Pro-München - a far right political party - Munich

I had heard about this Pro-München group in work and noticed their posters around town. Anyone know if they are Neo-Nazi, they certainly give me that feeling. I felt utter contempt toward this poster, depicting a "blond" haired babe with big innocent eyes at Isartor Platz. Is this group as cute as they make out? They are calling for a ban on large Mosques being built in Munich and are against "Foreigners" who commit violence. I think if they get any more power they will be looking at ways of forced re-patriation of "non-whites". Rings bells in my head of BNP and National Front. Why are groups like this allowed to post such rubbish in public? Freedom of speech and all that but is this not incitement to hatred?

We had the Neo-Nazi march in Marienplatz a few weeks back and now these yobs looking for your vote on March the 2nd.

Think it's just a lobbyist group telling you how you should vote.

Got my voting form and i shan't be following their advice.

"Pro München" is the "fluffier" of the far right parties standing for election to the council on March 2nd.
Bürgeriniative Ausländerstopp (NPD) is the more in your face with a skrewdriver lot.

It was originally hoped that they wouldn't get the 1000 signatures needed to stand but after the drum banging from Koch and Schmid form the CDU/CSU people from inside city hall tell me they had a massive increase in people signing.

It's their legal right to poster and I would never condone anyone comitting the crime of criminal damage of tearing them down obviously.

I saw the first poster, too, a week or two ago and found it extremely offensive. Any party that puts a Christian church crossed-out like that would definitely suffer from more backlash. The kid is beautiful, but I hate the way that he is looking apprehensive, and the message is that we have to save him from the Moslems. I thought there was freedom of religion here. I am totally fine with a mosque being put in town.

Dave which way will you vote? I know it's none of my business but with all the choice out there who does one vote for? I personally don't have much of an interest in politics as the last 20 years "world events" has put paid to me believing anything about fairness and democracy. I will vote however in this local election as I think it has an impact on me as a local and maybe just maybe I could hinder some right-wing fascist from gaining a seat.

Tbh Ruth, i'm not surprised at the backlash against Islam and, frankly, why shouldn't there be one?

Were we all in the middle east, we wouldn't even get the chance to choose!

I find myself becoming more of a hawk and more right wing by the day because of the bullshit emanating from so called Muslim religious leaders.

I went past these guys at the Christkindlmarkt thinking, please, please, please try to hand your pamphlet to me! F---ers didn't dare.

there you go:

SPD - Social democrats.
CSU - Christian democrats with a "local" touch.
FDP - Pro invididual liberties and more unrestricted economy
Green - Environmental and personal liberties
Links - Socialist
Rosa (Munich Only) - Lesbian and gay list
ÖDP - Environmental but more conservative than Greens
Freie Wähler (second largest group in bavaria - Local independents

IT doesn´t matter what they would do to us if we were there (and let me remind you that lots of westerners are indeed "over there", and not as welcome guests but as invaders). What matters is that we, as part of our way of life, have agreed as a group that one is free to pursue one´s religion as far as it doesn´t infringe on anyone´s legal rights. I think there are a lot of peaceful Moslems who would be glad to have a mosque in Munich to pray in.

Were life fair and equitable i would agree with you Ruth.

Sadly, for all of us, it's not and Muslim fundamentalists have decreed that you, me and all our children should die in a religious holocaust.

I wasn't here for the first such campaign and i don't want to be party to bringing in the second.

Now I know you've probably had a skin full after today, but there's no need to go right off the deep end, mate. You'll be getting knee high black shiny boots next and marchin' about to silly walks. Get a grip, will ya?

<goes for cold shower>

Here's my choice for Mayor!...

I'm serious Sin mate, were a western politician to spout the hatred that these fuckers spill onto fertile minds, they woulld be arrested.

We've the advantage of history to see where that leads . . .

I truly believe that we have to not only stop this tide of hatred but take active measures to prevent it.

I dont mind either, as long as the security services are bugging them and that shitey wailing sound cant be heard.

Glad schotte brought us back to the important things to consider, " that shitey wailing sound " , and this from a Scot . . . .

bagpipes.

Er... no they wouldn't, and furthermore, no they haven't.

Now i'm gonna take you on on this one, who spouts shite like Abu Hamza used to?

