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Nach der Anfrage auf dem Plenum, ob Ihr wieder in der KTS spielen könnt, waren einige Leute nicht sehr glücklich. Insbesondere ich habe einige Bauchschmerzen mit einem erneuten Auftritt von Oi Polloi in Freiburg. Aber um etwaige Missverständnisse ausräumen zu können, soll euch der Raum gegeben werden, zu einigen Dingen Stellung zu beziehen und vielleicht einige Gerüchte auszuräumen. Deswegen schicke ich euch einige Fragen, bei denen ich euch bitten möchte sie zu beantworten.

Good to hear from you and let us first say that we appreciate being given the opportunity to dispell rumours and clear up misunderstandings - judging from some of the rather curious questions there certainly seem to have been more that a few of those amongst your group. In order to avoid any misinterpretations of anything we might say due to our somewhat less than perfect command of the German language we've answered in English but we think we managed to understand your questions fairly well. At any rate we've done our best to answer them all fully and in depth although maybe in a slightly different order to that which you laid them out. We think we've covered everything though and we've also added some questions to you concerning some of our own concerns about some things at KTS that gave us more than a few of our own "Bauchschmerzen". We look forward to your answers to those but first let's deal with your questions to us.

Es wird immer geschrieben, ihr verbrennt einen Haufen Fahnen während eurer Auftritte, immer USA oder Israel Flaggen. Wie oft kommt das tatsächlich vor? Wenn das stimmt, warum verbrennt ihr nicht die Fahne von Marokko, Syrien, Norwegen, Monaco, Iran oder auch mal eine von Schottland oder eine Gälische?

As anarchists we oppose any kind of bullshit patriotism, xenophobic nationalism etc so yes, we do usually burn some national flags at our gigs. We'll generally burn the flag of the country that we are playing in so that means we burn the French flag in France, Italian in Italy, Belgian in Belgium, German in Germany etc etc. In addition to this we'll very often burn the Union Jack as we tend to see it all over Europe on people's jackets etc where it is sadly often adopted as some kind of "punk" symbol. We don't feel that a bullshit national flag has anything to do with our idea of punk so we'll point that out and burn it. We've also had American members in the band over the years (one particularly who still stands in from time to time) who have felt particularly strongly against the American flag after having to do all that "pledge of allegiance" to the flag patriotic bullshit at school so the American flag does often get burnt as well especially if we're, say, playing our song about US intervention in Nicaragua in support of the right-wing Contras or the US support of the fascist Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. We do not "always" burn the US flag though and certainly not to the exclusion of any others as we have already explained. We haven't played in Marokko or Monaco or most of the other countries you mentioned so we've not burned their flags - the exception being Norway where yes, we have played and burnt their flag. Your proposal about burning say the flag of Monaco or wherever is interesting and we'd have no problem doing it but we just feel at present that burning for instance the German flag in Germany is a more effective symbol against nationalism. We have also read that we "always burn the Israeli flag" - mostly in one particularly bad article (posted on numerous German internet sites) that is full of pretty serious inaccuracies - and this is one of them.We do not, in fact, burn the Israeli flag at our gigs - don't believe everything you read, especially where it is written by people with a distinct agenda - and you'll notice of course that this assertion is never accompanied by a picture. As to burning the Scottish flag, at gigs in the UK we generally burn the Union Jack rather than the separate flags of England and Scotland etc. As you probably know, the Union Jack contains the Scottish flag within the design so in a sense that covers it but more importantly it is the Union Jack that is the symbol used by the neo-fascist British National Party so burning the Union Jack is more appropriate in the context of opposition to their hate-filled nationalist, xenophobic, "patriotic" bullshit. Just for your information there is no strictly Scottish similar neo-fascist party. The Scottish National Party is quite different from the BNP and is a left of centre, multi-racial, immigration encouraging mainstream party described tellingly by neo-fascists in Scotland (quoted in a German zine) as "linken Pisser". In Scotland the BNP are the fascist threat so it's their symbol we generally burn. That's not to say that we never have the Scottish flag burnt at our gigs in Scotland - we have - burning the Union Jack is just what we usually do though - burning the symbol of the fascists seems more appropriate.Lastly you ask, rather curiously, about burning a "Gaelic flag". You seem to be a bit confused here and mixing up language issues with nationalism, patriotism etc. As far as we are aware there is no such thing as a "Gaelic flag". If there was such a thing as a flag to represent the Gaelic language like the Esperanto flag that represents Esperanto then we wouldn't have any reason to burn it as it's not symbolising any kind of bullshit nationalism - it would simply be a symbol of a threatened minority language and we believe in linguistic human rights and language diversity.

Wie steht ihr zu Nationalismus ?

We would have thought that it would have been fairly obvious that, as anarchists, we are internationalists rather than any kind of British or Scottish nationalists. You say you've looked at our myspace page so we would have thought that the complete absence of any British or Scottish flags or nationalist statements and the presence of numerous photos showing us playing in front of a massive anarchy sign backdrop or using a black and red anarchist flag along with lyrics like "the only flag we need is the black and red flag" would have made that pretty clear. Nationalistic patriotism, xenophobia,etc - it's all bullshit - we're for a world without borders and nations.

Zu eurer gälischen Platte: Mit euren Statements zur gälischen Kultur wird im Interview von dir sinngemäß gesagt, dass diejenigen die Schlimmen sind, welche die Sprache vernichten und nicht die, die sie erhalten wollen. Was bedeutet der Begriff "Erhalt der Kultur" und "Kulturimperialismus"? Und warum wehrt ihr euch so entschieden gegen Einflüsse von Außen. Kultur war doch schon immer von Einflüssen, Neuerungen und Weiterentwicklung geprägt und so auch jede Sprache. Auch das Deutsche hat englische Einflüsse, im Mittelalter waren es französische Einflüsse.

