Heh, so the people come from the countryside to live in a box and start voting SDP for the sheer joy of living in a box.

antti: why would somebody with a Nazi flag vote SDP?

Well, NSDP. I think I have a picture of the previous flats bathroom somewhere.

Well, given the 70′s apartment building, where that apartment was for sale, I find this Nazi flag on the wall somewhat ironic.

One political motivation for the 70′s places, like Merihaka or Koivukylä was that the hicks would move in, be happy for the indoor WC and vote SDP, like all the decent urban working people were supposed to do, instead of putting Nazi flag on the wall.

just above the baby cot as well, never too young to start brainwashing…..

The link went around already a few days ago, but now they took the offensive pic out.

This is a typical welfare-state phenomenom. (Phil forgot to mention this so I added it.)

Fasaaninpolku..? heh, I know that building..! It’s right off Sala-ampujankatu…

Pheasant Path right off Poacher Street… hmmm… the guys there had a warped sense of humor making street names

I have one of those rabbit cages. They’re not bad if you have a large balcony. And they’re constucted of solid masonry–not the carboard-like 2X4 and plastic siding construction that’s so common in the US. I’m relatively insulated from my neighbors and don’t have to worry about fires and such

However, with a private garage unit, I wouldn’t have to use my kitchen as a workshop for building/repair projects. Currently, half my kitchen is occupied by a large workbench and tool cabinets.

Unfortunately, it’s not common in Finland–at least not here in Espoo–to have an adjoining garage complex. That’s really the only thing that’s not planned well around here.

And NO, I don’t vote SPD

Oh Phil, no need to worry, I took a screencap

Here’s a screencap: http://cs.helsinki.fi/u/sairaksi/tmp/hkeskus.jpg

They have changed the photos again from just an hour ago as now the apartment is completely empty.

I dunno, maybe he belongs to the SS Viking Division?

http://stonebooks.com/archives/980218.shtml

http://www.avalanchepress.com/SSViking.php

Did anyone take a screenshot?

Here’s a screencap: http://cs.helsinki.fi/u/sairaksi/tmp/hkeskus.jpg

Comment by samwyse — Tue, Aug 22nd, 2006 @ 5:30 pm

Oh well, they top that in India:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060821/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_india_hitler

Swastika is quite popular decorative element in Indian “interior design” also.

@Antti

It’s an ancient Hindu symbol, pre-dating any european use of it.

The flag seen on the wall is the War Ensign of Nazi Germany, that is, a flag flown by warships. Just wondering why a neo-nazi or a former SS-soldier would hang this on a wall, instead of the usual white circle with a swastika on a red background-one?

Yes, and no connection to nazism there, although I have understood some extremist Hindus may have some sympathies for those ideas.

Just wondering why a neo-nazi or a former SS-soldier would hang this on a wall, instead of the usual white circle with a swastika on a red background-one?

Well, because they sell those. (a bit flashier than the plain one)

pre-dating any european use of it

and the Finnish version pre-dating the German version, while we’re at it. Wish there was a RIAA in 1933, we’d collected royalties like anything.

Actually it’s not only a hindu symbol but also a buddha symbol widely been used all over the East /Sout-East Asia. I’ve also seen the mirror-image of it, don’t know the difference..

…and since we’re talking about swastikas & Vaasa – here’s a bit of history for you guys:

The Finnish Air Force was founded on 6th March 1918. There was one exceptional feature in the founding of the FAF, that it was organized right from the start as an independent branch of the armed forces. This foresight created a good basis for its development and made it one of the oldest air forces in the world. (Great Britain’s RAF 1. April 1918 and Sweden’s Flygvapnet in 1925)

The swastika has been used since ancient times both as an ornament and a motif. It is known to appear, among other applications, in the sewing works of the Finno-Ugric peoples until the modern days. The swastika is very often construed as a symbol of good luck.

