R.I.P. Michael McGeown - No Pasaran!
Derry City Ultras display for former player Michael McGeown who fought with the RAF in WW2 and was interned in various Nazi POW camps from 1942-1945. McGeown passed away in Belfast earlier this month at the age of 91.
Here are some pictures of an antifa action I took part in back in 2007, four years ago tomorrow.
The Nazis decided that they wanted to march through the Jewish quarter on the anniversary of Kristallnacht (tactful huh?) They had bussed in a bunch of their scum mates from Germany, the ‘das Vaterland’ neo nazi group – there were around 400 of them. Needless to say, we weren’t about to let that happen.
I had been following the shameful bureaucratic process that allowed this march to go ahead in the English language press – and it serves as a powerful example of the state’s dithering inability to do anything about these things. The city council had already ruled it illegal, but the scum took it to court and fuckin won (free speech? fuck off!), so as the council and the court argued among themselves hundreds of neo Nazis were already on busses on their way to spit in the face of the victims of the holocaust.
To give a bit of background about the significance of the Jewish quarter, it’s not a place where all the Jews live now – it’s the only area of Prague that Jews were allowed to live for hundreds of years. As ‘serfs’ of the king, they had no legal rights outside the Jewish Quarter, and if you saw a Jew anywhere else, it was legal to kill them. Central to the Jewish Quarter is the old synagogue and graveyard. Jews had to be buried on consecrated Jewish land, but they weren’t given anywhere else to bury their dead, so the graveyard is crowded with graves. The synagogue itself is inscribed all over the walls and ceiling with the names of all the Jews from Prague who were murdered in the holocaust. It’s one of the most emotionally powerful places I’ve ever been in my life.
The thought of nazi scum marching and sieg heiling straight past that place makes my fucking blood boil.
When we arrived at Starometska station, it was wall to wall riot cops. When we got up into the street, the first thing we noticed was all the Germans! God knows how many German antifascists had followed their scum countrymen to Prague but it seemed like there were German accents behind black masks everywhere you went. The Jewish quarter was packed full of antifascists, anarchists, normal citizen demonstrators, members of the Jewish community waving Israeli flags, and there was a huge police presence. It was very obvious that no Nazis would marching where they wanted to march today.
There were a few minor skirmishes by the Jewish quarter where I was, but nothing major, the police were down like a ton of bricks on any violence and large sections of the Nazis had apparently given up and were off trying to cause trouble elsewhere in the city. I learned later that German anarchists had been pulling up cobble stones and throwing them at cops in the old town, and that some smaller groups of the scum got jumped at the train station, by the university and on Vaclavske Namesti, here’s a video antifa prague made afterwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhC_PHNKDY8… So a victory all round – a good example of how when the courts and councils fail, people on the streets can succeed.
