Flirting with Hitler
Gothic is a way of dressing, a taste in music, a style. But in Germany - at the extreme fringes - it has also become the point at which neo-Nazism and Satanism meet
John Hooper
The Guardian, Saturday 16 November 2002
The prosecutor called it "a picture of cruelty and depravity such as I have never, ever seen". He was describing the scene left behind when Daniel and Manuela Ruda fled from their home in the west German town of Witten in July last year after murdering their friend, Frank Hackert. When police broke in three days later, on July 9, they found a poster of hanged women in the bathroom and a collection of human skulls in the living room. There was a coffin in which 23-year-old Manuela sometimes slept. Blood-stained scalpels were scattered around the house. And then there was Hackert's corpse. He had been stabbed 66 times. A scalpel was lodged in his stomach and a pentagram cut into his skin. Nearby was a list of names. Police believe that they were those of the people the couple intended to kill next.
The Rudas' trial in January provided a stream of outlandish and gruesome details. Much of the focus was on Manuela, who shrank from sunlight and had had two of her teeth replaced with animal fangs to look more like a vampire. She said her initiation into the world of Satanism had taken place at a Gothic club in Islington, London, where she claimed to have met real vampires. "We drank the blood of living people," she told police. On January 31, she was sentenced to 13 years in a secure mental facility, while Daniel was sentenced to 15 years.
While public attention tended to dwell on the way in which Manuela had given life to her sinister fantasies, a more chilling aspect of the case went largely unnoticed: the links between the Rudas and the neo-Nazi movement, links that hint at a much broader - and growing - overlap in Germany between the far right and the broad range of occult and esoteric movements that nowadays go by the generic name of "Gothic" or "Dark Wave".
Among the witnesses at the trial was 28-year-old Frank Lewa. He testified that he had first met Daniel Ruda on the local far right/skinhead scene. Daniel's involvement was more than casual. The regional newspaper, the Rheinische Post, discovered that at the 1998 general election campaign in Germany, Daniel had canvassed for the National-Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a far right party that the government has since tried to outlaw (the matter is currently before the Constitutional Court).
On the witness stand, Lewa said that after the election Daniel drifted out of the skinhead world and into the Gothic scene. He began listening to "black metal" music, a variant of heavy metal, and at one time played in a band called the Bloodsucking Freaks. It was through a black metal fanzine, in fact, that he met Manuela, after placing an ad that read: "Black-haired vampire seeks princess of darkness who despises everything and everybody and has bidden farewell to life."
Daniel, 26, broke contact with Lewa after a row at a party. Lewa told the court that he had received a letter from his erstwhile friend in July, a few days before the Rudas killed Hackert. In it, Daniel called Lewa a Judas and enclosed a photograph of himself, covered in blood and apparently hanging from hooks in the ceiling. He was pointing two gas pistols at the camera.
When the police finally caught up with Daniel and his wife, on July 12 2001, they were in the east German city of Jena, having previously visited two nearby towns, Sonderhausen and Apold.
The significance of these details would be lost on most Germans, and it appears not to have been remarked upon at the trial. Nevertheless, it would have meant a very great deal to anyone who had studied what has become known as "the case of Satan's Children", in which three schoolboys who lived near Jena were convicted in 1994 of the ritual black magic killing of a classmate.
One of the boys, 16-year-old Hendrik Möbus from Sonderhausen, formed a band while in a juvenile detention centre. Among the tracks on a CD they produced was one called Zyklon B, after the gas used in the Auschwitz gas chambers. Not long after Möbus's release on probation in 1998, he began violating the terms of his parole, roaring out "Sieg Heil" from among the audience at a concert, and attempting to justify the murder for which he had been sentenced on political grounds. "I don't know whether, in the Nazi era, one would have been convicted if one had rendered race vermin harmless," he was quoted as saying.
Germany has legislation making both Holocaust denial and the use of symbols from the Third Reich criminal offences. In 1999, faced with the prospect of another spell in jail for contravening these laws (and thereby breaking the terms of his parole), Möbus fled to the US, where he applied unsuccessfully for political asylum. He is now back behind bars in Germany. His brother, who lives in Apold, runs a black metal label, Darker Than Black.
In the days that followed the murder of Frank Hackert, the Rudas embarked on a kind of pilgrimage to places that in their minds linked the far right and the occult - to Jena, Sonderhausen and Apold. It is possible they planned to do more than visit: on the death list police discovered in the Rudas' flat was the name of the mother of the boy whom Hendrik Möbus and his friends had murdered seven years earlier.
Links between Nazism and esoteric and occult movements are nothing new. Hitler, rejecting Christianity, embraced instead the paganism of the early Germanic tribes. Their beliefs, both real and imagined, offered a basis on which any number of sinister concepts could be superimposed. The process reached its apogee at Schloss Wewelsburg, near the town of Paderborn. Though the present-day castle dates from the late 16th century, records suggest that there has been a fortress on the site since the days of the Huns, more than a thousand years earlier. The surrounding landscape is wooded, often misty, and interspersed with giant, weirdly-shaped rocks. The castle and its environs were ideally suited to the purpose for which Heinrich Himmler rented them in 1934 - that of providing the officers of his elite corps, the SS, with an education in the supposed pagan mysteries underpinning National Socialism.
Though it does not make much of an impact at election time, the far right remains a disturbing undercurrent in German life: sufficiently disturbing for the federal government to have launched an all-out drive against the neo-Nazi fringe two years ago (including the attempt to ban the NPD). "The problem with the far right in Germany is not that its members are particularly numerous, but that they are readier than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe to resort to violence," said a senior intelligence officer who asked not to be named. That point was driven home by a string of savage attacks in early 2000, culminating in the beating to death of a Mozambique-born German citizen in Dessau.