The first publicly displayed swastika motif in Finland is probably the swastika ornament around Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Aino triptych from 1891. This painting is currently hung in the stateroom of the Bank of Finland in Helsinki. The armed forces of Finland adopted the swastika during the Civil War in 1918. Swedish Count Eric von Rosen donated the White Army a Thulin typ D airplane in Vaasa on March 6, 1918. On the wings he had painted blue swastikas, his personal mofif of good luck, in Umeå on March 2, before the airplane took off for the crossing of Gulf of Bothnia. After landing in Vaasa the airplane was incorporated as Aircraft Number 1 in the parc d’avions of Finland, later to be renamed the Aviation Force. It was therefore decided to adopt the blue swastika on a white circular background as the national marking, and this was retained until 1945 when it was superseded by the current roundel due to a directive issued by the Allied Control Commission. The directive, however, did not require that the symbol be replaced in other Air Force symbols and flags where it remains in use.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuva:Thulin_Typ_D.jpg

“The swastika is very often construed as a symbol of good luck.”

I think I’ve heard of some six million people who found that the symbol meant that their luck had run out. Totally.

There’s a connection to the Nazi symbol, though, because Hermann Göring’s first wife was the sister of Eric von Rosen. But AFAIK when Göring joined the Nazi party the symbol had been alredy adopted as the party symbol. So the connection seems to be accidental … unless von Rosen and the Nazis took liking to the same symbol because it represented “Nordic” or “Aryan” superiority. Then the symbol is indeed racist, although the Finns may not have realised it … unless they regarded themselves as “Aryans”. The Swedish-speaking part of the nation often did. So, in conclusion, if those who adopted the symbol in Finland were Finnish untermenschen then then adopting the symbol doesn’t have racist implications. Otherwise it very well may have.

Eric von Rosen, and his brother Clarence, were actually both very active in the Swedish Nazi circles… and was the founder of the “Nationalsocialistiska Blocket” organization…

http://www.aftonbladet.se/sport/0011/03/vonrosen.html

IIRC one of the the Baltic states had a red swastika motive in the 1920′s as air force insignia.

Aha, remembered right
http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n3/latvia_ballila.gif
Latvian AF
http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n3/whitfalc.html

So both Finns and latvians used the swastika motif *before* the Germans so we claim original usage.

To speculate whether Finns had racist motives is rather mute, especially considering that ‘undesireables’ were quite rare in these parts. I’ll even suggest that Finland’s volunteers to the SS Viking Division had no racist motives. If anything, during WW2, Finland was swept-away by the Nationalist sentiments of the era, so identifying with Hitler was only natural. It’s quite understandable considering its own recent independence from Russia. But any racism by Finns would have been vicarious at best.

Central europe has a different history though; systematic hanging of Jews and Gypsies go back over a thousand years. Hitler only mastered the concept; he didn’t even invent it. Leave it to the Germans to take an old idea and perfect it. heh heh

Anyway, Finland was never part of that history. Anyone can hijack a symbol and use it to represent their ideology. For the vast majority though, I think the symbol meant absolutely nothing.

Oh, and by the way, think about all the newly born Finnish boys who were named Adolf during that time

Well, I guess everyone can live with name ‘Aatu’, but think about this AKS offspring with ‘Aunus’ or Ääninen as a second name.

Well, you have kids named ‘Varma Kosto’ from 1918

Come on, “hangin Jews and Gypsies” is not part of central-European heritage. Hell, quite many of the most prominent Europeans were and have been Jews, so many in fact, that the Nazis could exploit the idea of their assumed “extra succesfulness”, ie. a conspiracy or at least alien values: money for money’s sake in particular.

But, yeah, in Finland the number of active anti-semites was close to zero.

And yet there were advocates for racism, of course, as in any country which was in thouch with western science. Fortunately enough, most Finns were classified as untermenschen, so racist ideas never got much of a foothold.

