German Prosecutors, Police and Press Continue to Denounce and Investigate an Unending Plague of ‘Nazi Salute’ Incidents

Once upon a time, the spectre that haunted Europe was communism, but today that spectre is the stiffly extended arm raised to an angle of 45 degrees. Sometimes I cannot sleep at night, so much does the anxiety gnaw at me that a political extremist might be sticking his arm into the air and hailing victory. It is the stuff of nightmares, and the very idea should make you intensely afraid, because nothing conveys confidence in your political beliefs and moral convictions as much as hyperventilating that somebody, somewhere might be mimicking – even by accident! – the signature gesture of a political party that has been defunct for nearly four generations now.

The German economy may be caught in an indefinite downward spiral, we may be unable to practice even the most basic border security, stabbings and gang rapes may be on the rise, and the Interior Minister may be unilaterally banning entire newspapers, but at least we can take heart in the fact that our cultural police are sparing no effort to combat that perennial plague of fascist saluting:

The Saarland police have opened an investigation into the Austrian right-wing extremist Martin Sellner. The police in Saarbrücken announced that they are investigating him on suspicion of using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations. Sellner is said to have publicly offered a Hitler salute in the Saarland state capital.

{snip}

Even more damning, Sellner’s enemies in the Saarland Pirate Party have posted helpful video of this dangerous right-wing extremist’s appearance, which confirms that he made this gesture not once, but multiple times. You might object that these movements in no way resemble a Nazi salute, but that would be very naive of you. A recent court decision clarifies that raising the left arm also qualifies as a Nazi salute for purposes of the German criminal code, and so it as least possible that Sellner is guilty of offering multiple Nazi salutes with both halves of his body simultaneously. {snip}

If only the Sellner Incident were an isolated case. Alas, it is not: Alternative für Deutschland are hard at work lacing their political campaigns with cryptic images alluding to this darkly powerful magical gesture. A mere six months after police investigated AfD offices in Berlin-Pankow for their apparently fascist inflatable snowman, who may not have been merely waving but actually heiling Hitler …

… we find ourselves confronted by the wholly new atrocity of this AfD campaign poster:

From Der Spiegel:

The image on an AfD poster from Frankfurt an der Oder is at the very least misleading: it is a photo of a happy-looking family. In the foreground, three blonde children are sitting on a sofa.

Happy-looking family: borderline Nazi. Blonde children: pretty explicitly Nazi. But it gets worse:

Behind them stand a man and a woman, each with one arm outstretched and slightly raised. Their fingertips meet in the centre of the picture. “We protect your children” is written in large letters above the photo. The arms could symbolise a protective roof over the little ones. Or they could mean something else entirely.

Yes. They could mean Nazis, that’s how serious this is.

A politician from the Left Party has filed a criminal complaint, probably because she interpreted the gesture as a Hitler salute. Now the public prosecutor’s office has intervened. A spokeswoman … said that the investigating authority was currently looking into whether there is an initial suspicion of a criminal offence.

{snip}

{snip} That picture on the AfD poster turns out to be a stock photo …

… which our evil scheming AfD poster artists have printed in mirror image. That might seem exculpatory, but as the crack journalists at the Märkische Onlinezeitung point out, it is the opposite! “In the original … the man’s left arm … is fully extended, while the woman’s right arm is bent. The AfD inverts the image so that the man’s right arm is fully extended.”

{snip}

It goes on and on; there are dozens and dozens of stories like this. On 12 July we heard about the Dresden police officer who got drunk at a party and offered the Nazi salute while dancing to that notorious fascist anthem, L’Amours Toujours. The police chief Lutz Rodig regretted that the officers present at the party had “squandered public trust, which is indispensable for our role as guarantor of democracy.” Two weeks later there were the men who shouted Nazi slogans and gave Nazi salutes at a public festival in Eging am See, near Passau. A day later there was the twenty year-old in Schwerin who got caught offering the Nazi salute, shortly after local authorities discovered swastika graffiti in a cemetery and on a local shop.

Even childcare centres are emerging as dens of right-wing extremism here in the most democratic Germany of all time:

What should be done when children in a primary school nursery form swastikas out of stones, give the Hitler salute or sing a song with racist slogans? After such incidents in Pirna, Saxony, became known on Wednesday, state politicians offered their first reactions ..

Nobody should dismiss the incident “as a trifle or a silly boy’s prank,” wrote Left Party politician Luise Neuhaus-Wartenberg … the education policy spokesperson for the Left Party parliamentary group in the Dresden state parliament, the impression that the use of Nazi symbolism is unproblematic should not be allowed to become entrenched.

According to the Sächsische Zeitung, it had previously emerged that four children between nine and eleven years of age had made swastikas out of bricks and pebbles at the Am Friedenspark primary school nursery in Pirna. The children had also offered the Hitler salute. The incident took place on 5 July.

The staff at the day care centre … informed the police, who opened an investigation into the use of unconstitutional symbols. According to the police, the public prosecutor’s office will decide on the next steps, as the children are not yet old enough to be criminally responsible.

A few days earlier, the song “L’Amour toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino had allegedly been played in a group room at the day-care centre; children had sung the slogan “Foreigners out” to it. The song was added to the playlist by a trainee at the request of the children. An educator was not in the room; the trainee was suspended.

{snip}