The far right is especially pervasive in the formerly communist east where unemployment is high and where, after the war, there was not the same painful reckoning with the past as in the west. Despite - or perhaps because of - the fact that there are fewer immigrants in the former GDR, surveys also show that racist attitudes are more prevalent there than in the cosmopolitan west.
One possible reason why the degree of support for the far right does not show up in election results is that the most extreme rightwingers will have nothing to do with the democratic process and abstain. This is particularly true of those connected with the so-called Kameradschaften which form a network of mutually independent, neo-Nazi secret societies. Each may have no more than 10 or 15 members, but around them is a wider circle of associates and sympathisers. Indeed, the secretive and hierarchical world of the German far right mirrors that of many occult communities.
On several occasions since the fall of the Third Reich, evidence has surfaced of connections between the far right and Satanism. As in the cases of Hendrik Möbus and Daniel Ruda, however, they have been limited to individuals or, at most, small groups. But in the past five years, an entirely new phenomenon has developed: a mass youth culture in which neo-Nazi ideas and symbols have merged with the Gothic scene.
This movement can be traced back to 1993, when Roland Bubik, widely regarded as the leading thinker of the German extreme right, wrote a seminal article for the magazine Junge Freiheit. Entitled "Culture as a question of power", it argued that "new possibilities for influencing people are arising in the area of communications networks. In particular, the entertainment industry... has an immense influence that until now has gone unremarked." Within a couple of years, Bubik's partner, Simone Satzger, was stating as fact, in a collection of essays edited by Bubik, that the far right's strategy was "to open up contemporary cultural and political phenomena to use them for our own purposes".
Since the mid-1990s, Germany's neo-Nazis have attempted to penetrate several youth scenes, including techno, but it is with Goths that they have had their greatest success. The Gothic movement may be on the wane in Britain and many other countries around Europe, but in Germany, where its adherents are known as Gruftis (from the German word for "crypt"), they constitute a vast group. It is particularly strong in the former GDR. East Germans are still reeling from the fall of communism, and the young in particular seem to be searching for new values to fill the gap left by a creed that was as much a religion as an ideology.
"The concentration of Goths in Germany is much higher than in other European countries," says Stephan Tschendal, who edits an online Gothic magazine. He estimates that between 5% and 7% of all young Germans between the ages of 12 and 25 are Goths, an overall population of at least 650,000. Many of them are doing no more than making a fashion statement, or registering a protest against the drabness and conformity of modern adult life. Devil-worshippers exist only on the extremist fringe. But in two specific areas of the Gothic scene - the areas in which the neo-Nazis have had the greatest success in infiltrating their ideas - Germany's intelligence officers believe there is genuine cause for concern. One of these is "neo-folk"; the other is black metal, the dark variant of heavy metal that so appealed to Daniel Ruda.
In a darkened hall in the centre of Leipzig, blue lights play on the smoke billowing out from under a stage where Darkwood, a three-piece neo-folk band, play placid, lilting, slightly weird music. The band's gig forms part of an annual, three-day Gothic festival, which this year attracted some 17,000 people from all over Europe to Leipzig. Churches in the city that had been asked to host concerts refused to do so, citing the risk that Satanists could assemble on consecrated ground.
About half the crowd at the gig are typical Goths, but the rest look as if they have wandered in from a Nuremberg rally. There are men wearing high, heavy boots and black military-style shirts and trousers. There are women, also wearing boots, with calf-length skirts and white shirts with a symbol on the right arm that resembles a badge of rank. Everywhere, there are leather cross-straps, forage caps and 1930s-style shorts.
As its name implies, neo-folk draws on the musical heritage of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other protest singers of the 1960s and 1970s. Some German groups dig further back into the past, updating and reworking traditional folk tunes. The acoustic guitar is central to its music, which also features flutes, cellos and violins. Yet neo-folk is anything but folksy. Punk has had an influence on its evolution and much of the music could be described as industrial. Unusually extensive percussion sets are typical of the genre. Another characteristic is that gentle melody-making can all of a sudden give way to something much more visceral: the lead singer of Darkwood seized hold of a pair of heavy drumsticks and beat out an intimidating tattoo on a bass drum. It was like Japanese Kodo drumming, but with the rhythms of a Prussian parade ground. The drumming rose in a crescendo, then ended as abruptly as it had begun, prompting the loudest cheers of the night.
The Leipzig festival was launched in 1991, soon after German reunification, and has helped turn the city into the Gothic capital of Europe. Like neo-Nazis, Goths are drawn to its Volkerschlachtdenkmal, one of the strangest and most intimidating monuments to be found anywhere in Europe. A vast, stepped pyramid towering over a lake on the wooded fringes of the city, it resembles a Mayan temple. The Volkerschlachtdenkmal was inaugurated in 1913 to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig 100 years earlier. But since German reunification, it has become a favoured rallying point for the far right.
The pivotal figure on Leipzig's neo-folk scene is a 29-year-old DJ who goes by the name of Mortanius. He denies that neo-folk has anything to do with extreme-right politics. "These groups use language and symbols both from the Nazi era and the days of the GDR to provoke people, to get people to think - think about their past," he told me. "People from the far right scene don't feel comfortable in this environment. We never see skinheads at our gigs or in our clubs. On the contrary, we have problems with them. I won't say you don't see people from the extreme right or that they aren't trying to infiltrate. The attempt is certainly there. But it is doomed to fail because people can think for themselves. We have a generally left-leaning audience."
