The Post-Mortem on Cologne
Originally posted at Gates of Vienna on September 21-22, 2008 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).
by Baron Bodissey
I’ve been exchanging emails with Aviel, who was an eyewitness to and participant in yesterday’s events in Cologne. He will be sending us a report later, but his contribution has been delayed by the injuries he sustained yesterday, which were worse than he originally thought:
Baron,
I will send you a full report by this evening. I got in late last night, and what I thought were sore ribs turn out to be a broken one. I will fly back to Paris this afternoon and then go to have some X-rays taken. Then I will send you a very detailed report in chronological order about the activities over the weekend here in Cologne. It may be too late for you to use but I assure you that it should be kept for future references. Things are getting very very bad now. Please forgive me for I am just not in the best of shape at the moment.
Aviel
A commenter named maalmannen attempted to reach the Heumarkt in Cologne for the demonstration yesterday, but was unable to get through. Here’s his account:
Yesterday I tried to join the Anti-Islamization demonstration that was announced to start at 12:00 o’clock. And, naïvely enough, I believed that I could simply show up at the Heumarkt and join the rally.
Since I live in Strasbourg, I took the train from Strasbourg at 06:54 and the train was scheduled to be at Cologne Hauptbahnhof at 10:05. However, due to the sabotage of the train signal system, which blocked the railway from Frankfurt to Cologne that morning, the train was delayed by one and a half hours, so I got to Cologne at 11:30.
I tried to reach the Heumarkt, but all entrances were closed by counter-demonstrators and police. On several occasions, I observed people trying to join the demonstration being attacked and chased away by the leftist counter-demonstration.
In one case, an old woman carrying a lot of anti-Islamization posters was attacked by a gang of Antifa activists. The rest of the crowd shouted “Nazis raus” when these criminals attacked the old frau and took all her posters away from her, and then ordered her to leave or risk more attacks. Another woman tried to capture the event with her digital camera, but she was stopped by the Antifas.
However, I have quite long hair and was taken by the counter-demonstrators as just another leftist, so I was able to sneak through the outer ring of counter-demonstrators until I met the inner ring of policemen. These policemen did not ask if I was a demonstrator or a counter-demonstrator; they simple did not let anyone pass. So although I passed the outer ring of all the leftists, I was not able to pass the inner ring of the policemen. And now I am probably counted in the mainstream media as just another counter-demonstrator.
And now: equal time for the Muslim point of view. Or maybe oppo research.
In any case, the Arab point of view. Actually, this is ultimately from AFP, and it’s more balanced than most of the MSM stories I’ve read so far.
From Al-Arabiya:
Thousands of Germans Protest Anti-Islam Meet
German police said tens of thousands of Cologne residents took to the streets Saturday to protest an “anti-Islamization” conference of European far-right leaders.
Carrying banners saying: “We are Cologne – Get rid of the Nazis!” protesters gathered outside the city’s cathedral to demonstrate against the congress organized by the local far-right group Pro-Koeln (For Cologne).
Pro-Koeln began two days of seminars Friday during which speakers denounced an influx of Muslims to Germany and the construction of one of Europe’s largest mosques in the city.
Earlier Saturday, police banned a rally organized by far-right adherents in Cologne just as it was about to begin, following clashes with thousands of opponents.
Far-right rally banned
Some 3,000 police, drafted in to control the protests and seal off part of the old city, used truncheons and water hoses to fend off violent “anti-fascist” leftist activists.
“It is a dictatorship!” said a Pro-Koeln member of the decision to ban the far-right rally.
Andreas Molzer, a member of the European Parliament and an Austrian far-right group who attended the congress, called the ban an “anti-democratic scandal.”
Pro-Koeln had hoped 1,500 people would attend Saturday’s rally in the city center to oppose the mosque and an “immigrant invasion” of Europe.
Those attending the congress, including far-right leaders from Belgium, Austria and Italy, protested against “Islamification” and voiced support for Europe’s “Western values and Christian traditions.”
The counter-protest, called by trade unions, churches and anti-racist movements, saw thousands of students, families and local business people carry signs with slogans including “No to Racism” and “Cologne is rebelling!”
The protesters disrupted the Pro-Koeln congress and ensured that fewer than 50 delegates were able to return to the meeting on Saturday morning.
Individuals fight back
Mayor Fritz Schramma, whose city council gave the green light for the construction of the huge mosque, slammed Pro-Koeln as “arsonists and racists” hiding under the cloak of a “citizens’ movement” in a speech earlier Saturday.