Would any politician in the ME dare to criticize the current, past or future government? Them all being the same government.

I hope they stop those bloody church bells as well.
Waking me up on a sunday morning.
And them happy clappy Christians who sing in the next block all the bloody time.

You live next to Kilians MT?

Nah mate, I live in GBV (where else ) but I can see that churrchy thing next to Kilians with the two tits on top from the next street corner.

Anyhoo. Just met by chance this evening a guy I know who is standing for the council (he's not going to get elected, but anyway).
Word on the street is that if any of these fascist clowns get elected and it is fairly likely they will get at least one seat, then the other parties will not co-operate with them in any way.
The parties are going to fight each other hard for votes over the next few weeks for sure but they will co-operate on that issue.

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Munich City Council is already suing Pro München for defamamtion after these comments:

"Nicht länger sollen in der Öffentlichkeit provozierend auftretende Schwule, Perverse und Abartige als Vorbilder Kindern und Jugendlichen vorgehalten werden..."

About the City Office for LGBT Affairs: "Lehrstelle des Abartigen".

Bluedave mentioned stopping a tide of hatred. I am not sure that in this case the best solution is to fight fire with fire. The West (particularly my home country, the USA) has done a lot of things in the past to contribute to the negative feelings in the Middle East towards the West. I am not saying we should treat anyone with kid gloves, but we shouldn't really make them wear horse-hair shirts, either. Sure, anyone being violent or engaging in illegal activity needs to be stopped, but these cases need to be treated on an individual basis, especially since it is not only Moslems doing this kind of stuff. Alienating immigrants or Germans of an Arab/Moslem background is not the way to make them feel part of our society and thus feel bound to its laws and norms.

Well said Ruthie. You can't go around spouting genocide just because a couple of kids were stupid enough to beat up an old man in an underground station. The two kids are the criminals to blame, and not every man, woman and child from here to the Chinese border. It is merely incidental what their backgrounds are, and I'm sure there are just as criminal Germans who have committed exactly the same offence somewhere else in the country. I've said it before and I'll say it again; The Muslims are the new Jews. The danger lays in ignorance... as it always has.

As far as i am concerned its the typical German trait.We and our country are not doing well lets blame the Auslanders again.

Let's not get carried away here, they're just a few isolated extremists. After all, most of them behave impeccably...

Hilarious!!

Btw: there's already a mosque in the centre of Munich. Its at Sendlinger Tor. It's sans the minarets though.
As long as the fatwas/sermons are within the law then there shouldn't be a problem with a bigger, more traditional one.

Every church/temple/gurdawa should be equal in that respect under the law.

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Think this was done already...

Sorry JW, Americans or Muslims?

Who do you think I am referring to?

I dunno. That's why I asked for clarification.

As I said in another recent thread about this (see Eck Spatz's link above):


I wouldn't be too worried about them at this stage - you always get a few loony groups around the fringes of any democracy, but as long as society is in reasonably good shape and the economy isn't doing too badly, most people don't take them seriously. The "Republikaner" with whom they seem to be related, were around for a long time, but never came anywhere near taking over the country.


Good to know that the other parties have enough common sense to keep the loonies out.

Same thing with religion. Most Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, etc, etc, aren't religious nutters or dangerous fanatics. (Dunno about some of those "Born-again Christians" though. ) Like Ruthie said, mistrust and hatred just breeds more hatred. It's a vicious circle.

The christian fundamentalists are just as bad. And according to the Jumpin' Jehovas, only 144 thousand of them are gettin in. Scientology etc etc. The list goes on. If you're not in our gang you're gonna burn with the rest of them...

Check out this poster from the ÖDP.

Is it just me or is a kid in Lederhosen acting possessively about the globe slightly disturbing?

Here's another one I found.

Weird eh?

Yes they would. If a German politician professed in public that the jews or any other group should all be killed (which is said on Arab TV, by various Arab and Persian politicians, quite a bit), he or she would be arrested, the law is very very clear. If a German politician said that the jews should be pushed into the sea, which is also quite common, he or she would be arrested. If that politician denied the holocaust, they would be arrested. So Bluedave is spot on.


