Chinese tourists arrested after Hitler salutes in Germany German police on Saturday arrested two Chinese tourists for making illegal “Heil Hitler” salutes in front of the historic Reichstag building that houses the German parliament. Berlin police officers say they detained the two men, aged 36 and 49, after they were seen striking the Nazi-era pose and photographing each other with their mobile phones. They face charges for “using symbols of illegal organizations,” the police said in a statement, and were released after posting bail of 500 euros each. read on here: http://www.arabnews.com/node/1140236/world -------- I truly can't understand the Germans! They make themselves look like idiots and the laughing stock of the free world! Wish China would expel their ambassador until they apologize and refund the money. They sure ruined the holiday for the two Chinese guys. The whole Nazi/Hitler phobia has become a mental illness with people so obsessed... of all, the Germans are themselves the worst... a result of the relentless brainwashing treatment and that frightening paragraph 130, by which they go to jail for doubting the hc or doing the Nazi salute.
Comic. Fascism is alive and well in Germany it seems. By which I mean over authoritative and inhuman state behaviour. Germans will be Germans. They just can't help themselves. Chinese people have a sense of humour. Who knew? The Germans don't.
I wouldn't call it fascism, rather blind obedience to the demands of the winners of WW2. Yes, for the Chinese it was just a bit of good fun, nothing else. Heck, I could have done the same, because I, too, didn't know until now that that particular gesture is a criminal act. Nuts! But watch this video of "Bomber Harris do it again, the fruits of reeducation", where German girls bare their breasts and show that slogan. THAT was not a criminal act! Disgusting... https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=dresden+Bomber+harris+do+it+again&ru=/search?q=dresden+Bomber+harris+do+it+again&pc=MOZI&form=MOZSBR&mmscn=vwrc&view=detail&mid=0CC8450D90CD7690FA410CC8450D90CD7690FA41&rvsmid=A9D4B843CD1C4CBD25D2A9D4B843CD1C4CBD25D2&fsscr=0&FORM=VDQVAP
It's against German as well as Austrian law to show the Hitler salute in public (there are exceptions, but I won't discuss them here). This is pretty well-known and these two Chinese guys should have known which apparently was not the case. They were arrested by the police but were released from the police station shortly after. There is very likely going to be a penal procedure, however, they won't end in jail. I fail to see how standing in front of the Reichstag doing the Hitler salute has anything to do with humour. I also fail to see how this makes a people of 82mill. look like idiots. The idiots in this case were two Chinese. It's basically very simple, there are laws, follow the laws and there won't be any trouble. Of course, as a Holocaust denier you won't be happy with these laws. Bad luck.
I cannot begin to count the number of times a Hitler salute has been used in comedy. It is normatively used in this way. I routinely make Hitler salutes in jokes. Hitler and the Nazi's are great source of comedy worldwide. If the purpose of this law is to prevent a NAZI resurgence in Germany and Austria, then a Chinaman doing it for his holiday snaps isn't relevant to the law. So arresting a Chinese tourist for it is a misuse of that law. This is applying the letter of that law for a purpose that was not the laws intention. It's a misuse of power. An abuse of authority. Policemen like that, are not in the right job. Judges like that are not in the right job. And this over authoritarian response is indeed comically very reminiscent of the very regime this law was made to curtail. It is fascism. Intolerance of foreigners. Obeyance of laws above common sense or ordinary decent behaviour. I vas just following zee orders! What has happened here is... some Chinese guys were taking the piss out of German history and the Germans busted them for a laugh. Here is how this will play out. Chinese man goes home to China and never pays that fine. German justice, swivels for it. The rest of the world, laughs even harder at the NAZI's and makes even more jokes about how the NAZI's are still about. @ Caligula. It is very simple. Blindly follow the laws and there will be no end of trouble. People thrown alive into ovens. We don't just follow laws. We have a special word for that. It's called Draconianism after a famous tyrant. Laws are used to resolve disputes between people that cannot be resolved peaceably amongst themselves. It is a method of conflict resolution. An arbitration system for when normal reasonable behaviour breaks down. When you use a law to bring a conflict where there was none, you are a fascist and you deserve what all fascists deserve.