Less than an hour after meeting Mortanius, I found myself in a shabby room with four Goths, three young men and a woman, who had agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity. One of the men had a partly shaven head and a pigtail, and was wearing a black shirt, camouflage trousers, military boots and a symbol dangling on his chest that managed to combine a Celtic cross, a human skull, an eagle's wings, two entwined snakes and a pentagram. His girlfriend had a spiked collar around her neck and a dog's lead dangling between her breasts. At one point, we fell to discussing what he called "youth Satanism". "It starts with the moving glass and then they go on to animal sacrifice," he said nonchalantly, and apparently knowledgeably.
When I read out Mortanius's description of the local neo-folk scene and its lack of connection to the far right, all four burst into incredulous laughter.
Solveig Prass, the Leipzig social worker who had set up our meeting, asked me if Mortanius had been wearing any badges when I met him; had I noticed that one of them was the so-called "Black Sun"? A pagan fertility symbol, the Black Sun is known to have been used by the Alemans, a third-century Germanic tribe. Each of its 12 "rays" is the rune meaning "sun". According to Dr Rudiger Sunner, author of a recent book on Nazism and its use of myth, the Black Sun is "definitely a sign of the SS". Himmler fashioned the SS emblem from one of the Black Sun's 12 jagged "rays", and a large Black Sun was set into the floor of the Obergruppenführer's Hall in Schloss Wewelsburg, immediately above the crypt.
Mortanius was in fact wearing three badges, including the pagan Black Sun: he argues that "our symbols... don't really have anything to do with the Third Reich".
How close, really, are the links between Gothic - or, specifically, neo-folk - culture and the German far right? Unquestionably, there is an element of sheer, apolitical mischief: it is not easy for the sons and daughters of the generation of 1968 to find a way of shocking their parents, but dressing up in vaguely neo-Nazi garb should do the trick. "I want to stand out from the crowd of normal Dark Wave folk," Mortanius told me. "I don't want to be an ordinary Goth in the street. I want to provoke people."
The organisation charged with protecting Germany from a Nazi revival is the Verfassungsschutz, a body roughly equivalent to Britain's MI5. Reinhard Boos is its director in Saxony, the state in which Leipzig lies, and so has a special interest in gauging the threat posed by far right penetration of the Gothic scene. When I visit him in his office in a leafy Dresden suburb, he produces a couple of CD covers and lays them on his desk. One is an album by the British band Death In June, which shows four dogs' heads arranged at right angles. Half-close your eyes and they become a swastika. The other CD is by the Austrian band Der Blutharsch. Tip it, and a shiny patch on the inside cover becomes a triangle containing the jagged ray of... what? The SS symbol? Or the sun rune? Is this merely provocation, or evidence of a link between extremist politics and neo-folk music?
"I think the truth is in between," says Boos. "The Gothic scene is not to be confused with rightwing extremism. But there are some groups that use symbols which refer to rightwing extremism and they do it mainly for provocation. Very, very few of them do it to support rightwing groups. On the other hand, the rightwing extremists know that there are people who can be useful to them, so some of them try to win them over for their own aims. It is not a plan by a few [people] that is carried out in a clear, structured way. Those who think it is a good idea do so of their own accord."
"Things are not going well for the far right," argues Wolfgang Hund, an educational scientist and the author of several books on the occult. "They are under pressure from all sides and they are looking for allies... They are looking for foot soldiers in the ranks of disoriented youth - human raw material for any Pied Piper who comes along."
One of the young men I met in Leipzig was about as different from the far right stereotype as could be imagined. His jet-black hair was shaved away on one side of his head and hung lank down the other. He was wearing a black velvet tailcoat, a silver pentagram on a chain around his neck, five rings in one ear, and sunglasses. This apparently typical Goth was in the process of trying to free himself from the neo-Nazi scene.
"My first contact was through a member of the NPD," he said. "It was all very low key at first. We went to some concerts [of neo-Nazi bands] and I liked the music they played. Then I started getting flyers and leaflets. Eventually, I began to help distribute them." He decided to leave after a row over money ended in his being badly beaten.
Such cases notwithstanding, Boos believes that recruitment is not, in fact, the far right's primary aim. The threat posed by the infiltration of the Gothic scene is, he believes, subtler. "We take it seriously because it opens people's heads to extreme rightwing thought."
Solveig Prass and her colleagues in Leipzig, who talk regularly to DJs and others, have been keeping a running estimate of how much of the Goth scene is under the influence of the far right."The link was first noticed in the mid-1990s. At that time, it was estimated that the overlap was about 5%. Two years ago, we put it at 7-8%. Now, our estimate is 9%." Alfred Schobert, a lecturer at the Duisberg Institute of Language and Social Research, took a similar view in his 1998 academic investigation into the infiltration of the Gothic scene by the far right. "It is not about recruiting in the short term. It is about [producing] an overall reversal that picks up on and distorts the prevailing mood."
Through the Gothic scene, the far right can obtain access to the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people throughout Europe. If they can be taught to accept certain beliefs and symbols as normal, then the extreme right will have made significant progress towards achieving what Schobert argues is a key, medium-term goal: "The removal of the taboos that attach to Nazi symbols and racist-nationalist ideology".
· Additional research by Beate Steinhorst
Friday 24 September 2010
Sunday 25 April 2010
On-line Con-line
This weekend I came across an article in The Sunday Times by Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson in which Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the internet, discussed the nature of the beast he has created.
Amongst various other subjects he touched on he said
“Most people have several groups of friends. But the web allows you to be part of a group that is not geographically close — you can talk to somebody in a tiny village on the other side of the world, where they have a different culture, and find you have something in common. I think that’s a good thing, it promotes human understanding, it encourages world peace.”
