April 3, 2006
I WENT TO A PUTSCH THE OTHER NIGHT AND A SOCCER GAME BROKE OUT:
Player Silences German Racists With Hitler Salute (Der Spiegel, 4/03/06)
It started with a Hitler salute. Two eastern German soccer teams in the fourth division, FC Sachsen Leipzig and Hallesche FC, had just drawn 2-2 on March 25 in Halle, and the fans weren't happy.Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2006 4:16 PMLeipzig's Nigerian midfielder Adebowale Ogungbure was walking off the pitch when hooligans ran up to him, spat at him and called him "Dirty Nigger," "S*** Nigger" and "Ape." He ignored it and walked on. Then, when he passed the main stand and heard fans making whooping monkey noises at him, he decided he'd had enough. He put two fingers above his mouth to symbolise a Hitler moustache and stuck out his right arm in a Nazi salute to the crowd.
Given their behavior, one might think they would have appreciated the gesture and even returned it. But a Halle supporter attacked him from behind with a corner flag and another grabbed him in a stranglehold. Ogungbure pushed them away as a teammate intervened and dragged him towards the tunnel, to the safety of the changing rooms.
"I was just so angry, I didn't care. I could have been killed but I had to do something," Ogungbure told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week. "I thought to myself, what can I do to get them as angry as they have made me? Then when I lifted my arm I saw the anger in their faces and I started to laugh."
"I've faced some sort of racist abuse at about half the matches I've played," he said, but the spitting was too much on March 25. "I've never seen anyone spit at a dog or a cat in Germany -- why should I be spat at?"
It's things like this that make me start to think that they got off easy in 1945. I know you shouldn't think like that, but it's hard not to.
Posted by: Mike Morley at April 3, 2006 5:12 PMUnless we were willing to keep the death factories working, they were bound to get off easy.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 3, 2006 5:29 PMBut aren't the Americans the only racists in the world? Aren't Europeans much more sophisticated than that? To paraphrase Tom Wolf: racisim always descends on America, but lands some place else.
Posted by: ic at April 3, 2006 5:46 PMHis response to the crowd I find very satisfying.
Posted by: RC at April 3, 2006 5:55 PM Racist that are offened at being called nazis.
Sounds like the commies havent changed.
much.
Posted by: tony martin fan at April 3, 2006 6:40 PMwe should have depopulated germany and erased the german culture from the planet. no need to keep the ovens running, just kill the host culture. "new israel" has a nice ring to it.
Posted by: toe at April 3, 2006 6:52 PMThereby losing the argument about whether Applied Darwinism is justified.
Posted by: oj at April 3, 2006 7:05 PMAll of us are ‘hard wired’ to become racists. The designed in trait to ‘belong to our kind’ is essential for survival when times are desperate. The binding force can be race, color, religion, politics, class, … “ Do unto others as you would have.., Consider others more highly than yourself, and Turn the other cheek” are examples of many of the Biblical admonitions to help us control this basic instinct that tends to go awry.
Posted by: TGN at April 3, 2006 8:09 PMExcept that hatreds based on differences of ideas are sensible, while those over immutable physical characteristics and ethnicity and the like are merely animalistic.
Posted by: oj at April 3, 2006 8:15 PMIt's pretty rare that something happens on a soccer field that I'm sorry I missed seeing.
Posted by: H.D. Miller at April 3, 2006 9:20 PMthere will only be one race, eventually.
Posted by: toe at April 3, 2006 9:21 PMEventually?
Posted by: oj at April 3, 2006 11:53 PMtoe, we're already one race, the human one.
Posted by: erp at April 4, 2006 8:11 AMand we all live in the third world...from the sun.
seven daya in the week, seven continents.
what does it all mean.
stay tuned...
Posted by: toe at April 4, 2006 10:21 AM