the German police
have developed software that enables them
to trace the identities of people
conducting such online transactions, and
are using these data to compile lists of
the street addresses of subscribers to the
domestic, school, or office dial-up, or
DSL, services which are used to download
the music, and are using these lists to
conduct their raids.
Today music -- tomorrow,
what else? People subscribing online to
Skeptic magazine, or Der
Spiegel? Who knows how far the
horizons of the German police force will
reach, once they have climbed out of the
Klosettendeckel [toilet
seats] which seem to have been the
previous limiter to their field of
view?
Will they prosecute
people who download the books by me, David
Irving?
The German police have
learned nothing, and forgotten nothing,
from their experiences of the last hundred
years. They still click their heels and
shout Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst -- it
is just that the armbands are of a
different color now. |
Police said the nationwide raids
followed investigations into 342 people who had
posted songs by skinhead bands on the Internet. The
songs contained lyrics inciting racial hatred, the
crime agency said.Police said they would carry out 333 raids by
the end of Wednesday at the homes of people who
posted songs on a music sharing Web site. "Inciting
racial hatred is more than just a petty crime,"
said Federal Crime Office President Joerg
Ziercke. "Skinhead music groups create an enemy
image and help propagate extreme right ideas." Inciting racial hatred,
displaying Nazi emblems like the swastika and
performing the stiff-armed Hitler salute used
under Adolf Hitler are crimes punishable
by imprisonment in Germany, the country which
carried out the Holocaust. The Federal Crime
Office started clamping down on Internet trading
of music inciting neo-Nazis to hate and attack
Jews and foreigners in 2001. The songs convey Nazi ideology and contain
lyrics such as these from the group Tonstörung
(Sound Interruption): "Sharpen your long knives on
the pavements; delve them into Jewish bodies." More than 100 people have been killed in racist
violence in Germany since unification in 1990. Most
of the attacks are random and involve skinheads
picking on foreigners in the street. Property has
also been attacked. Swastikas have been daubed on
Jewish gravestones, bricks thrown at Turkish kebab
shops and firebombs hurled at asylum hostels. Most
synagogues have 24- hour police guards. German
police raided homes of more than 300 people on
Wednesday whom they suspect them of sharing
neo-Nazi music files on the Internet. Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. 
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