The United States has only recently begun to stick it's nose into the Middle east. Muslims have long memories. They still take offense on account of the Crusades. Which was a purely European invention. There's no need to jump up on the cross or for you to alleviate your guilt by pinning the US up there. All of the west should share the guilt. It goes back thousands of years, and all are punished. The seeds of cultural conflict are far older than the United States. And the word is "muslim." Moslem is akin to calling them niggers or wogs, or boy, or fuzzy wuzzies, or Hottentots, or anything else racist and colonial you can think of. Lastly there are no ethnic Germans of Arab background. Being German means having German blood. Their government judges it as a all or nothing category. There are Turks with German Citizenship. They are citizens. No one, especially themselves would call them Germans. German identity is ethnic. Not like French or American Identity which is civic.


The Muslims are most definetly not the new jews. It's ignorance to say so. There is hardly a comparison. It's also ignorance to pull out the word Genocide, when no one is talking about genocide. The problem is not just about the u bahn attack. Its been brewing since at least 1958. Last time I checked it was still Germany. It's their country. They can legislate their foreign population. It's their right to do so.

Except that a high proportion of the "foreign" population aren't that "foreign".
They were born here or have lived here a long time.

The ÖDP is an enviromentalist-bourgeois party. They aren't tainted by accusations of racism or xenophobia.

As if it wasn't obvious: AbuHamza is a BRITISH citizen who spouted his shite in BRITAIN. He was indeed born in the Middle East but fled Egypt when very young because Egypt does not tolerate individuals who spout his kind of shite.

Abu Hamza is also the leader of Al Qaida in Iraq. Different guy, though.

If they aren't Turkish (Anatolian turks don't think of them as real turks) and they aren't German, then what are they? Being born here doesn't make them German. They still operate on Jus Sanguinus (law of blood) here and not Jus Soli the law of the soil. They couldn't even become citizens until recently. Dual citizenship isn't recognized. And becoming a citizen isn't easy. Being born here doesn't make them not foreign. Unless you are applying a civic identity on a country that doesn't do civic identity, i.e judge the German system by the British, American or French civic standard. Their constitution doesn't even disallow Bills of Attainder. Its a totally different system. They might not be foreign in the classic sense, but they aren't German either, born here or not. And the decision of whether or not to allow them to really stay lies with the Germans.

I'm afraid I agree with BlueDave on this (oh horror!). The problem with muslims is too big to go welcoming more of them with open arms. I've seen absolutely no evidence of a so-called 'moderate' muslim community really trying to reign in the growing fundamentalism. Knee-jerk liberalism is not going to help in this case. There needs to be some limits on immigration.

Any links for that? Thanks.

You correctly identify the situation that a LOT of foreign citizens either born or living long ter in Germany find themselves in.
A solution to their situaution currently lies with "the Germans", though that may change.
But ethicly, "the Germans"(by which is meant conservative opinion within the state), don't.

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Spoke to a bloke from the council on Friday.
The case of the the City of Munich v Pro München is more symbolic than anything.
They wanted to make it so it is on the record but expect the state will drop the case.

For what? That Arab politicians (with the exception of Sadat, and he's dead) still publically say that the jews should be pushed into the sea? Read the PLO charter Article 15. Or listen to Arab television or Radio. Read a speech from Nasser or a speech by Arafat when he was in Exile before he mellowed out. Check out a Press Release from Hamas or Hezbollah. Or check out any number of die jews die comments from Saddam or Ahmadinejad. You can google that stuff easily enough.

As for German politicians or anyone else getting arrested for denying the holocaust or suggesting a sequal, it's common knowledge that holocaust denial is illegal in Germany and Austria. David Irving's case from Austria a few years back is proof enough. those laws have teeth and to defy them means Jail time. So what are you really asking for a link of?

Has anyone ever reliably polled non-ethnic German citizens of Germany for their opinion on these sort of issues?

Just curious, Kat, but do you even know any Muslims personally, particularly practicing Muslims?

How is one going to identify an intending immigrant as Muslim unless they self-identify or you assume that they are? I don't know about other countries per se, but a lot of US converts to Islam keep their original names.

