For those of you what can't do German, here's a version of my statement in English for the people who've known me for years and had a nasty surprise after looking me up on the internet. So you can get an idea of what I'm on about I've translated my original transcript to try and put a stop to the nasty rumours being written about me.
Please spare a couple of minutes to read this before you are influenced by any crap you read elsewhere. This comes from the horse's mouth as apposed to the anonymous sources who have published this crap.
I've always been against censorship and think it's great that anyone can have a public platform to air his views, as we have with the internet. But as I am now experiencing, the lack of any real research or an editor allows anyone to write anything about anyone or anything they like without a thought for the verity of what is written. Most people would probably say that they don't believe a lot of what they read on the internet but right now I'm finding out that this maxim is not neccesarily true.
Recently, an anonymous person, group, who knows, has posted lies about me on the internet. A (naturally anonymous) e-mail informed me of this. Without knowing me or anything about me it has been posted that I am a member of a neo-Nazi organisation. Unfortunately, thanks to this, my name is being dragged through the mud and, because many people believe any old rumour they hear, I feel very uncomfortable. So, in order to fight fire with fire, I have decided to start this blog to clear my name.
An internet site from a very right wing group in America was hacked into. My name was found as a user of the site and my personal details were published on the internet. The hackers decided to publish this list and, lo and behold, I am described as a member of this group. The hackers' identity will remain ANONYMOUS.
Fact: I am and was never a member of this or any other similar organisation. It is ridiculous to suggest this, as anyone who knows me also knows.
Why, then, am I on this list?
Curiosity killed the cat, and this cat ain't letting his reputation get killed.
I'd lived in my old town in Bavaria for 8 years before moving to my current location. Despite what many people think, most Germans tend to be very anti - Nazi and I had never met a fascho until I moved to a different part of the country. Suddenly I was confronted with people who felt no shame about openly showing their "colours". It was a shock for me, I wanted to find out more about the mentality, "uniforms", activities of these people (and their foreign counterparts, many of whom had been killed ny the Nazis) and looked at several relevant sites.
As a Brit I was surprised to learn that a day-to-day clothing company like Lonsdale is used in Germany as a code: despite anti - racism campaigns, Lonsdale is almost always associated with neo Nazis (due to the NSDA in the middle of the word - Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). If only they knew how many black British boxers have proudly worn the Lonsdale belt, or of British icon Paul Weller (who has at least 2 black children) who adapted the "Lonsdale London" logo to "Weller Woking" ; Fred Perry, because of the laurel leaf logo, is also popular. Do they actually know that Fred Perry was Jewish? Probably not.
Anyway, I'm digressing. Out of pure curiosity, before Youtube became ubiquitous, and after a couple of bottles of wine, I ordered a sampler CD from this site (which never arrived). Naive and stupid, but I simply wanted to hear what all the fuss was about. This was in 2007 (four years ago). If I'm honest, I found what I read interesting, in a morbid sense of the word. It was not my scene, nothing for me, but because it was alien to me, I found it interesting. I also like to find out things abou other scenes with which I feel no connection. (The problem is, you can watch "Louis Theroux with the Nazis", but if you want to be Louis....) The motto "he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it" was always there and I felt as if I had discovered a strange "race" of people who had either forgotten or ignored the past. But after a little research I had had enough of reading about these strange people who still believe that Germany '39 was a paradise. They obviously don't know how many people fled (or tried to) flee the Nazis, as I found out after coming to Germany.
After a couple of evenings over a couple of weeks my "research" was over. Apart from the levels of ignorance and/or hate shown by these people there were no surprises. It was still a scene with which I wanted nothing to do with.
And then I received the e-mail which informed me that I was now a "well known Nazi". And then the rumour Tsunami started.
Fortuntely all of my friends (and most people who know me) also know that it's a joke to describe me as being (politically) conservative. To describe me as being a Nazi is beyond a joke. The people who wrote this about me are people who have never met me. They have only seen that my IP address was on another site.
Good luck to them when they want to do something constructive, but I will not allow them to atack me when they know nothing about me.
Thank you for your time. I hope that you understand my problem.I don't feel a need to apologise as I have never had anything in common with the people with whom I have been connected with. I do understand that I could have done things differently. But I am a direct person and wanted to miss out the middle man. Which is what everyone who reads this has done: gone to the source and not the source of the rumours.
Ironically, because I stupidly ordered the "wrong" CD (in 2007!!!), a cursory glance at my record/CD collection would very quickly demonstrate that I am definitely not even close to approaching the right-wing scene (unless the faschos are into Funkadelic).
Short and sweet:
1) I am not, was never and will never be, either mentally or physically, a member of any right-wing, Nazi or facist organisation. I have and have never had anything to do with this scene.
2) I was/am definitely not right-wing.
3) I am against racism and all other forms of discrimination.
Now I have had my say. If you don't believe me you can go and fuck yourself. You obviously don't know me. My thanks to the "Anonymous" group who could do a good job: why don't you hack my computer? Then you would see that 2007 was a one-off!
And special thanks to all of my friends and people who know that I would never have anything to do with the Nazi pigs.
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