Anger Management German Style

The city of Leipzig had a major protest 2 weeks ago when the extreme right faction referred to as, ``the Brown Shirts´´ or neo-nazis returned to the city for the 3rd time in a year. Some 1300 of them got off at the train station to walk to the center of the city where there is a statue depicting the ousting of the Romans from Germany by the people. The statue has long been a symbol of the purity of the German race.

The Brown Shirts were met by a 10,000 strong crowd, rallied there to protest their presence in the city and the political ideals for which they stand. On hand were 4,500 police to ensure that there was no major trouble as quite often with these marches there is a faction from the extreme left present who are known as, ``the Black Shirts´´.

You can imagine the potential for violence at times when both the extreme left and right come together. People in general here support neither as the Black Shirts are equally violent in their demonstrations against the Brown Shirts with rock throwing and bloody clashes.

There is a professor at the university in Leipzig who studies crowd violence, crowd mentality and non-violent solutions to demonstrations. His solution to the problem was put to the test at this particular protest. As the Brown Shirts walked through the city towards the statue they were showered by thousands of people with confetti. Now in Germany, confetti is not used for weddings and the like. Here they use rice for that purpose. Confetti is only used during, ``Carnival´´, which is the period I have described previously, where people go out on the streets and into shops, restaurants and schools dressed up in fancy dress and perform pantomime etc. to chase away the Winter and herald in the Spring. To shower the Brown Shirts with confetti was to say we think your uniforms are carnival costumes and that you are nothing short of a pack of clowns.

Their march continued to the statue in the city center where they rallied and began to make speeches over a hand held megaphone. Unbeknownst to the Brown Shirt leader giving his political diatribe at the foot of the statue, someone had positioned two large sacks of confetti on top of the statue and as he just got into the swing of things these sacks were opened by remote control and the entire area around the statue was flooded in storm of confetti and the roar of laughter emanating from the 10,000 strong anti-Brown Shirt crowd. Needless to say the humiliation was so complete that they immediately packed up their bits and bobs and goose stepped back to the railway station where they swiftly and gladly departed.

There was no violence on this occasion mainly due to the fact that there were some 14,500 people in opposition to the Brown Shirt brigade of 1300. They would have been hard pressed to win any form of physical confrontation against such overwhelming odds.

I have included this snippet in here as an example of the general attitude of the people here and the fact that there can be non-violent solutions to problems, given some forethought and careful planning. I thought it was just simply magnificent.

These two extremist parties, the Black and Brown Shirts can make life very difficult for the government of the day particularly should the government take a stance to which neither faction adheres. Caught between a rock and a hard place so to speak.

Germans in general are overwhelmingly opposed to Nazism and any form of its return to political strength. There will remain for some years to come the remnants of the old school but the modern generations have little interest in upholding or following the subversive and anti-social nature of these parties.