As for the SS Vikings, Nazis asked for “Nordic types”. Some of them must have intendified themselves with “Aryans”, but most of them felt too Finnish to have anything to do the racial thories of the Nazis.

#35

“Come on, “hangin Jews and Gypsies” is not part of central-European heritage.”

Oh yeah?

If you search this link for the word “jew”, you’ll get a quick idea of what I mean. There’s much more though; I lived in that area for the past few years and researched the area extensively. Very interesting. I doubt that places like France were any different. I think both eastern and western Europe were relatively similar back then.

http://timelines.ws/countries/POLAND.HTML

Central European heritage, now there’s a topic. It kind of depends on how we see at the word “heritage”. I think Luther is a part of that heritage, however we define it. He didn’t tell to hang Jews, just to burn their books and to convert them. First he actually liked Jews because he thought they just hadn’t heard about Jesus yet and sent the right message, intelligent people as they are, they would convert. When he realized that the Jews already knew about Jesus and still didn’t want to become Christians, that’s when he called for Jewish religious books to be burned. After all, the readers of those books seemed rather to want to believe in them than in the Bible.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, in central Europe hangin Jews and Gypsies doesn’t “go back over a thousand years”. On the contrary, quite a few of the most influencial families were Jewish from the 18th century onwards and even earlier.

That’s one of the reasons why the Nazis could exploit them. Another reason was the masses of poor Jews who fled from Russia and Poland to Germany in particular. Hmm, why did Germany let those Jews immigrate? Were they running out of people to hang?

I’m not saying that the Jews were always treated nicely, remember occasional purges or ghettos … but they were not hanged on sight.

Here’s what the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church in the US has to say about Luther’s anti-semitism:

“While the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod holds Martin Luther in high esteem for his bold proclamation and clear articulation of the teachings of Scripture, it deeply regrets and deplores statements made by Luther which express a negative and hostile attitude toward the Jews. In light of the many positive and caring statements concerning the Jews made by Luther throughout his lifetime, it would not be fair to characterize the reformer as a ‘rabid anti-Semite.’ The LCMS, however, does not seek to ‘excuse’ these statements of Luther, but denounces them (without denouncing Luther’s theology).”

http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=2166

Another story about what to do with the Central European heritage is about Dianna Dunken Rowe from Alabama who believes she is a direct descendant of Martin Luther. She sent 4,000 post cards to Jewish leaders writing:

“I am a descendant of Martin Luther, who wrote many anti-Semitic tracts during the 16th Century. I hang my head in shame and I have great sorrow in my heart for the tracts he wrote and for the influence that his writings had on those who persecuted the Jewish people”.

http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/luther.html

That story has been published in 1997 in the Toronto Star.

Here’s the wikipedia article on Luther’s best-known anti-Semitic pamphlet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

Interestingly enough, one of Luther’s sources was a Catholic pamphlet called “Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith”.

I have to say, checking out the wikipedia stuff on Luther and his pamphlet really makes me feel sick and my previous view of the reformer of simply being a lunatic who wanted to burn books seems to be less than adequate.

Burning books, or even synagogues, doesn’t seem to be enough for Luther:

“But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews’ synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God’s name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies_%28excerpts%29

He is clearly saying that even if somebody would put his program of religious persecution in practice and the Jews wouldn’t be able to praise the Lord in public, more should be done to ensure that they can’t practice their religion in private.

Somehow I get the feeling that the old and bitter Luther at the age of sixty was theory and the Nazis, Lutheran or not, Christian or Pagan or secular, were practice. The wikipedia article on Luther’s pamphlet also noted that Karl Jaspers (famous anti-Nazi existentialist philosopher with a deep knowledge of theology) had said about Luther’s infamous book: “There you already have the whole Nazi program.”

“That’s one of the reasons why the Nazis could exploit them. Another reason was the masses of poor Jews who fled from Russia and Poland to Germany in particular. Hmm, why did Germany let those Jews immigrate? Were they running out of people to hang?”

