Germans Attack Music

The German police cracked down on music that did not fit with the official politics of the country today in a confiscation of over 45,000 CDs. No, this isn’t the ’30s all over again, with the Nazis destroying the art and music they didn’t like because it was un-German – it’s the current German government taking down far-right music because it doesn’t like the music’s message. The crack down, in which 800 police officers raided 224 houses and apartments around the country, targeted 204 people, all of them between the ages of 21 and 45, who the government accuses of illegally distributing the anti-Semitic and xenophobic music. 170 computers were seized in the raids.

Producing and selling right-wing music that promotes extremism or racial hatred is illegal in Germany, which is still trying to cover up its Nazi past with laws against Nazism now. The prosecutor who ordered the seizures, Siegfried Mahler, has said that raiding the music scene was important because the CDs are used to recruit youths and raise money for far-right groups.

It’s so German that the best way the country has found to deal with a horrible police state that made so many people and their views illegal is to make the people who hold those views illegal. Banning the sale of the music and confiscating the CDs will not solve the problem of far-right extremism, which will probably become even more of an issue across Europe (the same Europe that criticizes the US for so many of the problems it has with regards to civil rights and extremism) with the financial crisis. The Germans need to find a more constructive way of dealing with these people, who have a right to their politics no matter how horrible they may be.

What do you think of the music Holocaust? Do you see ANY justification behind their actions?

Source: AP