There is a big difference between external "influences" and a deliberate campaign to wipe out a language. We have no problem with a bit of influence from outside - in fact we often embrace it - as it can often be of real benefit. Scottish Gaelic for instance is full of influences from Latin, Greek and French as well as from Irish and Manx Gaelic and they really enrich the language. There has also of course been a two way exchange with the English and Scots languages that has brought new words into all three, again enriching the respective vocabularies. This is a completely different matter from the organised attempts to eradicate the use of Gaelic in Scotland which saw the beating of schoolchildren who spoke Gaelic as their mother tongue when they were caught using the language - a policy which persisted up until the 1970s - and the continual discrimination in some areas of officialdom against Gaelic speakers today. In regards to the quote from that interview yes, of course we regard people responsible for policies aimed to eradicate the language like using violence against children and discrimination against native Gaelic speakers in the courts etc in a negative light (to say nothing of earlier historical proposals of the London government to forcibly sterilise all female Gaels) and likewise we support Gaelic language activists who are working to ensure Gaelic speakers' linguistic human rights and to stop the language dying out. We want a multicultural UK where all the minority languages of the British Isles are respected - Welsh, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic etc - not one where everyone is just forced to speak English. We think children should be able to grow up having the opportunity to have the benefit of both the indigenous language of the particular area where they are as well as English as a lingua franca. There are great benefits to children's development of a bi-lingual or tri-lingual upbringing and we don't think they should be denied that possibility.

We're talking about linguistic issues here but you obviously want to talk about culture as well and cultural imperialism. Ok, we believe generally that people should have the right to live as they please as long as they're not harming others so for example if we take a group living a nomadic lifestyle like European traditional travelling people they should have the right to preserve their culture by continuing to live in that way if they want rather than being forced to give up travelling and to have to live in normal houses, in many cases in some European countries having their children removed to be brought up according to the norms of the dominant culture or, of course, as we all know during the Third Reich being deliberately exterminated. Likewise the removal of the children of so many indigenous Australian tribespeople to be brought up by white Australian adults according to the norms of white Australian culture would be an example to us of cultural imperialism. We believe that the indigenous tribespeople should have the right to decide themselves what culture they want for their children rather than having it imposed on them. In a Scottish context we're thankfully not talking about such extreme situations. In many ways the culture of Gaelic speakers is pretty much the same as that of English speaking Scots and there are all kinds of great overlaps in Scotland - the Gaelic speaking community contains plenty of English and Polish people as well as the odd Russian or Czech and of course there is the Gaelic speaking Scottish-Asian community as well - it all makes for a very interesting melting pot. Most of these people are enthusiastic about Gaelic song which is a big part of Gaelic culture - there is some very beautiful stuff out there - so yeah, we think it would be sad if these tunes and songs died out so we're all in support of people who want to preserve this by organising musical events etc. This doesn't mean that we're somehow against all other forms of modern non-Gaelic music or something - our own style of music for instance is nothing to do with traditional Gaelic musical culture although we do use the language itself in some of our songs. We do get the feeling that some of our critics in Germany are deliberately misinterpreting our position on Gaelic especially when they start talking about terms like "purity" and so on that we have never used or indeed been interested in - Gaelic hip-hop for instance that some friends are working on - mixing influences from the cities of the USA with Gaelic from the Highlands of Scotland - great! We're all about mixing up different ingredients across borders - we just think it would be a great tragedy if some of those ingredients were wiped out so there was lot smaller choice of ingredients to work with at the start.

Wo seht ihr den Unterschied zwischen eurem Engagement für die Gälische Sprache und dem Kampf gegen Anglizismen und für die Reinhaltung deutscher oder französicher Sprache und Kultur?

Firstly we're not talking about any "Reinhaltung" of Gaelic. We're not interested in things being "rein" - this is your term not ours. We have no problem, as we've already explained, with outside influences where they help a language become richer and develop rather than stagnating. What we are talking about in relation to Gaelic is its very right to exist as a living language or really the linguistic human rights of Gaelic speakers. More importantly though there are vast differences which frankly we thought would have been obvious between the situations of Gaelic and German and French. French and German are both major official languages of major world powers (as of the year 2000 there were 98 million German speakers making it the 9th top oral language in the world and there were 72 million French speakers putting it in 13th place) - Gaelic on the other hand is an endangered minority language spoken by just over 50,000 people or a little more than 1% of the population of Scotland, a country that is not even fully independent but is a subordinate part of the UK. In addition to this, most Gaelic speakers live on the periphery of Scotland in isolated rural areas in the north and west, many of them not even on the mainland. As a result this is not a community that has a huge amount of influence politically to help them in contrast to, say, the Swedish speaking minority in Finland which tends to be from the upper classes and thus has a lot more political clout leading to very good bilingual services for Swedish speakers in Finland and status as an official language. Gaelic has no official status and although there have been some improvements in recent years, native Gaelic speakers are still often disadvantaged when dealing with officialdom and may have to deal with discrimination and abuse ( for example the recent case of the couple being thrown out of a shop just for being heard speaking Gaelic or Gaelic speakers being forced to used different versions of their names rather than the given Gaelic name that is not officially recognised). This is in addition to the brutality that many Gaelic speakers experienced as children that we have already mentioned where they were beaten or otherwised abused by the education system simply for using their own language. This is a quite different situation from French or German. Neither language is in danger of disappearing in the near future. Both languages are official languages and you are not forced say to give evidence and take part in court procedings in a different language to your native one thus putting you at a significant disadvantage (we've seen people convicted as a result of this kind of thing). Neither is there a history of French or German speakers in their respective countries being beaten at school simply for speaking French or German respectively. We could go on but basically they are totally different situations. If it helps you to understand things in a German context then we'd maybe liken the situation with Gaelic in some ways to that of Sorbisch, the minority Slavic language spoken by about 50,000 people in Brandenburg and Sachsen. Here again we have an endangered minority language with a history of repression against the speakers (Sorb activists victimised in the Nazi period and bans on the use of the language previous to that) and with today (as in the situation of Gaelic) some lipservice paid by the government to preserving the language while in reality the offical support is generally pretty much tokenism - last year for instance, according to one report, all Sorb cultural institutions serving the entire Sorb population to preserve their culture in the face of increasing Germanisation received less money than the budget of just one Berlin theatre. We feel it would be a great shame if Sorbisch was to become extinct and if we lived there we'd be singing in Sorbisch ourselves. We want a culturally and linguistically diverse society in Germany too and respect for these people's linguistic human rights. What we find puzzling though is that judging by some of the criticism, hostility and on occasion outright violence (once in Bremen when we played a song in Gaelic our guitarist at the time was hit in her face by a bottle for being a "fucking Scottish nationalist" - she was actually a Polish anarchist) that we've had from so many "Anti-Germans" as a result of our support for minority languages like Gaelic it looks as if, to be consistent, the "Anti-German" position on Sorbisch would be that people should stop using it and should all speak Hochdeutsch instead! Kind of ironic. We hope that isn't the case. We would be interested to know your position at KTS on this and whether you would discriminate against a band singing in Sorbisch - would you really prefer them to sing in Hochdeutsch instead?

