Saturday, July 25, 2020

Neo-Nazis in Cape Breton

Yesterday I wrote to politicians to support the federal court ruling against the safe third countries clause that made it possible to return asylum seekers to places like the United States, which is so clearly no longer a safe third county, and to urge that our country do more to decrease the number of stories of refugee suffering on that front. 

 Today, I read in The Guardian, a report on an investigative article by Martin Doerry, a reporter and former deputy editor at Der Spiegel, about the efforts of German neo-nazis to establish a "colony" in Cape Breton. Links to these articles are below and you can get a translation of the one in Der Spiegel.  Refugees from an assortment of oppressions must wait long periods in Canada, many working hard in menial work - if indeed they got this far and are not in detention centres, COVID not withstanding – to find a safe refuge. Asylum seekers risking their lives again as temporary care-givers at Nova Scotia’s epi-centres during the worst of the pandemic, were quickly laid off without notice, and little hope that their efforts would be rewarded. 

Everything is connected.

How is it that rich white Germans with an agenda so seriously counter to Canadian values, can purchase property, and seek citizenship in Canada in order to create a community to diffuse their toxic ideology? What could be more a threat to Public Safety? My husband and I are of an age to be contemporary with, and have met, the children of pro-Nazi immigrants to Canada. Several thousand Nazi war criminals were allowed into Canada and hardly any were ever prosecuted or deported, something many have forgotten or never knew about at all.  I have many other creative activities I would rather be pursuing this on a Saturday afternoon, but my father was a WW2 Vet. He is not here to speak out on this.

From The Guardian article:
Martin Doerry…  spent two months researching the story after receiving a tip from a German national who has been living in Cape Breton for 20 years. The source told Doerry there is an increasing number of German-speaking right-wing extremists moving to Cape Breton. Doerry's research resulted in interviews with almost 30 people and brought him to three companies - Cape Breton Real Solutions, Wissensmanufaktur (Knowledge Manufacturer) and F.E. Property Sales all owned by German nationals who are known for their right-wing extremist views.

The very names of these companies is enough to evoke Third Reich rhetoric:   "Cape Breton Real Solutions" and "Knowledge Manufacturers."  
The website of  https://fe-propertysales.de/en  scarcely veils its toxic purpose.  For starters,  see how F.E. property owner, Frank Eckhardt,  introduces his scheme:

Liberty and self-determination through own initiative – your land in Cape-Breton-Island
One thing was clear to me, however: quality of life and realistically good prospects for the future are steadily and noticeably diminishing for us citizens in a Federal Republic and the European Union, which is determined by increasing control and madness of the authorities. Now you can watch or start actively changing something yourself..

From The Guardian

The RCMP investigated Eckhardt after he allegedly gave a client a storage disk full of Nazi material. This information was sent to Interpol in Ottawa who in turn sent it to Interpol Wiesbaden, but no charges were laid as the crime didn't happen on German soil. Doerry said Echhardt doesn't hide his sympathy for those who deny post Second World War Germany's political infrastructure.

 Another of the "influencers" behind this project, Eva Herman
"was fired from her job as a newscaster because of her right-wing views. Through her YouTube and Telechannel social media platforms, Herman talks about the COVID-19 pandemic being a hoax, warns about the invasion of Arab-African-Asian people and the "global vaccination alliance of Bill Gates and Angela Merkel."

 When I was in high school living in New York State, my parents, both Canadian WW2 Veterans, were kind and open enough to agree to host the sad daughter of a Nazi as an exchange student in our family. It was an eye-opener for her and us. She spent years dealing with an assortment of depressions, and neuroses, joining one self-help group after another. Her hatred of her father’s Nazi past haunted her. I felt compassion for her. I grasp the roots of facism. I grasp how it could attract when all you know lies in ruins – even, or especially, if your country contributed to its own ruin or suffered greatly from the abuses of Stalinism during and after WW2. It takes brave work to rise above our lesser angels, to seek different and better ways to create a civil societies. Heavens knows - we face many similar situations in today’s world and must be ever vigilant. Democracy, as most of us hope to see it, continues to be a "work in progress". 

 This German woman and I formed a long-time friendship, until a few years back, when she told me she has been saved. At first I thought, "Well, it wouldn't be my choice, but if it brings her some kind of peace, I can listen."  Then I discovered this meant she was afraid of many things, and had been lured into the neo-nazi camp in Germany under the guise of personal religious salvation in a fundamentalist form of Roman Catholicism, which some of my Catholic friends disparaged. "New converts are the worst", said one I respect greatly. This group was anti-gay, anti-immigration and a lot more anti’s. I sometimes thought my friend might have been denying some lesbian tendencies in herself. We had arguments on the phone. I spent a lot of time trying to compose what I hoped might be a persuasive letter to express my thoughts on the unwisdom of a "salvation" thus achieved, but before I could send it I learned she had died. Such efforts usually fall on deaf ears when dealing with “true believers” anyway. It is beyond my ken to know if she found the peace she was seeking. I have to work to control my own lesser angels, when they contemplate a hope she did not.

In a time of the global lock-down, it is easy to overlook such threats to Canadian security. While we are busy checking the backgrounds of refugees of many stripes, we must not forget to carry out similar diligence on rich white Europeans who, while they live in countries where some of their activities are rightfully viewed as unacceptable, or illegal face little worse than arrest for hate crimes. Certainly few will be fleeing environmental depredation, torture, real persecution, civil wars and human rights violations in their quest for lebensraum in Cape Breton. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/austrian-immigrants-cape-bretoon-1.5123091

This article on an Austrian couple’s involvement is of interest. They were certainly screwed by Eckhardt, but as the articles above indicate, while many Germans came over to hear the sales propaganda for land in Cape Breton, few people would be unware of the hidden agenda by the time they bought into it. It is mere speculation, on my part, but if so, why did this family go public with their immigration issues, hoping to raise sympathy for staying, and not "out" Eckhardt in the interview. I hope Canadian immigration will delve deeply before allowing them to return. 


New Reddit group     https://www.reddit.com/r/ANTIFAcb/





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