“Too many people forget that just because you can read anything it doesn’t mean you have to read everything,” Sir Tim says. “The web is one great big system of peer review, we are all acting as part of a big web of humanity all working collectively on the task of figuring out which pages are good to read.”
“The web is a very powerful tool and it can be used for good or evil. Nuclear power can be used to make a nuclear bomb.”
“I don’t feel responsible for the fact that terrorists as well as doctors use the world wide web because the world has terrorists as well as doctors. It’s not the role of the web to make a world in which there are doctors but not terrorists. That’s the role of armies and governments and parliaments and judges.”
“It has changed politics,” says Sir Tim. “It definitely had an effect on the way the Obama election worked. The individual is empowered, the electorate is informed. The web is a place where people can be held accountable for what they’ve said. “I think in China and Iran there is wide understanding that there is limited information coming online. Obviously I think the internet is much better when it’s not censored.”
This rather long preamble leads me on to my own personal experience.
Recently an elderly couple of my acquaintance, very new to the on-line world, forwarded me an email they had in turn been forwarded by an erstwhile “electronic pen-friend” geographically continents away. The communication was under the heading:
“Islam Explained in Layman’s Terms”
It stated that is was adapted from book by a Dr. Peter Hammond, entitled ”Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat”.
At a quick glance some of the phrases that jumped out at me confirmed what the title suggested; that this was a piece of viciously anti-Islamic rhetoric. Here are a few random examples:
“Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.”
“Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.”
“…they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.”
“…expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim.”
“For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply.”
These quotes are interspersed between statistics stating percentages of Muslim populations in countries globally, qualified by statements of this nature:
“When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections… “
In the email the quotations from the book end here and are followed by a series of comments by the initiator of the original missive, who I presume is an American, given the references to Obama and his election last year. See below:
“Well, boys and girls, today we are letting the fox guard the henhouse. The wolves will be herding the sheep!”
“Obama appoints two devout Muslims to Homeland Security posts. Doesn’t this make you feel safer already?”
“Obama and Janet Napolitano appoint Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development.”
“DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).”
“NOTE: Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant…? Just wondering… “
“Devout Muslims being appointed to critical Homeland Security positions?”
“Doesn’t this make you feel safer already??”
“Was it not “Devout Muslim men” who flew planes into U.S. buildings 8 years ago?”
“Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 13 at Fort Hood?”
“Please forward this important information to any who care about the future of our respective countries.”
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.. – Thomas Jefferson.
Thus ended the email with a quote from a man who claimed to be an abolitionist but is quoted as saying that black people were inferior to white people “in the endowments both of body and mind.”
Pointedly I repeat one line:
“Please forward this important information to any who care about the future of our respective countries…”
Being a curious type I investigated a bit further by Googling a phrase in the text, only to find that the excerpt plus comments had been forwarded around the world at least 4,410 times.
One of the top listed links was for an organisation called “Stormfront”. The email above was printed in full, with a few small amendments.
Here are some of the responses to the posting on the Stormfront site:
“Muslims in our country, hiding cowardly from the jews, whinging about “racism”, committing crime, making public anouncements that women in short skirts should be raped and not apologising, taking drugs and contributing to the degeneracy of our culture = SCUM OF THE EARTH”
“Sydney is already experiencing the effects of +5%. According to the 2006 census 3.9% of Sydney’s population is Muslim. I don’t know what the situation is like in other cities, those who feel that Muslims are just a peace loving minority are kidding themselves.”
“Islam is far from peace loving in Australia. Gang rapes for example.”
“This is why we need to fight against anything in Australia to do with Islam. Turn up to Muslim Mosques / Muslim School protests. Let your voices be heard.”
“My father always told me as a child “don’t trust them bloody towel heads” and the proof is in the puddin.”
“Apparently Islam started as a reformation against excessive “taxation” and government oppression in the Arabian world. Kind of like Jewry it thrives on been “oppressed” and seeking “justice” for its followers.”
Reading through these vile racist comments I Googled “Stormfront”. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the site:
Early history
“Stormfront is a white nationalist and supremacist neo-Nazi Internet forum that has been described as the Internet’s first major hate site.
Stormfront began in 1990 as an online bulletin board for white nationalist activist David Duke’s campaign for United States Senator of Louisiana. The name “Stormfront” was chosen for its connotations of a political or militant front and an analogy with weather fronts that invokes the idea of a tumultuous storm ending in cleansing. It was opened to the public in 1994, and the Stormfront.org website was founded in 1995, becoming the first website associated with white supremacy.”
What is missed in this particular quote is
A. Stormfront equates more accurately to “Blitzkrieg” (Lightning war)
B. Nick Griffin, in his notorious recent appearance on BBC politics program Question Time referred to Duke as follows:
“I’ve shared a platform with David Duke, who once was the leader of a Ku Klux Klan, and always a totally non-violent one…”
So – to Dr Peter Hammond himself. Who is he? A further on-line search took me to a site run by an American evangelist called Jay Rogers, whose recent posts include “Puritan Storm Rising”, “Abortion: The Religion of Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice”, “Occult Roots of Abortion” and bizarrely “Is “Nero” in the new Star Trek movie an intentional Christian allegory?”. On his site Rogers describes meeting Hammond:
“I had a couple of dynamic spiritual experiences this week. The first was meeting Dr. Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship, South Africa. Dr. Hammond is a personal “hero” of mine and is doing more to promote true Revival than anyone I can think of. He spoke of his mission’s work in Africa – the vision is no less than “All of Africa for Christ.” Hammond understands that Revival isn’t simply life-changing on a personal and pietistic level, but nation-changing and world-changing as well.”