Ha! Good one, I must admit

My guess is that antisemitism was distributed evenly prior to WW2. Russia was no different than Germany or France or Poland in that regard. The Nazis simply capitalized on this anti-Jew sentiment most effectively.

By the way, prior to the late 1800′s, the state of Germany didn’t even exist. Instead, it was divided between the Prussian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire/ Habsburgs, with many transitions throughout history. So it’s not like ‘Germany’ per se, always hated Jews. The sentiment was Europe-wide.

“I’m not saying that the Jews were always treated nicely, remember occasional purges or ghettos … but they were not hanged on sight.”

Of course, I realize that. I was just being facetious and exaggerating a bit. And yes, there were many who were wealthy and influential–probably a disproportionate number. For this reason, I can somewhat understand why the public bought-into the notion of hating them; people with great wealth and power can influence things like economies and wars, for example–perhaps not always to the benefit of the common man.

To me, it seems similar to the Finns vs. Swedes/Finn-Swedes situation in past times. The Swedes/Finn-Swedes comprised and aristocracy of sorts and the Finnish peasants resented it. But, as in the case of Jews in c. Europe, I’m sure not all Finn-Swedes were wealthy. Just a disproportionate number were.

So I guess, here in Finland, we had the Swedes to deal with; we didn’t have time to hate the Jews

The reason why so many Jews fled from Western Europe to Poland over the centuries was that Poland was much more religiously tolerant. Anti-semitism rose in Poland later than in most other European countries.

Lithuania is another example of a country with strong anti-semitism that centuries earlier had been an oasis for people of all faiths, when the rest of Europe already had fallen to Christian persecutions of nonbelievers. As late as the 14th Century (Lithuania converted to Catholicism in 1387), Lithuania was a multiethnic and multireligious superpower ruled by Pagans. The advance of Christianity often meant an advance in anti-Semitism in European history. Typical example is the victory of Christianity in Spain, when all Jews were told to either convert or be expelled (a key event in European history that might have been in Luther’s mind when he was advocating the expulsion of Jewry).

Lithuania and Poland share a common history, as the conversion of Lithuania led to a union and Poland-Lithuania still was among the most tolerant countries in Europe. Jesuits, counterreformation, the spread of religious fanaticism from Western Europe etc. contributed to a growing anti-Semitism.

@Helsinkian

You’re probably right about Martin Luther not being the most tolerant figure. But looking at him through a current-day prism is probably a mistake.

Unlike today, religion was power. And ML’s power was always challenged.by the Catholic church. In fact, within ML’s lifetime, converting Catholics was probably still a top priority.

Perhaps ML saw the Jews as a divisive group who, by their very existence, could undermine those goals. So converting (or expelling) them was just par-for-the-course.

He might have seen the lternative as sliding back into Catholicism, so the ends justified the means.

Kristian: I think Luther wasn’t that different from many Catholics of his era when it came to Jews. Still, Catholic Poland-Lithuania of Luther’s day was more tolerant than most other Catholic countries and welcomed not only Jews, but Protestant refugees also.

Of course my comparing Luther with Hitler is a mistake. But Karl Jaspers was living through the Hitler era and I’m sure for him it was a matter of contemporary relevance that Luther had propagated much the same thing as Hitler and indeed, Hitler was distributing Luther’s anti-semitic propaganda to justify his expulsion of German Jewry.

Luther was an old and bitter man when he wrote the anti-semitic pamphlet. He had indeed been more tolerant of Jews in his youth and as long as he thought he would be successful in converting Jews to Christianity, he had a positive attitude toward them. When he realized that they wouldn’t buy his arguments about Jesus and stubbornly persisted in their faith, that’s when he started hating them. I don’t think he saw the existence of Jews as something that would endanger the Reformation or something that would be more beneficial to Catholicism than to Protestantism.