Meanwhile, around 150 bars in Cologne stopped selling Pro-Koeln members the local Kolsch beer with some taxi and bus drivers also refusing to transport delegates to the congress.
One hotel even cancelled bookings made by “undesirables.”
On Friday, several hundred opponents of the congress formed a human chain around a mosque in solidarity with the Muslim minority, which numbers more than three million in Germany, or four percent of the population.
Pro-Koeln has five elected local councilors and is chasing other official positions in the region.
Cologne, in the west of Germany on the River Rhine, is famous for its Gothic twin-spired Roman Catholic cathedral – a UNESCO world heritage site that survived Allied air raids during World War II.
From a reader who works for a media outlet:
I went to the Cologne rally hoping to get fresh HD video of leaders like Le Pen and Dewinter, and to be honest, I figured it would end in a riot, not begin with a riot, as it did. I and my cameraman were escorted by police through the human barricades the Left had set up to block the narrow streets down to the heurmarkt.
Once in the square, it was a big nuthin’. The event had been strangled. The media outnumbered the participants by at least five to one, maybe ten to one.
The leader of Pro-Köln told me in English that he did not believe the police sided with the Left, but had “capitulated.”
I was astounded at the numbers and fervor of the Leftists, even though I have watched the Left-Muslim alliance march in London. It was obviously some kind of major religious experience for the Leftists. Quite disturbing.
AMDG was in Cologne yesterday, and has posted an extensive and detailed account of what he witnessed. He has included dozens of excellent photographs, and, since I haven’t borrowed any of them, I recommend that you visit his blog to get the sense of what happened at the aborted Pro-Köln conference.
Here are some excerpts from what he wrote:
A personal account of yesterday’s demo in Köln: Antifas block access to a demo: “We are the authority”.
My colleague A [I will use initials as I do not know whether the persons mentioned want to be identified] and I arrived at 10:30 in Cologne. We had gone by car and parked to the other side of the river in Deutz neighbourhood (to the right in the map attached). Please note that the name of the tram-underground station is Deutzer Freiheit, which means the Deutz Freedom. This is very ironical. There is no more freedom in Germany, or in Cologne, or in Deutz of course. I am afraid that only a miracle could save us, or a very severe economic crisis that wakes up the citizens.
Our original plan was to cross the river and reach the Heumarkt, which was just to the other side. I phoned G, who I was going to meet, and who was already at Heumarkt. I was utterly naïve indeed thinking that I could meet her on the spot: there was no way to cross the river. The tram connexion was cancelled and the bridge was blocked by a line of antiriot police (we would later see in the afternoon, when we were able to cross it back, that it was full of police vans). Furthermore, the bridgehead was taken by some 100 or 200 “antifas”. I think that there could be around 5000 in total, including fellow travellers and Gutmensch. Please note that all the figures given are my own non-expert estimations.
We took a picture to a banner, and then tried to make some portraits of the antifas, but they told us unfriendly not to do it. The antifas were the usual brainless scum that you can expect. All in black, most with sunglasses and many with the collar or the hood of the pullover covering their mouth or head. I took some pictures of the groups from a safe distance.
[...]
It was obviously not possible to enter the Heumarkt. I tried one of the narrow streets of the old city; there was a line of antifas with black clothing and sun glasses. They have even dared to place one of those plastic red-white stripes in front of them. I told one of them that I wanted to cross, they say no way. One of them spoke Spanish, and I ask her whether she was any authority, she confirmed it “we are the authority”.
A line of anti-riot police agents was only two meters behind them. I can not find a better image of the creeping Eurabian fascism: The police not only do not confront them, they cover their backs. Alternatively, we may think that the antifa-lefty militants are just the stormtroupers (Sturmabteilung?) of the formal police. They have even an excuse: the demo was officially cancelled “after leftist opponents of the rally clashed with its right-wing backers”, says Reuters. Curiously those responsible for the violence could demonstrate and control the streets with police complacency.
[...]
Conclusions: The German political class succeeded in cracking the demo. The economic cost of the operation has been significant.
The political impact of the demo can only be confirmed in the next city elections. We will have to keep an eye to the immediate reactions in the following days.
The organisers were not able to hold the congress; we were not able to join the rally, but this is not important. We already know what any possible speech about the Islamización of Europe could say. That should not be our purpose, but to have an impact on the media. And we have had it, as never before. We should thank the counter demonstrants for that, without them, we would not have managed. But this cannot be a one-off event.
Read the rest at La Yijad en Eurabia
.