Hitler is used in comedy in Germany, the Nazis (it's a plural -s without apostrophe) are used in comedy in Germany, there are many clips online you can watch and have some fun. It's usually people from other places that have no first hand experience and have never been to Germany who think it's a fascist dictatorship turned around 180 degrees. If there is a law which under certain circumstances doesn't allow to publicly show the Hitler salute, no problem for me. If there's a law that says 'don't drive faster than ...', fine. If there are laws that say you have to pay taxes, ok. Laws are also used to make a society as a whole work and to provide a framework for its institutions and citizens, and whatever is considered acceptable and what not is up to that society (the Romans, as an example, considered their slaves 'things' and this was clearly defined by their laws, they weren't 'people.' Btw, I'm familiar with Draco). These things are subject to change of course, sometimes they follow political processes, sometimes they follow changes in society, the Zeitgeist plays a role, values and social norms can be importaent, etc. Laws are not just there to resolve disputes, that's way too simple. There are experts who say that this 'showing Nazi symbols in public is a legal offence' law should be changed, and that Holocaust denial should not be regarded as a legal offence either, but it's not really a debated topic atm. And there will always be people who claim there is zero freedom in Germany and Germans are completey brainwashed because they allow authorities to define showing Nazi symbols in public or denying the Holocaust as illegal. Whether this law creates a conflict where there wasn't any conflict, lies in the eye of the beholder. I don't see it that way at all. Btw, the ovens in the death camps were used to get rid of the many corpses, they were not used to burn people alive, there were reported cases though in which some people from the so-called Sonderkommando jumped into the ovens to commit suicide. But you can talk to user Jazz about that.
Well there's at least one case where the Soviets, when they were occupying Poland, turned what used to be a bakery room at one of the prisons into a crematorium, complete with a tall smokestack that leads nowhere, all for show. Then they still run tours there saying this is where bodies were cremated. Unfortunately Germany's open-ended laws are being interpreted by overzealous prosecutors to make questioning any piece of the historical narrative tantamount to Holocaust denial.
Here is some more fake to examine... https://nodisinfo.com/zionists-holocaust-cremation-deaths-ohio-train-wreck-images/
@Caligula Thanks for the informative reply Caligula. A good read. Also thanks for the grammar correction. I can use all the help I can get. Exactly what harm do you feel these Chinese people were doing and to whom? What is it about their behaviour that caused £1,000 worth of damage and to whom? Who is the aggrieved party and were they aggrieved to the tune of over a month of the average wage. What damage did they do and to whom that cost someone over one month of labour? What do you feel the purpose of the law is, if not to settle disputes between people? I strongly believe that this is the only acceptable purpose of the law. That while in a malign and corrupt society the law may be used as a tool of repression or systematic theft, that this is not acceptable social behaviour. The law is made for men, and men are not made for the law. It is a tool only. Once the law has become a dogma, it is no longer beneficial to mankind. In order to change bad laws, first you have to break those laws. Then lots of people have to also break those laws and once those laws are routinely and regularly broken in society, they are no longer laws at all. Now, German people have the right and ability to make their own laws. Chinese people have been forced to respect those laws. But, is this something that could not have been verbally corrected by a policeman or indeed an aggrieved passer by? Would that not have been enough? Yes it would. Their policeman is a ****wit, and their judge is a ****wit. They would do well to arrange a career change for all involved in this Draconian attack on innocent tourists. Who quite frankly cannot reasonably be expected to know every stupid and minor law in their own country let alone every stupid and minor law in someone else's. These people are not lawyers, let alone lawyers specialised in German law, they are just some people on holiday out for a good time trading for mutual benefit with Germans. The people involved were causing no harm to anyone and considerable benefit to some. There is no expectation on them whatsoever to know of every bullshit anachronism in German law. Nor is there even any great expectation on our own citizens to abide by bullshit laws. Nor any desire for them ever to do so. So instead of applying a bullshit law, or saying everyone needs to be a qualified lawyer to enter our country, ignore it or change it. I vas just following zee orders. Is not acceptable social behaviour. It does not justify malign intent.