Am I the only person here who finds Rhyntyntyn alarming? I also think it is stupid of you to say I am calling Muslims something like "nigger" because I apparently misspelled the word as "Moslem" -- please show me where that is a derogatory term. You don´t want me to call them names, yet you have such a screwed up opinion otherwise? TBH, quite a few of the views expressed on this thread are alarming.

Edit: to get a bit more concrete: Rhyntyntyn said Germany belongs to the ethnic Germans and they are free to decide what to do with anyone who is not ethnically German living in their country. WTF?!?!?! Need I say more?!?!

I don't know if Ryhntyntyn's views are alarming, but on the subject of ius soli and ius sanguinis in German nationality law, they are not up to date. The legislative reform introduced elements of ius soli, so that children of non-German parents can be German citizens by birth under certain preconditions: Acquisition of nationality by birth in Germany, Min. of the Interior

Ryhntyntyn, I don't quite understand what you mean by saying that Germany "doesn't do civic identity" – if someone is naturalized, he/she is a citizen, regardless of ethnicity; that is a civic identity, isn't it? Whether this person feels German or is regarded as such by every compatriot cannot be legislated. It takes time to change attitudes.

Is that right...

What Rhyn is saying is that even if you become a German citizen, you are still regarded by many as an "Ausländer".
I've seen it myself in action and the issue is reguarly brought up in the press.


As fas as I know, there is no polling that is in the public domain of German citizens with migrant backgrounds.
There is the "I had had it hard so why should they have it any easier?" kind of argument like the one you get (say) in schools sometimes.
But I don't think that German citizens with migrant backgrounds would have a problem with access to German citizenship getting easier or the franchise being widened.

Of course it is all publicity, but 10 points to the Greens for the "Hitler Cats" poster!

No Ruthie, you need not say more, ever again. Please. You might think it's stupid of me to point out that you are being insensitive because you are ignorant. You are wrong, and you have a lot to learn. There are plenty of sources for how to deal with Muslims without being an offensive bumpkin out there. The Brits try really hard to be sensitive. There's a wealth of information out there written in English. It's not stupid to learn things. Try it sometime.
Heres one link: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/co...ties/pdf/151921
And the quote within "Is it correct to write Muslim or Moslem? Muslim is preferred. People refer to themselves as Muslims. Many regard Moslem as a term of abuse, like people of African descent dislike being called negroes. Also avoid Mohammedan and Musselman." There are others, but you are on your own.

And Germany belongs to the Germans and the non-Germans who have citizebnship. It's their country. Just like France belongs to the French. To whom should it belong then? You? The world? They can legislate anyone they want. Why is that alarming? What I find alarming is that while you don't hesitate to ascribe all of the problems of the middle east to the faults of the United States, you continue to display our culture's biggest faults: ignorance of other cultures and a corresponding refusal to learn, and the idea that the US is the mold and every other country has to fit into that mold. That's what I find alarming.


Citizenship does not equal a civic identity. You are of course right that a citizen in Germany has all the rights thereof. But in Germany especially that is a legal status and not an identity. In France for example the Identity is Civic. One says the word, joins the club learns the language (In France at least) and voila! one is supposed to be French. The day before one could have been Russian, but after naturalization... In theory anyway.
What it means to be a German is different, this in spite of the legal reforms you pointed out. Here you can naturalize and you are a German citizen, but you are still not a German. One cannot legislate ideas or opinions of course, but the concept of the civic identity does not exist in the German people or in the relevant foreign populations. Naturalizing makes one a citizen, not a German. To the Germans the idea of being German is rooted in descent. I suspect they could learn to be more accepting, but crossing the line to the French or American Model will not happen.
And the reform you rightly mention changes the law to allow the naturalization of german born children of foreigners. What it doesn't do is change the right of return for anyone who can prove German descent. Their laws still recognize that anyone descended from Germans is a German. It wasn't a flip flop from Jus Sanguinis to Jus Soli. It was a mild reform to try and introduce a bit of of Jus Soli to a system that remains overwhelming Jus Sanguinis.


As a matter of fact according to the 93% of the Germans that don't vote Green on a regular basis it is. At least they have a sense of humor though.
German Blood or Decent will get someone citizenship faster and in a far less complicated manner than being born here to foreign born parents. That much hasn't changed in spite of the their reforms. Is that good? I don't know. Is that the state of things? Yes it is.