Was bedeutet für euch der Begriff Volk? Kann man sich aus emanzipatorischer Sicht überhaupt positiv auf Volk und Volksgemeinschaft beziehen?

We feel that there are some subtleties here that we are maybe missing in terms of what the words "people" and "folk" and "Leute" and "Volk" mean in English and German. In English when we use the word "folk" it is generally a term to describe music like say Woodie Guthrie or Bob Dylan or as an alternative word for a bunch of individuals - for example "there were a lot of folk at the antifascist demo today". "Volk" on the other hand brings to mind images of some kind of nazi-like idea of one homogenous mass of people united by some kind of fucked up nationalist ideology. It's not a word we generally use but for some reason very often when we use the word "people" in English it is translated by Germans (or should we say, more accurately, "Anti-Germans") as "Volk" when we would have used the word "Leute" ourselves. For example if we say "ordinary people are getting ripped off by the poll tax and should fight back" this gets translated as "Das einfache Volk...." instead of "einfache Leute". We're not German language experts but this sometimes seems like a deliberate attempt to put a negative spin on what we're saying. We certainly don't believe in any kind of homogenous "Volk" or "People" concept. As we hope we've cleared up here, we're all about diversity and a heterogenous society. Again "Volksgemeinschaft" is a term that none of us have ever used. The internet translator here gives the translation "community" but we suspect this isn't the whole story. We don't see any problem with people partly identifying themselves as part of a community as in say "the gay and lesbian community" or "the punk community" but could you say you're part of the "gay and lesbian Volksgemeinschaft"? Don't know - doesn't sound right somehow - sorry, none of us are native German speakers and we don't have a dictionary to hand - we're trying our best but as you probably know these internet translators are notoriously dodgy. If the word has some kind of nationalistic connotations then the answer would be no, we don't see how ideas of "Volk" or "Volksgemeinschaft" are positive from an emancipatory viewpoint.

Some of these questions in regards to Gaelic and culture etc seem to us to indicate that some of the people asking these kinds of questions are possibly a bit confused about issues of language, culture and identity so if these questions aren't just asked in the hope that we will give some kind of "wrong" answer (as some people have cynically suggested) and you are seriously interested in why we feel that linguistic diversity is so important and why it is a tragedy every time any language becomes extinct then we really recommend the following books:-

"Linguistic Genocide in Education - Or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?" by Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

"Language Death" by David Crystal

"Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages" by Mark Abley

Also we should maybe emphasise again here that we see ALL languages as being of equal value - be they Gaelic, Basque, Japanese, some tiny native American language, Sorbisch, Yiddish, Spanish etc etc - and we see it as a great loss whenever ANY threatened minority language disappears. We support any campaign to preserve any threatened languages and to secure the linguistic human rights of their speakers.The only reason that we've chosen Gaelic to particularly work on is that Gaelic is the local threatened language and so it's the one where we can readily be of more use in supporting it and may actually be of some significant help in its current dire situation - that's our hope anyway.

In einem deiner Songtexte heißt es: "Commies and Nazis are the same". Wie ist das gemeint?

That is half a line which you have taken out of context and also partially misquoted. The song was written partly as a reaction to the various rightwing and authoritarian left-wing parties in the UK that preyed on young disaffected kids often involved in punk music and tried to recruit them to their various groups. We're talking about people like the neo-fascist National Front and on the left wing parties like the odious Socialist Workers Party who were notorious for their opposition to physical confrontation of fascists or the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party who had such policies as support for nuclear power "as long as it is under workers' control" and a belief that "homosexuality is a product of decadent capitalism that will disappear after the revolution" - that's obviously not the kind of revolution that we want any part of. Also as anarchists we have a lot of issues with authoritarian communism after some of the stuff that went on in the Spanish Civil War, the Kronstadt Uprising etc so we were quite happy to have a dig at these kind of communist groups. The song was also on an LP that was released as an attempt to get an anti-fascist message over to some skinheads and others who might have seen themselves as non-political and who could have gone either way or those who might have been slightly "patriotic" (something we wanted to change) and this song was an attempt to avoid being instantly labelled as "commies" and thus written off which was the usual response of the right to anyone challenging their ideas. We actually had a bit of success with this - people writing to say they had really changed their "patriotic" or right-wing ideas, burnt their Skrewdriver records etc after listening to our LP so that was good. Most people realised what we meant with this song as well and understood that we were not seriously equating communism with the singularly horrific crimes of the Third Reich. However the very fact that you - and some others in the past - asked this question shows that the song was open to misinterpretation. Bearing this in mind and the fact that we would never want to give out a message that the unique crimes of national socialism are somehow comparable to some communist groups we understand that we didn't express ourselves as well as we should have here. This was also a particular concern since,as we've explained in another answer, we've always taken a non-sectarian approach to fighting fascism, putting other political differences to one side in order to form a united front against the fascists and we didn't want to encourage hostility to any genuine leftwing group prepared to put their money where their mouths are and get out on the street to take the fascists on. As a result, having realised we'd made a mistake, we took the decision a long time ago not to play the song ever again. We never have and we never will - and incidentally this is somewhat old news as that decision was taken OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO!

Wie steht ihr generell zu Antisemitismus?

