
In Stuttgart, Germany, last week, violent Leftist and Islamic supremacist demonstrators violently menaced anti-jihad activists – giving a sobering picture of where Germany, Europe, and the U.S. as well are headed if we don’t stand up and resolutely defend our freedom now.
Thursday afternoon I spoke in Stuttgart at the invitation of the human rights group Pax Europa. The event was well advertised, and so the thuggish Leftist/Islamic supremacist alliance mobilized and was out in full force.
About a thousand protesters from the frequently violent hard-Left Antifa group showed up, along with around 500 German riot police. “Antifa” stands for “Anti-fascism,” but if any fascism was on display, it was from the “anti-fascists,” who did their best to destroy the Pax Europa event. They were menacing people, starting fights, banging drums, blowing whistles, and chanting Leftist and Communist agitprop slogans. One young man from Antifa came up to me as I was standing right in front of a line of German police and said, “You’re lucky there are so many police here today.” He was not expressing solidarity.
Pax Europa had planned a full program featuring Middle Eastern Christian musicians, a Coptic Christian activist, and others, so as to highlight the hollowness of the Islamic supremacist narrative of Muslim victimhood and anti-jihadist racism. But the police ordered the Pax Europa organizers to drastically reduce the scope of their event. Everyone was restricted to ten minutes only. Several participants opted not to appear, in light of the manifest danger. Antifa people were attacking supporters of Pax Europa. I saw several individuals being chased by rabid Leftist gangs. At least one man went to the hospital.
The police used loudspeakers to call on Antifa twice to disperse, as Pax Europa had lawfully reserved the space for their event. The Antifa people responded only by moving forward, chanting slogans, banging their drums, and holding aloft the usual Leftist kitsch — Che Guevara, the hammer and sickle, the Palestinian flag, signs denouncing Islamophobia, etc. The police moved them back a bit but did not ask them again to disperse, and allowed the Pax Europa event to begin.
It was an incredible din. We had loudspeakers that appeared to be able to reach the considerable crowd behind the protesters, but the Antifa thugs did all they could to drown us out: the drums got louder, the vuvuzelas came out, they were blowing whistles, and of course they were screaming and yelling. They also started throwing things: bottles, ice eggs, excrement and more. One bottle narrowly missed the Coptic activist’s head and crashed onto the stage — other bottles crashed at our feet. Several speakers were hit with eggs. The manure they threw was all over the stage floor.
It was like looking into the pit of hell. Here were young people passionately committed to their cause and believing it to be that of justice and freedom, and they are eager and willing useful idiots for the most radically intolerant ideology on the planet. So when my turn came to speak, I addressed them, and told them just that. I told them they wouldn’t like what happened to them when their friends took power, but by then it would be too late for them.
The menace continued. Antifa burned the truck belonging to the company that set up the stage for Pax Europa’s Thursday rally. Friday night they found out the hotel that the courageous anti-jihad politician René Stadtkewitz was planning to stay in when he came to Stuttgart to announce the founding of the local branch of his new Freedom Party; they reportedly broke the hotel’s windows and painted threatening messages on its walls. Also yesterday, I spoke to a Pax Europa meeting at a location in Stuttgart; Antifa thugs found out the location after the meeting had ended, and stormed and surrounded the place. Thirty-six were arrested.
But it is not too late for Europe. I spoke at Stadtkewitz’s Freedom Party event on Sunday, and found a crowd made all the more resolute and determined by the violent intimidation to which they had been subjected. They realize that freedom hangs in the balance today in Germany, and in Europe and the U.S. as well, and they’re prepared to take a stand.
That was a great source of hope. Saturday morning I had the great honor of meeting with Susanne Zeller-Hirzel, one of the last surviving members of the White Rose, the nonviolent resistance movement that worked against Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany in 1942 and 1943. We discussed numerous parallels between the Nazi era in Germany and the advance of Islamic supremacism today — as we saw in Stuttgart Thursday, Nazis and Islamic supremacists are remarkably similar in their taste for using force to shut down opponents they can’t out-argue.
It’s time for the White Rose to flower again in Germany. And as Islamic supremacism continues to advance in the U.S. also, we are not far behind.
Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, Stealth Jihad and The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (all from Regnery-a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).