Luther took it as self-evident that he had the right to tell the Jews what to believe in and that the Jews had no right to freedom of religion. He justifies his anti-semitism with saying that he had heard a rumor that some Jews had tried to convert Christians to Judaism. Now whether that rumor was true or not, that’s what made him enraged. The mere thought that Jews would want to compete with him on the same terms, that made him ask for burning books and synagogues and expelling Jews.

If you compare Luther’s attitude toward freedom of religion with that of the Taliban, there are many similarities. History of Europe in 16th and 17th Centuries, both Protestant and Catholic, is most fascinating when read through a current-day prism. The Spanish Inquisition, the witchhunts, all of that was happening in an era of religious fanaticism. European Christians were behaving in exactly the same way as the Taleban and other jihadist fanatics of our day.

Religion is power in many parts of the world this very day. There are more religious people in the world than non-religious ones. I don’t see that as a problem at all, the whole issue is about how to stop the political power of religion. Religion is power in many Islamic countries, but also Hindu extremism has had its great moments and indeed in many Christian countries religion still is power.

It’s normal that the church has evolved after Luther’s day and indeed, Lutheran churches are not at all anti-semitic. Indeed it’s true that most Lutherans have given up on anti-semitism, especially after the Holocaust happened. Lutheranism of today is not a particularly anti-semitic religion and there is open discussion on the topic, which is highly admirable.

But Luther’s legacy is important in the history of anti-semitism. Many people have hated Jews over the centuries, not because other Gentiles hated them too, but because they identified with Luther. This is especially so for the hundred or two hundred years after Luther’s death. Luther was a man whose views were listened to. Even if today’s Lutherans prefer to take their cue from the more tolerant sermons of the young Luther, it is the anti-semitic old Luther who for a very long time set the Lutheran standard in how to relate to Judaism.

#17 Hank: Did you see Mumbai Hitler restaurant pics?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5275866.stm

The owner says the Hitler poster that figures in one pic was put up by a guest. The motive to name a restaurant after Hitler: “Just like Hitler wanted to conquer the world, I want to conquer at least my area through the food served in my restaurant.”

I wonder what they serve and whether they’re aware that Hitler was a vegetarian…

Well, apparently it doesn’t matter to the owner what Hitler ate as none of the items on the menu have anything to do with Hitler, just the name of the restaurant.

Echa A Rodar Tu Corto. . .
Your short feature to travel all over the world…

cinevivo

http://www.cinevivo.com.ar

Regarding cultural heritage of Central Europe…

In Germany, there’s a group called the anti-Germans. Most of them call themselves communists, yet support George Bush and demonstrate for Israel:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2145701,00.html

The anti-Germans have had interesting celebrations, such as celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Dresden bombings eleven years ago.

“In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the destruction of Dresden by the allies, the anti-Germans praised the bombing of the civil population, since in their view, so many had supported the Nazi regime.”

“Lutheranism of today is not a particularly anti-semitic religion and there is open discussion on the topic, which is highly admirable.”

That’s because religion has its back against the wall in the west. If they can’t tolerate each other, then they’ll lose even more market share to secularism. If religion becomes widely relevant again, then they’ll work against each other again.

re: anti-Germans

Leave it to Germans to over-intellectualize something political and then form a movement based on it. Typical.

The anti-Germans make sense. The fact that they’re leftists who support Bush makes sense completely.

They seem very similar to the views of the British left-wing critic Christopher Hitchens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

Yeah, it’s sort of like a syllogism gone awry. But it does make sense.

It’s a very small group though. The vast majority of German ‘protester’ types are lefties, anarchists. They’re definitely not pro-Bush. Actually, the center-right population isn’t pro-Bush either.

That’s very different from a little over a decade ago. There was actually a lot of support for Bush Sr.— and Raegan, for that matter. That was under Kohl. Those were good days, as far as I’m concerned.

Screenshot isn’t working! Can someone repost? Thanks!