This is an easy one - you get an answer in German this time as this is just copied and pasted from a German fanzine interview that has been readily available on the net for several years now:-

Unsere Position lautet folgendermaßen: Jeder Arsch, der gegen eine bestimmte Minderheit Haß schüren will, wie in diesem Fall dem jüdischen Volk, hat eine gehörige Tracht Prügel nötig. Wir sind total gegen Antisemitismus und überhaupt gegen jeglichen Rassismus. Die Schrecken der Shoah oder des Holocaust dürfen nie, nie wieder stattfinden, und jede Art rassistischer Ideologie, die uns zu etwas ähnlich Furchtbarem wie diesem führen könnte, muß massiv bekämpft werden, bevor sie noch mehr Geister vergiften kann. Aus diesem Grund sind wir seit Jahren aktiv an antifaschistischen Aktivitäten beteiligt und können die Wichtigkeit von physischem Widerstand gegen Faschismus gar nicht genug betonen. Jeder, der auf einem unserer Gigs war, weiß, daß wir uns stets zu diesem Thema äußern, und auch ein ganz kurzer Blick auf unsere Texte von Songs wie "Nazi Scum" und "Let the Boots Do the Talking" zeigt, wie wir zu diesem Thema stehen. Unser Song "Bash the Fash" erwähnt eindeutig die Judenverfolgung der Nazis und fordert die Hörer dazu auf, die Fehler der 30er Jahre nicht zu wiederholen, nämlich der Verfolgung tatenlos zuzuschauen und unsere Anmerkungen zu "Let the Boots Do the Talking" rühmen die jüdischen Kämpfer des Aufstands im Warschauer Ghetto. Worte allein zählen natürlich nicht so viel wie Taten, weshalb wir auch versuchen, obwohl keiner von uns eine Schlägernatur ist, unseren Worten Taten folgen zu lassen. Diese kranken Wichser müssen aufgehalten werden und das liegt an uns. Krank ist das einzige Wort, das wirklich auf die zutrifft, wie sonst könnte man die Faschisten beschreiben, die in York zu demonstrieren versuchten, um das Massaker an der jüdischen Bevölkerung im Mittelalter zu feiern? Wir waren damals da, um es mit ihnen aufzunehmen. Als wir mal in Estland waren und ein paar ortsansässige Nazi-Boneheads uns so eine Scheiße erzählen wollten, von wegen wie die Juden ihr Land regieren und ausgerottet werden sollten, nahmen wir es auch mit ihnen auf und mehrere von den Wichsern mußten sich daraufhin erst mal im Krankenhaus behandeln lassen.

Wo ist euer Engagement für die Massaker im Sudan? Wo für dieMenscherechtsverletzungen in Burma? Gegen die Todesstrafe fürHomosexuelle in islamistisch regierten Ländern? Die Unterdrückung der Frauen in diesen? Warum der Fokus auf Israel?

Well, here at least is something we agree on - concern about the situations in Sudan and Burma - that's something positive. We're very glad you're active in these areas and we'd be very keen to hear more about what you at the KTS are doing to help human rights in Burma particularly as we feel the situation there doesn't always get as much publicity as what has been happening with Sudan - maybe you have some good ideas or activities that we can learn from and that would be great to hear. Please tell us more about this. For ourselves we'd have to regretfully say that as there are sadly so many horrible situations around the world where people are suffering oppression and violence often through no fault of their own (just look at the plight of the Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka right now for instance) it unfortunately isn't possible to be particularly active on every single one of these issues and we can't claim to have done much more in relation to Sudan apart from boycotting Sudanese goods. As we said though, we feel that the Burma situation doesn't get so much coverage so in addition to boycotting Burmese goods and working with Amnesty International who are campaigning against human rights violations in Burma we've also been singing about the issue for some time now. Our song "Òigridh air na Sràidean" which talks about the injustice in Burma has been played on the radio a couple of times in Scotland and it is available to listen to online on the BBC website after we played it for a Gaelic radio session. We chose to play this song for the session as we believe this is such an important issue and the song is also going to be on our new LP which we're working on just now and will come along with detailed sleevenotes about the situation in Burma etc - we feel that any publicity about what is really happening there can help. From looking at our myspace you will also have seen the prominent gay rights group amongst our top friends so it shouldn't come as any surprise to you that we've been active for many years against ANY kind of oppression of gay people ANYWHERE - we don't limit our opposition to homophobes to those in Islamic countries. We've been singing about homophobia for well over twenty years now in our song "When Two Men Kiss", constantly speaking out about it as well as raising money for gay rights groups and taking part in other activities like helping one gay rights group that works particularly against oppression of homosexuals in Iran. Likewise we have long been active in women's rights issues and against the oppression of women ANYWHERE not just in Islamic countries. Our song "The Right To Choose", for instance, is a pro-choice song that we have been playing for years and which amongst other things mentions the sick fanatical religious fundamentalists who try to stop women having the chance to choose abortion by blowing up abortion clinics and murdering medical personnel involved in abortion procedures. You will probably have heard about these cases in the USA with the crazed right-wing Christians who have done a lot of this kind of thing. This is not in an islamic country we know, but hopefully you still feel it is something that should be opposed. Our recent "Total Resistance To The Fucking System" LP also comes with a booklet containing a large article against female genital mutilation (so-called "female circumcision") as practised in many African countries - and yes, since you seem very interested in whether they might be Islamic countries or not, many of the people who do this do follow Islam - although interestingly enough it is not a practice sanctioned in the Koran and the only two countries to have formally banned the practice at the time of writing were the 95% Islamic Senegal and the 60% Islamic Burkina Faso. At any rate it is a piece of barbarism that has to stop regardless of the religion of the sick people carrying it out.You're obviously very concerned about women's rights issues in such countries so we'd recommend reading "Desert Flower" by Waris Dirie, the Somalian model who herself suffered female genital mutilation - she has been very active in campaigning against FGM and talks about it a lot in the book - let us know what you think when you've read it.

The thrust of this group of questions seems to be an implication that we only sing about the Israeli occupation or at least that we have an interest in it to the exclusion of all other human rights issues around the world. That just isn't borne out by reality as we have a long history of interest in and songs about all kinds of injustices around the globe. In addition to what we've just been explaining about our interest in Burma, women's oppression in Africa etc etc we'd also direct you to our songs like "Apartheid Stinx" which was about,yes, you guessed it, apartheid South Africa or "They Shoot Children, Don't They?" which was originally about both apartheid South Africa and the British occupation of Northern Ireland. Then there was our song "Deathcafe" about Nestle's marketing of baby-milk formula to developing nations around the world and the resulting needless deaths of thousands of children or our song "Death By Night" about the Bhopal disaster in India. We also sung about the situation in Nicaragua in our song "Hands Off Nicaragua" and about what happened with Pinochet in Chile in our song "9/11" (the date of his fascist coup just in case anyone didn't know - nothing to do with the Twin Towers in NYC). As well as that, although we haven't sung about it, we've been involved in raising money for groups fighting for human rights in Tibet, we donated our tourbus to a group working to help kids in wartorn Afghanistan with musical therapy (and no, it wasn't an Islamic group) and we've also spoken out at length against what the Russians did in Chechnya - our song "Feòladair Craicte" covers this Russian brutality in Chechnya and also talks about the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict. Furthermore, we were of course speaking out against Saddam Hussein back when the US administration were his great allies and old Rumsfeld would shake his blood-stained hand and we sung about his gassing of the Kurds at Halabja. We also criticised the Turkish government's treatment of the Kurds in the booklet from our "Fuaim Catha" LP. There are probably more examples of other injustices around the world that we've been active against but we've done a lot of songs over the years and we think we've made the point now without having to go and look through every single LP or single we've ever made - none of which, we should point out, had any songs about Israel until we came to Freiburg incidentally (but more on that in another answer) although some did of course mention the Shoah in the context of encouraging the fight against nazis ("Bash The Fash" etc).