Well, generally speaking you’re right when you say that nobody was harmed by what these two tourists did. They didn’t harm anybody and they didn’t cause any damage. Would I harm anybody or would I cause any damage if I were going 100 kilometers an hour on an open road instead of 70 like the sign tells me? No, I wouldn’t, yet I should follow the sign otherwise I might be fined, and when I do the Hitler salute publicly I might be fined as well. You have to look at this law in a historical context and not isolated in the ‘here and now’. This law was created in 1948 and is clearly a product of its time. It was created by people who had witnessed the failure of democracy and the rise of the Nazi regime and all the misery it brought along. It was created with the idea in mind that a future democracy should not be weak and helpless like the Weimar Republic was. The Nazis slowly undermined the Weimar system and finally destroyed it by taking power (this is of course rather simplified). The Weimar Republic was extremely instable from the start and when a highly organized political group like the Nazis came along, this weak system wasn’t able to offer enough resistance. The so-called Enabling Act of 1933 is quite important in this context and one idea behind this law was to prevent this from happening again. In a nutshell, the new democratic system should be equipped with tools to counter a totalitarian threat. This is called streitbare Demokratie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie German legislature is allowed to introduce laws in order to protect the democratic structure from its potential enemies. Of course, there is a potential danger in there – the democratic structure could turn into something very undemocratic itself claiming it’s under threat and needs to defend itself, but no system is perfect. This law is not just about the Hitler salute in public or a swastika T-shirt, it’s more than that, but people who are not familiar with this very often reduce it to exactly these things. The other thing you mentioned about verbally correcting these two Chinese guys is quite right, and this is what happens very often. I was speeding a few weeks ago and was pulled over. They told me I had been going at least 80Km/h for the last 4 kilometers where only 50 was allowed. I was given a warning, no ticket, no fine. Don’t think that when you do the Hitler salute, you’re automatically fined 500 or 1000 Euros or thrown into jail. It really depends on the situation. In this case, the policemen obviously thought a verbal warning wasn’t enough, bad luck for these tourists. When someone is fined, of course, German lawmakers do not really think about what the average wage in other parts of the world might be and that Chinese wages are considerably lower than German wages. My ex-girlfriend is a cop and she has issued warnings on many occasions to tourists and especially football supporters from other countries as well as Germans who thought it’s a cool idea to do the Hitler salute. As I said, there are people who say this law is outdated and should be reformed, but at the moment, it’s not really debated.
China also has its own nationalist problem and these two Chinese tourists may actually be wannabe fascists who worship Hitler. You cannot assume that they were innocent tourists who knew nothing about Germany's law against extremist symbols. The video further shows that xenophobia is on the rise in China.
Nothing was known at the time of the arrest, who they were etc. What difference does it make for Germany whether they were or were not Fascists? Why can a person not think of his own country first? What is so great about being a multiculturalist? If Hitler is labeled a Fascist then Trump is one for sure!
Hitler is labelled fascist because he was the leader of the most famous Fascist regime. Trump is labelled Fascist because some people want to associate it him with a famous bad person. Godwin's law applies to Trump too. What difference this should make to Germany, is all the difference in the world. If your law is being misapplied, you have a problem with your legal system. If you are using it as an excuse to **** up foreigners for a laugh, or for not being German enough, what has changed in Germany?
I don't mean to be crass, but all I got from that is that speech is only a right as long as the legislature likes it. As soon as a new legislature comes to power, new forms of speech may be banned.
It's cool to do Hitler salutes. I often do and they usually get the desired laughs. Germany isn't cool. Wasn't cool in Hitler's time, isn't cool now. Please come to England and visit us instead. You can take the piss out of our history and indeed us, if and all you like. We won't arrest you.
@Baff, I worked and lived in England for some time, so I have some first hand experience. What are silly comments like "country x isn't cool, but country y is cool" supposed to say? That last comment of yours is really childish and shows you clearly don't know what you're talking about, not willing to take in new info, have a very single-minded view on this issue, and certainly no first hand experience regarding Germany. Sorry, but my-country-is-cooler-than-your-country is completely meaningless. @Jimmy79, if that's all you got from that, then that's your view. Your assumption is wrong. How many times has that scenario that you've described happened in Germany in the last five or six decades. You're probably American, I assume. Merkel is currently being booed at pretty much everywhere she holds a speech and I'm sure she doesn't like it, yet people have the right to do it and legislature doesn't and cannot do anything. She can leave the podium in the middle of a speech and that's it.
What did you think? Did you think you could piss on people having a good time and not get associated with that behaviour? That's not how it works. I have been to Germany three times. I have taught Germans, worked for German TV, socialised with Germans and have German family. I don't feel that makes me an expert, but I have formed certain opinions from this exposure. As nations we have stereotypes. Chinese are rude. Japanese are polite. And yes, some countries are cooler than others. In Berlin you can kiss another guy. So if you are gay, Germany is a cooler place to hang out than Saudi Arabia. Come to England, tourists. We will treat you better. We value you.
