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Burning Berlin pt2: The Nazi tea party

It wasn’t only anarchists who were holding protest events on the 1st of May.

Continued from here.

It wasn’t only anarchists who were holding protest events on the 1st of May. This year the National Democratic Party of Germany (think the BNP, only with real-life Nazi grandads) had decided to hold a family fete. If it was an attempt to make them seem more sober and legitimate than the kerazy leftist cop-fighters, they fucked it up by booking two former members of the SS, including this lovely guy, to make rivers of blood speaches while children ate cupcakes at their feet.

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As the Nazis were protected by a 500-metre police cordon and had private escorts through the crowds, ANTIFA planned to disrupt the fete by cutting off the racist swarm at the train station, so at 9 AM we joined hundreds of anti-fascists on a packed train and headed to Köpenick station.

On the platform a crew of riot police were waiting for us. While the crowd worked themselves into a righteous fever by inexplicably chanting Scooter songs, the police ushered locals across the platform (anyone blond was roundly booed and pelted for looking a bit like an Aryan overlord), but there were no signs of tattooed National Socialists to ruck with.


Eventually a man in his sixties sat down, and everyone joined him. Perhaps the cops on the platform were the same ones we faced the night before and were desperate for revenge because the site of people sitting down was all they needed to wade into the crowd and start beating everyone, young and old, high-fiving as they did it.

They were pulling protesters out by their necks or eyes and then lobbing them down the station stairs where more police would block their path.


Eventually they cleared the station and everyone stood outside chanting and occasionally charging the police.

While the terrifying anti-capitalist hoard of teenagers, clown protesters, and children with small drums were forming under rigorous police surveillance, the NDP’s Nazi jamboree down the road continued undisrupted and the police would only let our photographer in. Looking at the pictures though, it seems unlikely that the National Socialists are on the brink of becoming a mega evil superpower once more.

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This is the NDP base, with anti-facist Lego-men signs hanging out front.

While approximately 10,000 leftists had turned up to protest against the government/bankers/facists, only about 40 Nazis had showed for their SS tea party. In the end the two SS guys canceled their talk because they were "too ill to travel" (although we were told that at the last minute the city council reprieved their right to speak). This meant that all the Nazis could do was throw their racist children on their bigoted bouncy castle.

And shop at their tasteful merch table

Back at the main protest, following an initial burst of enthusiasm, people were tiring of the speeches about redistributing wealth and the DJ dropping Bob Marley/Clash mega-mixes and started to head home. I think they were saving their energy because the main protest, the one the police had drafted in 5,000 troops for, was scheduled in Kreuzberg at 6 that night.

Read about the big gnarly final show-down of pepper-spray and rock throwing here

PHOTOS: MARTINA KIX
WORDS: ALEX MILLER