Ihr sollt gesagt haben "Antideutsche aufs Maul". Ist das wahr?

We are aware that there is a wide spectrum of opinion amongst people who might class themselves as "Anti-German" from those on the one end who might simply be against German nationalism and militarism (and in that sense we'd describe ourselves as "Anti-German" as we share those feelings) to those who happily wave the national flags of the US and even the Union Jack on demonstrations, open bottles of champagne to celebrate the beginning of the war in Iraq, adopt George Bush as an antifascist icon and seem to believe that the USA and Israel can do nothing wrong, smearing any criticism of either as antisemitic or "structural antisemitism". Anyone who, for instance, like those in Berlin who celebrated the outbreak of war in Iraq with champagne we believe to be at best seriously misguided - likewise the individuals in Köln who responded to our introduction to a song about the horror and carnage that the USA visited on Nicaragua after the Sandinistas removed the right-wing Somoza dictatorship by chanting "USA, USA, USA!" - to support the USA in the context of what they did to Nicaragua is to our mind totally fucked-up and we will certainly have indicated as much on numerous occasions. As we said though we know that not everyone is so extreme and so you can't lump all "Anti-Germans" into one homogenous grouping. In any case, whatever we might think of some of their more extreme ideology, we would never encourage physical violence like that - that's totally crazy - so no, of course that is not true that we said that or indeed anything remotely like it. For us it is absolutely tragic that the once strong German antifascist movement has been so weakened and divided by this crazy Anti-German vs Anti-Imperialist stuff that just seems to have got totally out of control - encouraging more physical infighting is the last thing we need yet sadly there seem to be many elements that delight in emphasising the differences and splitting things up as much as possible. The only people who win here are the cops and the nazis and at a time when state repression is getting harsher all over Europe and neo-fascist groups are getting stronger and more organised it seems to us to be absolutely insane to spend so much time and energy on self-destructive infighting and sectarianism rather than on trying to work together to fight fascism and oppression. In the UK with Antifascist Action we always had a wide variety of groups involved from anarchists to Marxist groups like Red Action and even some elements of fringe Labour Party groups with people who just hated fascism and were prepared to get out there and do something about it. We had many different ideologies but we always put these differences to one side when it came to fighting fascism - that was the important thing. Sadly we often get the impression that some groups in Germany would rather argue about someone who criticises Bush being "structurally anti-semitic" or whatever as opposed to saying "Right, we might not agree on US foreign policy or the Israeli occupation but the fascists are marching on Saturday, let's all unite to stop them - that's the important thing." When there is so much internal bickering and fighting and misdirected energy the fascists are just laughing at us - despite our differences on some issues we'd like to be able to work together against them and wipe the smile off their faces.

Auf eurer Myspaceseite habt ihr zahlreiche Links (eure Topfreunde) zu Seiten gesetzt, die die Vorfälle am 11. September in New York und am 7.7. in London in Frage stellen (ReOpen 9/11, 7/7 truth, what about building 7). Es wird dabei unter anderem auf der Seite ReOpen 9/11 von Theorien geschrieben, die auf eine Inszenierung der Attentate durch die USA und Großbrittaniens hindeuten. Wie stehst du zu diesen Theorien und warum sind diese Seiten so explizit nach vorne gestellt?

Having looked at our myspace page you will also have noticed amongst our top friends the group NO2ID which campaigns against the plans of the UK government to introduce ID cards, a linked database and a massive increase in surveillance over all our e-mails and telecommunications. This kind of thing, together with the 4 million plus CCTV cameras in the UK and numerous other restrictions on our already limited freedoms has become much, much worse since the attacks on the WTC and 7/7 - we think you might call it something like "Sicherheitswahn" or "Überwachungswahn" - and it's all done in the guise of fighting "terrorism" - you know "you have to surrender some rights in order to help us fight the kind of people who did 7/7 and 9/11 - don't worry that we're introducing detention without trial, reading your e-mails etc - it's to protect you from the bad terrorists - trust us". Well, call us cynical, but for some reason (like their past records) we just DON'T trust the UK government or the Bush administration - or indeed any government. 7/7 and 9/11 were what lead to a lot of this stuff - things that are changing our lives and for that reason we see these events as so important that we really want people to think about them - hence the "top friends". We don't ourselves have any particular theory about either of these events but we do have a lot of questions about the numerous holes and inconsistencies in the official explanations of both. For that reason we'd like to see full independent inquiries into both and of course we'd always encourage a healthy scepticism in relation to any government justifications of measures that they are taking that impinge on our rights and freedoms.In the case of 7/7 we're just echoing here what people like Graham Foulkes whose 22 year old son was killed in the attack are saying: "For almost four years we have been asking for an inquiry into what led up to 7/7 ... we know that we have not been told the whole truth".Also, of course, any genuine independent inquiry would help to put to rest some of the more more outlandlish conspiracy theories which we certainly don't subscribe to. If you're interested in this subject we'd recommend watching the excellent film "Press for Truth" which you can see on You Tube which follows families of 9/11 victims attempting to get the Bush administration to launch an inquiry into 9/11 (you may remember that incredibly this inquiry was also initially refused) as it is a really superb documentary. This is NOT a "conspiracy theory" film, it doesn't advance any crazy theories but it does ask a lot of very important questions that we're still waiting for answers to - we just think the victims' families and indeed everyone else would be better off if we had these answers.

Dazu noch mehr: Als ich vor 2 Jahren das letzte Mal auf eurer Seite war, hat eine dieser Topfreunde von einer Inszenierung der Attentate durch das Weltjudentum und einer Verstrickung von Israel und den USA gesprochen. Bitte nehmt zu solchen Theorien Stellung.