Rogers has also posted a “ten commandments” style list of esoteric thoughts on what Hammond describes as “neo-Puritanism”, most of which is very dull reading, but points nine and ten read as follows:
“9. Frontline Fellowship’s vision is the transformation of all of Africa and the world. Neo-Puritanism is having an impact in these nations from children in home schools and church schools to the highest levels of government where presidents and high ranking officials are being impacted with world changing Gospel teaching.
10. We need to elect politicians with the backbone of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who stood up to communism, not to appease anti-Christian tyranny, but to defeat it. Our attitude toward militant Islam should not be a “turn-the-other-cheek-pacifism.” Military action by African Christians in defense against Islam is not only permissible from a New Testament perspective, but mandated to defend the faith. There could even come a time in America when Christians may have to take up arms against invasive regimes, false religions and an oppressive government in our own land.”
In response there is a posting from “Anonymous commenting and asking: …Awesome, I want to link to this in facebook, how do I?, and Rogers passes on the link to him.
A quick search reveals that the “ten commandments of Dr Hammond” has registered at least 2,740 hits on Google.
A further search brought me to a site called Iviews.com, who quote Dr Hammond thus:
“In spite of the odds, the Christians [of Sudan] are ‘doing something’ about their situation, they are standing up against the evil of Islam. . . not only fighting for survival, but fighting to win back that nation for Christ.” – Derek Hammond, missionary affiliated with South African pro-apartheid group, Frontline Fellowship
It should be noted that Hammond refers here to the Christian Sudan Peoples Liberation Army – The SPLA claims to be defending the population of South Sudan from Khartoum’s army and from Islamization. “Though its members claim to be ‘Christians’ resisting Islamization, they have behaved like an occupying army, killing, raping and pillaging,” wrote the New York Times.
For clarity I should include Iviews.com’s ‘Mission’:
“Iviews.com is an interactive publication that focuses upon providing timely reporting and insightful analysis and commentary on issues and events of importance to Muslims. While the publication is written from a Muslim perspective, its focus is not religious. Rather, iViews.com simply strives to add balance and objectivity to an otherwise homogenous media pool. Through expanded news coverage of the Muslim world, in depth analysis of world, national and local issues and enlightened intellectual perspectives, iViews.com works to bring to the fore, issues that might have received only cursory attention from typical media sources.”
An article entitled “Christian ‘Slave Redeemers’ Linked to Pro-Apartheid Militants” by Ishmael Royer states:
“Christian “slave redeemers” who are allied with Sudanese rebels have close links to militant South African missionary groups with ties to the former apartheid government of South Africa.”
It goes on:
“In Touch Mission International (ITMI) is a Christian missionary group based in Tempe, Arizona. It is the American arm of the South Africa-based ultra-right missionary group Frontline Fellowship. Frontline Fellowship activists have made dozens of trips to South Sudan, where they say they “smuggle Bibles” to Christian Sudanese… The chairman of Frontline Fellowship is Peter Hammond, a former South African army sniper and intelligence officer. Hammond, the son-in-law of ITMI president Bill Bathman, formed Frontline Fellowship on a South African military base in Namibia, drawing on ex-Rhodesian commando units for members. Frontline Fellowship literature called the South African army under apartheid a “missionary force” which must be supported.”
So, with a little investigation, the real purpose of posting sections of Peter Hammonds book, (and disseminating it widely via the net) is revealed. The old saying “don’t believe everything you read” rings very true. Agendas can be lightly disguised from the casual reader, as in this case, where political and religious extremism spread hatred, lies and manipulated truths about the religion of Islam. In case anyone disputes the validity of Iview’s sources, I quote the bibliography of their article below, and advise you to go and read it at Iviews.com (Article Ref: IV9912-755) – dated 21/12/1999.
1. Time, December 21, 1998 pg. 44
2. On one trip in January of this year Wiebalck was accompanied by SPLA Executive Council Member Arthur Akuien Chol, John Garang’s minister of finance and economic planning. See The Indian Ocean Newsletter, April 26, 1997
3. United Press International October 30, 1989
4. Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), September 23, 1999. The document referred to was reproduced in: Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg) September 19, 1997
5. Financial Times (London), September 8, 1986
6. Time, March 28, 1988; also, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) March 19, 1988
7. Chicago Sun-Times 12/11/1987
8. The Indian Ocean Newsletter, November 27, 1999
9. Ibid.
10. Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), September 23, 1999
11. The Arizona Republic, 10/29/1989 Page A14
12. Mail and Guardian, September 23, 1999
13. Africa News, November, 1989
14. Mail and Guardian, September 23, 1999
15. Africa News, November, 1989
16. For example: “Militia Leaders Propose Solution to End Montana Standoff,” PR Newswire, May 23, 1996
17. The Nation , 9/26/88, Pg. 228
And talking of newspapers two last views of Peter Hammond:
“If you believe Christ wants a holy war to preserve apartheid, the Reverend Peter Hammond is your general, his Frontline Fellowship your army,” wrote the National Catholic Reporter in 1989.
And from:
Independent On-Line
“Paintball Pastor’ Arrested After Kids Shot” by Johan Shchronen, November 30th 2005
Controversial pro-gun lobbyist and missionary Peter Hammond is facing criminal charges after allegedly shooting children with a paint gun in a bizarre Halloween trick or treat game. The Reverend Hammond, head of the Peninsula-based Frontline Fellowship, was arrested after surrendering to police in Pinelands. At least four children allege they were hit by paintballs in Rosebank and Pinelands on the evening of October 31.
