UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY

THE WORLD IS YOURS, KIDS!

COOKIE MONSTERS EAT BISCUITS NOW

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By John McCarthy

The Moderate Voice

     On the eve of the blood moon, 31-year-old Steffen Lange was arrested for distributing neo-Nazi leaflets in a Brandenburg school.
     Easily not the first time a far-right activist in Germany has tried to recruit youngsters to the racist cause.
     But what made Lange different was that he was dressed as the Cookie Monster – from Sesame Street – not Sesamstrasse.
     Police arrested Lange because it is illegal to belong to a neo-Nazi organization there. A search of his Senftenberg apartment showed that he was also in possession of neo-Nazi paraphernalia that was propagandistic rather than historical – also a violation of German law.
     Computers in the Lange residence had photoshopped the image of the Cookie Monster with Adolf Hitler and admirers Forrest Gump-like under the caption: “Who ate my biscuit?”
     British newspapers speculated that the answer might be “immigrants," like the swarthy Turks who come to Germany seeking a better way of life through menial labor.
     A German police spokesman described the use of the Cookie Monster’s image as an attempt to make neo-Nazism seem “harmless and everyday and perhaps something a bit fun and a bit rebellious.”
     News photos showed neo-Nazis on a German street dressed in blue Cookie Monster suits and red Tickle Me Elmo suits handing out racist pamphlets to children.
     Meanwhile, on Easter Sunday in Henrico County, VA – not far from the state capital of Richmond – some American racists had pre-loaded plastic eggs with racist propaganda messages.
     Brandon and Jackie Smith were supervising an egg hunt with their three-year-old when they saw that some of the eggs were different than the ones they had placed near their suburban Virginia property.
     “My husband noticed the last Easter egg and I knew it wasn’t one that we put out. We opened it and it’s got the white supremacist stuff in it,” Mrs. Smith told the local ABC affiliate.
     Inside the eggs were small papers with slogans like: "Diversity = white genocide” and “Mass immigration and forced assimilation of non-whites into our lands is genocide” messages that had been shared in the social media by participants of a poorly-attended “White Man March.”
     The Nazis prized youth participation in political activity from a tender age. Hitler Youth organizations actually existed prior to Adolf Hitler assuming power in Nazi Germany.
     The question becomes why? The NSDAP wanted children to get military-style training in weapons and assault tactics from an early age – and keep them out of church and Bible groups that they thought distracted from their message of German uber-nationalism.
     One such girls group of the Hitler Youth had a yearbook entitled: “Jungen eure Welt” which loosely translated means: “It’s Your World, Kids!” An important message for budding Nazis to learn – especially in the wake of what’s happened in the Ukraine –
instructing future Nazis that international borders are mere arbitrary lines on a map –
that can be erased with a simple blitzkrieg of tanks – or as in Putin’s case – by feint of force.
    If you want to set the bar on your beer hall putsch high – telling children that the world is theirs to conquer and giving them pre-training in specific arms and marine reconnaissance is a good start. The template the neo-Nazis are using now is nothing new.
     Children get used to a fat white man with a big white beard and a red suit who promises presents in Wintertime, so the fact that brown shirts and brown pants have been traded for one-piece blue furry suits is not really a stretch. But if the Nazi-expropriated Nietzschean blond beast had the fair hair and blue eyes of a “pure Aryan” – it is difficult to see how a cloth puppet with an insatiable desire for pastries figures into their fascist plans.
     What is different is what is the same. Because in America racism has gone troll-stealth on the Internet and in private groups: in Europe the underground is composed of skinheads disguised by costume. Whereas in the 1960’s the underground were easily identified by their Bohemian long hair and beards – now the clean-cut kid sitting next to you could be a dangerous neo-Nazi.
     It’s not exactly “The Boys From Brazil,” where a fictional Ira Levin account of a surviving Dr. Josef Mengele sought to clone Hitler and recreate his life experience among 94 Stepford sons in nine different countries – even down to the age difference between Adolf’s mother and father (23 years) and the exact age his father died when he was growing up in Austria (13 years old).
     But it is something to keep an eye on. Stuttgart mayor Manfred Rommel, former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich, philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the late Prince Consort of the Netherlands Claus von Amsberg and Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI) were all members of the Hitler Youth – and they turned out OK – after Nazism was rejected.
     If your idea of conquering the world by stealth involves using six-foot-tall skinheads dressed in clown costume on a public street – you might want to think again.
     Although propaganda and show of force is a powerful one-two punch – be careful when you do it – you might just end up being hoisted by your own Putin-petard.
     Which if you know your Shakespeare means: you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

 

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 
John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com