The first thing to point out here is that while it is not always possible to know everything that myspace "friends" are into when you first add them as they may later post objectional material to their pages AFTER we've added them we DO attempt to check everyone initially to weed out any potential idiots and naturally any signs of any kind of racism, homophobia etc guarantee a swift denial. Likewise anyone promoting antisemitic nonsense about a "World Jewish Conspiracy" or whatever is definitely NOT welcome. If you mean that this person or group was there two years ago and isn't any more then it's probably because we've noticed this nonsense or else someone has alerted us and we've removed them. If it's a current "friend" who is still there though talking about "World Jewish Conspiracy" bullshit then please send us the details and we'll remove them. To get to the main point of your question though, our position on such theories about a "World Jewish Conspiracy" involvement in 9/11 (or indeed the very existence of such a thing as a "World Jewish Conspiracy") is quite simple - it's total and utter fucking bullshit!

Alle auf eurer myspaceseite veröffentlichten Videos thematisieren angebliche Verbrechen Israels: aus dem Zusammenhang gerissene Bilder und Interview Stücke. Vor allem das Video "we will never forget" behandelt schwerpunktmäßig die Kindstötungen und nährt damit ein altes antisemitisches Ressentiment. Das zeigt meiner Meinung nach, dass ihr nicht an einer ausgewogenen Sicht interessiert seid. sondern einseitig Hass auf Israel schürt.

Firstly, prior to the recent Israeli attack on Gaza, NONE of the videos that we had on our myspace page had anything to do with Israel whatsoever. The ones posted at the moment are certainly not taken out of context in any way as no one with any interest in world affairs can possibly have missed what happened in Gaza and this is the context that they have been posted. For the benefit of people like you who seem all too ready to confuse legitimate criticism of the Israeli occupation and military actions with anti-semitism we posted the video of the Jewish peace activist talking about precisely this topic. Then there is the video about the American peace activist Rachel Corrie who was tragically killed by the Israeli army while trying to defend Palestinian civilian houses from demolition - and two other videos deal with the BBC's refusal to broadcast the charity appeal for the victims of the attack. Whatever our different views about the rights and wrongs of this tragic episode we would hope that we would all at least agree that there are now a lot of suffering people in Gaza (where, let us not forget, more than half the population are children) in desperate need of aid and for that reason we and a huge number of others in the UK and indeed around the world have been very critical of the BBC's stance on this matter. None of these videos are exactly any kind of diatribes of antisemitic hatred as you seem to imply. We're also quite frankly astonished at your comments about the "We will never forget" video that shows images of the death and destruction caused by the Israeli military machine in Gaza. To try to somehow claim that this is in some way similar to ridiculous antisemitic tales from history about "Jews stealing and killing children to drink their blood" or sacrifice them or whatever the sick stories were is ludicrous. There is a MASSIVE difference here - namely that scores of innocent children WERE undisputably killed by the Israeli attack on Gaza - that is FACT. The repulsive antisemitic LIES about "child-killing Jews" on the other hand are just that: sick fiction with no basis in actuality. You are trying to compare FANTASY with REALITY - that is absurd.

It's also strange to hear you claim that you feel we are not interested in a balanced view of the Israel/Palestine situation since we feel that that is precisely what we want - to balance out the rather warped view that some people in Germany seem to have about the whole topic. While we, for our part, have ALWAYS condemned Palestinian atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians and the vile suicide attacks on cafes and buses and the like which we have described in German fanzine interviews easily found on-line as horrendous and utterly repugnant - the German translations were "schrecklich" and "abstossend" which we hope conveys the strength of our feeling - our "Anti-German" critics, on the other hand, usually seem completely unable to condemn even the worst excesses of the Israeli military, instead defending them as "berechtigte Sicherheitsmassnahmen" or simply stating either "Es kann keine Diskussion geben" or "Alle Kritik an Israel ist Antisemitismus - Punkt". It is in the face of these kinds of totally one-sided attitudes that we feel we have to present the other side of the argument with precisely the aim of getting the balanced view that you talk about. Another example of this would be the potted history of the Middle East conflict published in the Berlin zine "Interim" which purported to show the background of today's situation but which despite starting in 1948 totally missed out, among other things, Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt and its 1982 invasion of Lebanon in which tens of thousands of Lebanese were killed and maimed. Yet it is precisely these same Anti-German people who will complain the loudest about Hezbollah - a group which came about directly as a result of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. You have to see both sides of the situation. While we would, for instance, condemn Israeli-American settler and army officer Baruch Goldstein's massacre of dozens of Palestinian civilians in the infamous Hebron Massacre and the settlers' subsequent erection of a statue in his memory as a "martyr" we would also for example unreservedly condemn the Lod Airport Massacre that saw the murder of Israeli civilians. We don't want to see any more killing on either side - we just want to see peace and justice for both Israelis and Arabs. While you and other "Anti-Germans" may feel that the Israeli occupation, house demolitions, seizures of Palestinian families' land and the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements are going to lead to a lasting peace, we, in contrast, don't - quite the reverse in fact and that is the basis of our criticism of the Israeli regime's actions. To try to portray this as "hate-filled antisemitism" is totally dishonest but again maybe it is no surprise from people that, as we say, we find to have a totally skewed view of the Middle East. Another example of this would be the infamous "Ist dir kalt oder hast du was gegen Juden?" leaflet about the Keffiyeh that attempts to link the Palestinian struggle with National Socialism by its huge emphasis on the so-called "Grand Mufti" of Jerusalem and his assistance to the Third Reich. There is no question about it - this evil man was an antisemitic arsehole. If the authors of this leaflet were so concerned about the balanced view that you say you aspire to, however,then it is somewhat strange that while they place so much emphasis on ONE man who supported Hitler they totally ignore and make no mention of the HUNDREDS of Palestinian Arab volunteers who at the same time fought against the armies of the Third Reich as soldiers in the famous Palestine Regiment, many of whom giving their lives in the struggle against Nazism at the battle of El Alamein. Strangely enough we've never ever seen any mention of this anywhere in any "Anti-German" literature which we often find to be characterised by both extreme bias and also a large amount of ignorance when it comes to the details of the Israel/Palestine situation. On the subject of ignorance, this brings to mind the piece in the KTS's own "Koraktor" that was published after our concert there and which, among other things, criticised us for stating that Ariel Sharon was to blame for the Sabra and Shatila massacres during Israel's operations in Lebanon.The author sneeringly mocked us for this, claiming that this showed our "antisemitism" and that we must have read that in some German "Boulevard-Zeitung" - thereby demonstrating nothing but his or her own total ignorance of the subject as anyone who knows even just the basics about Ariel Sharon and Sabra and Shatila will know that it was not the German tabloid press but the Israeli government's OWN INVESTIGATION into the massacres, the Kahan Commission, that came to that conclusion, stating that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" and that was why he was forced to resign from his position. Sadly this kind of smearing of people as racist "anti-semites" by those who simply don't know what they are talking about seems to be all too common in these circles in Germany and, as we've said, if you are genuinely concerned about the problems of one-sided views then we'd suggest that maybe you need to be looking a little bit closer to home.