Hammond faces charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and is due to appear in the Goodwood magistrate’s court on December 20. ‘I was shot off my feet and fell on the ground’Pinelands police said he had allegedly driven around Pinelands, Rondebosch and Rosebank with his three young children in the back of his car, calling costumed youngsters over then firing paintballs. One boy was shot in the face. Private detectives of PM Reynolds and Associates, hired by the father of one victim to probe the attacks, have taken statements from boys aged between 10 and 12, who were apparently lured to Hammond’s car that night and shot with a paint gun. Investigator Neville Bishop said Pinelands police had received a barrage of phone calls after news about the paintball attacks first surfaced but no statements or personal details of callers had been taken.
“There is a common thread in all my statements. The victims were all out on the streets dressed in Halloween costumes having fun when a car pulled up and they were lured closer by the driver shouting ‘Trick or treat’,” Bishop said.
“In two of the cases I’m still trying to establish which occupant in the car actually shot the children.
“The victim in the Pinelands attack, Marcus van der Oever, 12, who was shot at point-blank range in the face, so far has produced the most detailed account.”
Marcus said: “I was walking with a friend in Broad Walk, wearing our costumes. It was getting dark, so we were going home.
“A car pulled up, driven by a man who had children with him in the front and in the back.
“The man shouted ‘Trick or treat’ and I can’t remember what I said. Then the boy next to him lifted a paintgun and shot me in the face.
“I was shot off my feet and fell on the ground. The paint ball sprayed pink dye over me and my face was burning.
“The man laughed and pulled away,” Marcus said. Shocked and in pain, he stumbled home with his friend as his face started to swell. Marcus’s father, Thomas van der Oever, said his son had looked as if he had been kicked in the face.
“Marcus is lucky not to have lost an eye. His skin burst where the paintball hit him on the chin. It is so dangerous shooting someone in the face with a paintball gun at point-blank range.” Bishop said the first of two reports of paintball shootings came at dusk in Firth Street, Rosebank. “Two boys from Sybrand Park had been playing trick or treat and were waiting for sweets at the gate of a house when they were shot. One boy took three paintballs and his friend one.
“Further up the road another boy was shot once.
“Then Marcus was attacked in Pinelands,” Bishop said. Van der Oever said he was appalled that a “man from the ministry” would behave in such a way, especially when he had his children with him. Efforts to reach Hammond for comment were unsuccessful.”
Dr Peter Hammond. What a guy!
I post this blog not because I am pro or anti any religion, and neither would I support censorship, rather I seek to point out that taking any information on-line at face value is extremely dangerous, as this little bit of research into a piece of propaganda clearly illustrates.
Amongst various other subjects he touched on he said
“Most people have several groups of friends. But the web allows you to be part of a group that is not geographically close — you can talk to somebody in a tiny village on the other side of the world, where they have a different culture, and find you have something in common. I think that’s a good thing, it promotes human understanding, it encourages world peace.”
“Too many people forget that just because you can read anything it doesn’t mean you have to read everything,” Sir Tim says. “The web is one great big system of peer review, we are all acting as part of a big web of humanity all working collectively on the task of figuring out which pages are good to read.”
“The web is a very powerful tool and it can be used for good or evil. Nuclear power can be used to make a nuclear bomb.”
“I don’t feel responsible for the fact that terrorists as well as doctors use the world wide web because the world has terrorists as well as doctors. It’s not the role of the web to make a world in which there are doctors but not terrorists. That’s the role of armies and governments and parliaments and judges.”
“It has changed politics,” says Sir Tim. “It definitely had an effect on the way the Obama election worked. The individual is empowered, the electorate is informed. The web is a place where people can be held accountable for what they’ve said. “I think in China and Iran there is wide understanding that there is limited information coming online. Obviously I think the internet is much better when it’s not censored.”
This rather long preamble leads me on to my own personal experience.
Recently an elderly couple of my acquaintance, very new to the on-line world, forwarded me an email they had in turn been forwarded by an erstwhile “electronic pen-friend” geographically continents away. The communication was under the heading:
“Islam Explained in Layman’s Terms”
It stated that is was adapted from book by a Dr. Peter Hammond, entitled ”Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat”.
At a quick glance some of the phrases that jumped out at me confirmed what the title suggested; that this was a piece of viciously anti-Islamic rhetoric. Here are a few random examples:
“Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.”
“Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.”
“…they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.”
“…expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim.”
“For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply.”
These quotes are interspersed between statistics stating percentages of Muslim populations in countries globally, qualified by statements of this nature:
“When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris, we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections… “
In the email the quotations from the book end here and are followed by a series of comments by the initiator of the original missive, who I presume is an American, given the references to Obama and his election last year. See below:
“Well, boys and girls, today we are letting the fox guard the henhouse. The wolves will be herding the sheep!”
“Obama appoints two devout Muslims to Homeland Security posts. Doesn’t this make you feel safer already?”
“Obama and Janet Napolitano appoint Arif Alikhan, a devout Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development.”
“DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano swore in Kareem Shora, a devout Muslim who was born in Damascus, Syria, as ADC National Executive Director as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).”
“NOTE: Has anyone ever heard a new government official being identified as a devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout Protestant…? Just wondering… “
“Devout Muslims being appointed to critical Homeland Security positions?”
“Doesn’t this make you feel safer already??”
“Was it not “Devout Muslim men” who flew planes into U.S. buildings 8 years ago?”
“Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 13 at Fort Hood?”
“Please forward this important information to any who care about the future of our respective countries.”
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.. – Thomas Jefferson.
Thus ended the email with a quote from a man who claimed to be an abolitionist but is quoted as saying that black people were inferior to white people “in the endowments both of body and mind.”
Pointedly I repeat one line:
“Please forward this important information to any who care about the future of our respective countries…”
Being a curious type I investigated a bit further by Googling a phrase in the text, only to find that the excerpt plus comments had been forwarded around the world at least 4,410 times.
One of the top listed links was for an organisation called “Stormfront”. The email above was printed in full, with a few small amendments.
Here are some of the responses to the posting on the Stormfront site:
“Muslims in our country, hiding cowardly from the jews, whinging about “racism”, committing crime, making public anouncements that women in short skirts should be raped and not apologising, taking drugs and contributing to the degeneracy of our culture = SCUM OF THE EARTH”
“Sydney is already experiencing the effects of +5%. According to the 2006 census 3.9% of Sydney’s population is Muslim. I don’t know what the situation is like in other cities, those who feel that Muslims are just a peace loving minority are kidding themselves.”
“Islam is far from peace loving in Australia. Gang rapes for example.”
“This is why we need to fight against anything in Australia to do with Islam. Turn up to Muslim Mosques / Muslim School protests. Let your voices be heard.”
“My father always told me as a child “don’t trust them bloody towel heads” and the proof is in the puddin.”
“Apparently Islam started as a reformation against excessive “taxation” and government oppression in the Arabian world. Kind of like Jewry it thrives on been “oppressed” and seeking “justice” for its followers.”
Reading through these vile racist comments I Googled “Stormfront”. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the site:
Early history
“Stormfront is a white nationalist and supremacist neo-Nazi Internet forum that has been described as the Internet’s first major hate site.
Stormfront began in 1990 as an online bulletin board for white nationalist activist David Duke’s campaign for United States Senator of Louisiana. The name “Stormfront” was chosen for its connotations of a political or militant front and an analogy with weather fronts that invokes the idea of a tumultuous storm ending in cleansing. It was opened to the public in 1994, and the Stormfront.org website was founded in 1995, becoming the first website associated with white supremacy.”
What is missed in this particular quote is
A. Stormfront equates more accurately to “Blitzkrieg” (Lightning war)
B. Nick Griffin, in his notorious recent appearance on BBC politics program Question Time referred to Duke as follows:
“I’ve shared a platform with David Duke, who once was the leader of a Ku Klux Klan, and always a totally non-violent one…”
So – to Dr Peter Hammond himself. Who is he? A further on-line search took me to a site run by an American evangelist called Jay Rogers, whose recent posts include “Puritan Storm Rising”, “Abortion: The Religion of Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice”, “Occult Roots of Abortion” and bizarrely “Is “Nero” in the new Star Trek movie an intentional Christian allegory?”. On his site Rogers describes meeting Hammond:
“I had a couple of dynamic spiritual experiences this week. The first was meeting Dr. Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship, South Africa. Dr. Hammond is a personal “hero” of mine and is doing more to promote true Revival than anyone I can think of. He spoke of his mission’s work in Africa – the vision is no less than “All of Africa for Christ.” Hammond understands that Revival isn’t simply life-changing on a personal and pietistic level, but nation-changing and world-changing as well.”
Rogers has also posted a “ten commandments” style list of esoteric thoughts on what Hammond describes as “neo-Puritanism”, most of which is very dull reading, but points nine and ten read as follows:
“9. Frontline Fellowship’s vision is the transformation of all of Africa and the world. Neo-Puritanism is having an impact in these nations from children in home schools and church schools to the highest levels of government where presidents and high ranking officials are being impacted with world changing Gospel teaching.
10. We need to elect politicians with the backbone of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who stood up to communism, not to appease anti-Christian tyranny, but to defeat it. Our attitude toward militant Islam should not be a “turn-the-other-cheek-pacifism.” Military action by African Christians in defense against Islam is not only permissible from a New Testament perspective, but mandated to defend the faith. There could even come a time in America when Christians may have to take up arms against invasive regimes, false religions and an oppressive government in our own land.”
In response there is a posting from “Anonymous commenting and asking: …Awesome, I want to link to this in facebook, how do I?, and Rogers passes on the link to him.
A quick search reveals that the “ten commandments of Dr Hammond” has registered at least 2,740 hits on Google.
A further search brought me to a site called Iviews.com, who quote Dr Hammond thus:
“In spite of the odds, the Christians [of Sudan] are ‘doing something’ about their situation, they are standing up against the evil of Islam. . . not only fighting for survival, but fighting to win back that nation for Christ.” – Derek Hammond, missionary affiliated with South African pro-apartheid group, Frontline Fellowship
It should be noted that Hammond refers here to the Christian Sudan Peoples Liberation Army – The SPLA claims to be defending the population of South Sudan from Khartoum’s army and from Islamization. “Though its members claim to be ‘Christians’ resisting Islamization, they have behaved like an occupying army, killing, raping and pillaging,” wrote the New York Times.
For clarity I should include Iviews.com’s ‘Mission’:
“Iviews.com is an interactive publication that focuses upon providing timely reporting and insightful analysis and commentary on issues and events of importance to Muslims. While the publication is written from a Muslim perspective, its focus is not religious. Rather, iViews.com simply strives to add balance and objectivity to an otherwise homogenous media pool. Through expanded news coverage of the Muslim world, in depth analysis of world, national and local issues and enlightened intellectual perspectives, iViews.com works to bring to the fore, issues that might have received only cursory attention from typical media sources.”
An article entitled “Christian ‘Slave Redeemers’ Linked to Pro-Apartheid Militants” by Ishmael Royer states:
“Christian “slave redeemers” who are allied with Sudanese rebels have close links to militant South African missionary groups with ties to the former apartheid government of South Africa.”