Durch oben genanntes Video kommt man auf eine Weltverschwörungsseite (whatreallyhappened.com), die u.a. Schwachsinn, die Angriffe auf Gaza als den Mord an der Familie Jesus bezeichnen - damit das älteste antisemitische/antijudaeische Ressentiment bedienen, den Mord an Jesus.

As you've looked at our myspace site you will also have seen then that those videos are prefaced with a statement expressly condemning anti-semitism and one of the videos is of a Jewish peace activist dealing with precisely that subject. From that and our other statements on the subject it should be perfectly clear to all but the most close-minded individuals where we stand on nonsense like bullshit about the "murder of Jesus". We didn't link to some bullshit like that but to the You Tube video itself. We know that there is all kinds of ridiculous stuff that you can stumble across through You Tube but quite frankly if people choose to then visit other sites and come across nonsense like that which you describe then we credit them with enough intelligence to see it for the antisemitic rubbish it clearly is. You describe it as "Schwachsinn", so would we and we wouldn't patronise other people by presuming they're so stupid they that wouldn't.

In euren Texten singt ihr immer wieder von den bösen, reichen Männer,die alle regieren und das einfache Volk, das sich wehren soll.

We don't want to reduce this debate to some kind of slanging match of throwing insults around and we've tried to be relatively civil in answering all your questions so far, despite the fact that some of them seem to be somewhat ignorant, deliberately misrepresenting us or totally unconnected with anything we've ever said but we're afraid that we really have to say that this assertion that our songs about the rich are in some way antisemitic totally takes the cake as one of the stupidest things we've ever heard! We've already dealt with the question of your use of the term "Das Volk" when we would say ordinary individuals so we won't repeat that here but instead let's look at what you're saying about us singing about the rich. Yes, out of well over 100 songs we do have 3 or 4 that talk about rich people -let's have a look at them:-

"Don't Burn the Witch" which contains the lines "Troubles blamed upon the witch/When they should have really burnt the rich" is a song about the Christian establishment in the middle ages (which was unquestionably extremely wealthy) scapegoating and persecuting people like women who practised herbal medicine - with lyrics like "Inquisition in the middle ages/Phallocentric Christian outrages/There are those who'd bring back those days/Don't let the right wing Christian nutters have their way" it is patently obvious that this song is an attack on the intolerant, repressive and misogynistic attitudes of the Christian church. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with Israel or Judaism and we'd be very interested to hear how you think it does.

"Hunt The Rich" is a song about the particularly British sick "bloodsport" of fox hunting with a pack of dogs. Anyone who has ever been involved in hunt sabotage in the UK or read anything about it will know that by far the vast majority of the people who ride with hunts are either from the aristocracy or otherwise wealthy. Indeed anyone who isn't would neither be able to pay for the upkeep of their horses, vehicle with horsebox, riding gear, vetinary bills, the hunt fees etc or have the time to go out hunting often several times a week instead of working. While the British Royal Family for instance have long been enthusiastic hunters you won't find many supermarket checkout workers or street-sweepers out fox-hunting. The lyrics to this song are all about fox-hunting and hunt sabotage. In case you hadn't noticed, the hereditary British aristocracy are not Jewish and fox hunting with hounds does not take place in Israel so once again we'd love to hear how you think this has something to do with the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

"Guilty" which is a song about supporting anarchist and antifascist political prisoners does make a couple of brief references to the rich along with encouraging physical opposition to fascism. The first "rich scumbag in a judge's wig" refers to the way the UK legal system is set up so that all the top judges in the country come from the rich upper classes - that is the way the system works - you don't get working class judges - and that's deliberate. The second "rich scumbag in a bowler" refers to the distinctive "bowler hat" worn by a lot of the richer city executives in London. We're not aware of bowler hats being renowned for being especially worn in Israel but maybe you think otherwise.

"Rich Scumbag" lastly is a song using the trademark term "Rich scumbag" coined by the class struggle anarchist group Class War who we have long supported and this is where we have to say that we really are staggered by criticism for singing about class consciousness and against the rich. We find it difficult to believe that you seriously believe that you live in some kind of utopian egalitarian classless society where your average low-income worker or unemployed person has just as much influence as, say, some multi-millionaire company owner. That's certainly not how it is in the UK and we seriously doubt that that is the case in Germany either. If you genuinely believe it is then we think you should really open your eyes and take a look around at how society works - perhaps enrolling in a basic sociology course wouldn't be a bad idea - you could try reading some Marx too. If you somehow think that "the rich" is equivalent to "the Jews" then that says more about what is going on in your own head than in ours. We would remind you again, as we said in another answer, of our response to those antisemitic pricks in Estonia who came out with precisely that sort of shit about "the Jews controlling the government and society and ruling the Estonian people"- we don't tolerate that kind of bullshit and will always stand against it head-on.

Bei eurem Auftritt in der KTS, nach dem es zu den Auftrittsverbot kam, habt ihr bei den meisten Liedern Ansagen über Israel gemacht. Zu den Themen Faschismus, Wehrdienst, Rassismus, die Sicherheitsmauer/Zaun... hat immer das Beispiel Israel hergehalten aber nie ein anderer Staat, in dem diese Dinge vorkommen. Denkst du nicht, dass du so den Hass einseitig schürst, anstatt zu differenziertem Nachdenken anzuregen?