It goes on:
“In Touch Mission International (ITMI) is a Christian missionary group based in Tempe, Arizona. It is the American arm of the South Africa-based ultra-right missionary group Frontline Fellowship. Frontline Fellowship activists have made dozens of trips to South Sudan, where they say they “smuggle Bibles” to Christian Sudanese… The chairman of Frontline Fellowship is Peter Hammond, a former South African army sniper and intelligence officer. Hammond, the son-in-law of ITMI president Bill Bathman, formed Frontline Fellowship on a South African military base in Namibia, drawing on ex-Rhodesian commando units for members. Frontline Fellowship literature called the South African army under apartheid a “missionary force” which must be supported.”
So, with a little investigation, the real purpose of posting sections of Peter Hammonds book, (and disseminating it widely via the net) is revealed. The old saying “don’t believe everything you read” rings very true. Agendas can be lightly disguised from the casual reader, as in this case, where political and religious extremism spread hatred, lies and manipulated truths about the religion of Islam. In case anyone disputes the validity of Iview’s sources, I quote the bibliography of their article below, and advise you to go and read it at Iviews.com (Article Ref: IV9912-755) – dated 21/12/1999.
1. Time, December 21, 1998 pg. 44
2. On one trip in January of this year Wiebalck was accompanied by SPLA Executive Council Member Arthur Akuien Chol, John Garang’s minister of finance and economic planning. See The Indian Ocean Newsletter, April 26, 1997
3. United Press International October 30, 1989
4. Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), September 23, 1999. The document referred to was reproduced in: Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg) September 19, 1997
5. Financial Times (London), September 8, 1986
6. Time, March 28, 1988; also, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) March 19, 1988
7. Chicago Sun-Times 12/11/1987
8. The Indian Ocean Newsletter, November 27, 1999
9. Ibid.
10. Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg), September 23, 1999
11. The Arizona Republic, 10/29/1989 Page A14
12. Mail and Guardian, September 23, 1999
13. Africa News, November, 1989
14. Mail and Guardian, September 23, 1999
15. Africa News, November, 1989
16. For example: “Militia Leaders Propose Solution to End Montana Standoff,” PR Newswire, May 23, 1996
17. The Nation , 9/26/88, Pg. 228
And talking of newspapers two last views of Peter Hammond:
“If you believe Christ wants a holy war to preserve apartheid, the Reverend Peter Hammond is your general, his Frontline Fellowship your army,” wrote the National Catholic Reporter in 1989.
And from:
Independent On-Line
“Paintball Pastor’ Arrested After Kids Shot” by Johan Shchronen, November 30th 2005
Controversial pro-gun lobbyist and missionary Peter Hammond is facing criminal charges after allegedly shooting children with a paint gun in a bizarre Halloween trick or treat game. The Reverend Hammond, head of the Peninsula-based Frontline Fellowship, was arrested after surrendering to police in Pinelands. At least four children allege they were hit by paintballs in Rosebank and Pinelands on the evening of October 31.
Hammond faces charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and is due to appear in the Goodwood magistrate’s court on December 20. ‘I was shot off my feet and fell on the ground’Pinelands police said he had allegedly driven around Pinelands, Rondebosch and Rosebank with his three young children in the back of his car, calling costumed youngsters over then firing paintballs. One boy was shot in the face. Private detectives of PM Reynolds and Associates, hired by the father of one victim to probe the attacks, have taken statements from boys aged between 10 and 12, who were apparently lured to Hammond’s car that night and shot with a paint gun. Investigator Neville Bishop said Pinelands police had received a barrage of phone calls after news about the paintball attacks first surfaced but no statements or personal details of callers had been taken.
“There is a common thread in all my statements. The victims were all out on the streets dressed in Halloween costumes having fun when a car pulled up and they were lured closer by the driver shouting ‘Trick or treat’,” Bishop said.
“In two of the cases I’m still trying to establish which occupant in the car actually shot the children.
“The victim in the Pinelands attack, Marcus van der Oever, 12, who was shot at point-blank range in the face, so far has produced the most detailed account.”
Marcus said: “I was walking with a friend in Broad Walk, wearing our costumes. It was getting dark, so we were going home.
“A car pulled up, driven by a man who had children with him in the front and in the back.
“The man shouted ‘Trick or treat’ and I can’t remember what I said. Then the boy next to him lifted a paintgun and shot me in the face.
“I was shot off my feet and fell on the ground. The paint ball sprayed pink dye over me and my face was burning.
“The man laughed and pulled away,” Marcus said. Shocked and in pain, he stumbled home with his friend as his face started to swell. Marcus’s father, Thomas van der Oever, said his son had looked as if he had been kicked in the face.
“Marcus is lucky not to have lost an eye. His skin burst where the paintball hit him on the chin. It is so dangerous shooting someone in the face with a paintball gun at point-blank range.” Bishop said the first of two reports of paintball shootings came at dusk in Firth Street, Rosebank. “Two boys from Sybrand Park had been playing trick or treat and were waiting for sweets at the gate of a house when they were shot. One boy took three paintballs and his friend one.
“Further up the road another boy was shot once.
“Then Marcus was attacked in Pinelands,” Bishop said. Van der Oever said he was appalled that a “man from the ministry” would behave in such a way, especially when he had his children with him. Efforts to reach Hammond for comment were unsuccessful.”
Dr Peter Hammond. What a guy!
I post this blog not because I am pro or anti any religion, and neither would I support censorship, rather I seek to point out that taking any information on-line at face value is extremely dangerous, as this little bit of research into a piece of propaganda clearly illustrates.
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