You're exaggerating a bit here as we did not talk about Israel in relation to "den meisten" songs but yes, we did certainly mention Israel repeatedly so this would be a fair question if a band always repeatedly only mentioned Israel as if it was the only evil in the world - that would be ridiculous - and yes, it would make us wonder if they harboured some antisemitic prejudices too. That WOULD be a fair question were it not for the fact that you are totally ignoring the context in which this took place. When we arrived at the KTS for the concert we were given a tour round the place by one of the people there and in one of the rooms, in addition to some highly dubious stickers, we found a large number of home-made placards on sticks for some pro-Israel march that either had just taken place or was just about to happen. The slogans on these placards ranged from pro-Israeli military and occupation stuff to things like "Death to the Fascho-islamic Palestinians" or simply "Fuck the Palestinians". When we saw stuff like "Fuck the Palestinians" which to our mind is just total racist bullshit we got really fucking angry. We asked the guy showing us round what the fuck this was, if it was some kind of sick joke or what but he didn't really answer apart from saying he didn't really know and looked a bit sheepish and embarrassed. So we did exactly what we would have done if we'd found placards saying "Fuck the Jews" - we tore a bunch of them up on the spot. We then decided that when we got on stage we weren't going to stay silent about this unquestioning support of Israel that was seeming to degenerate into distinctly unpleasant anti-Arab racism of the type so widespread in society. From these slogans and some of the other literature that we found in KTS it was obvious that at least some elements using your centre seemed to have this totally one-sided view of the Israel/Palestine situation that was leading to this racist attitude so when we played we repeatedly mentioned the Israeli regime and its military policies to show that it's not the paragon of virtue that they seem to think it is and that they should take off the rose-tinted spectacles and see some of the very real and unpleasant failings that it has which, in our view, are not leading to peace in the Middle East. When doing this we also distinctly said that we were against antisemitism - and quite frankly the fact that you are saying that our comments were somehow "antisemitic" doesn't alter the fact that they most certainly were NOT. We also, of course, destroyed one of the placards onstage to illustrate our point and we guess that this is where all these stories about burning Israeli flags have come from.In hindsight we feel that it would have been better if it had been a "Fuck the Palestinians" placard that we had burnt but we had got so angry when we first saw that that we had just ripped up the offending cardboard on the spot as, we imagine, any decent person finding a "Fuck the Jews" placard would also have done. Naturally we do not place such an emphasis on Israel at other concerts - indeed it doesn't usually get mentioned very much at all at gigs - although if we're in some place where it is obvious there is a lot of the one-sided anti-German pro-occupation ideology around then we definitely will talk about it. We should also point out that prior to our visit to Freiburg, although we had Palestinian and Israeli friends and family connections to Israel as well as several band members having travelled to Israel and the neighbouring Arab countries so that we knew a fair amount about the situation, we didn't actually have ANY songs about Israel whatsoever - but our experiences in the KTS changed all that and inspired us to become really active on the issue,write about it and record and tour with anti-occupation Israeli punk band Nikmat Olalim and so on - so thanks a lot for that - you gave us the direct inspiration!

Anyway, we must also say that we find it extremely curious that you ignored this context of what we said at Freiburg last time since we have often talked about finding the racist "Fuck the Palestinians" stuff at KTS in interviews including in a couple that have been available to see online on German websites for several years now. You must have read this stuff because some of these questions that we've just answered are based on things you've quoted us saying in exactly these interviews. If you are so interested in the "balanced view" that you claim to want then it seems somewhat dishonest not to mention this. We also find it very disturbing that despite the fact that these placards were stored in your centre and there must have been a group of people who knew all about what was on them both during making, storage and use and that we have, as we said, often talked publicly about this, we have NEVER EVER seen any mention of the "Fuck the Palestians" stuff anywhere in any of the online discussion about that gig or our feelings on the Israel/Palestine issue - despite the fact that some of the criticism of us is clearly based on misinterpreted statements from these very same interviews. So, since we have been courteous enough to take the time to respond in detail to your questions to us we now have a few questions to you that we would ask you to be kind enough to answer for us. Thank you in advance and here they are:-

Who was the group responsible for producing these placards and are they still allowed to use KTS?Why was there no mention of sloganeering like "Fuck the Palestinians" in Koraktor in relation to this incident? Is this because that slogan is so common in your community that it is not particularly remarkable? Is it because a slogan like that doesn't bother any of you so that it is basically a non-issue? Was there a discussion about the use of slogans like this by users of KTS at any plenum? If not, why not? If so, what action was taken as result? If none was taken, why not?What is the current position of those involved in running KTS on the slogan "Fuck the Palestinians"? How many of you would stand in support of such a slogan?

Wie steht ihr generell zu Rassismus?

We - and a lot of other people - are very much looking forward to hearing your answers on this and we sincerely hope that you will condemn ALL forms of racism. We have to say that we were somewhat disturbed at the emphasis in some of your questions on "Islamic countries" when you asked, not about the oppression of homosexuals in general in countries around the world, but specifically in Islamic countries - sadly violent oppression of homosexuals is not limited to the Islamic world - there's plenty anti-gay violence in Christian countries like Serbia and Russia and institutionalised repression in places like Barbados where gay men face LIFE in prison or Jamaica where the sentence is ten years hard labour. Then again, if it is specifically the death penalty that concerns you why only the death penalty for homosexuality in Islamic countries - we oppose the death penalty for ANYTHING anywhere and we wouldn't ignore the big executing countries like China and the US where the state kills people "legally" just because they're not Islamic. Similarly your question about women's oppression again was directed only at "Islamic countries" when yet again sadly women's oppression is most certainly not limited to Moslem states. When taken together with the fact that these questions are coming from a place where people use such racist sloganeering as "Fuck the Palestinians" this indicates to us a rather disturbing mindset and an urgent need for some serious self examination and honest discussion at KTS about where exactly you stand on the issue of the sick anti-Arab racism so prevalent in society today.

We find it somewhat ironic that some of you are accusing us of bias and stirring up "hatred" when it is YOUR centre where we found the idiotic one-sided hate-filled racism of sloganeering like "Fuck the Palestinians". For our part, while we have legitimate criticisms of the Israeli regime and military, we would NEVER for a second tolerate an equivalent antisemitic slogan aimed at all Israelis or Jewish people. As we have previously said, we oppose any kind of antisemitism. That's why for instance we were involved in the Edinburgh Palestine Solidarity Group's campaign against the sick Holocaust denier David Irving when he planned to come to Edinburgh several years ago and why we were helping Irish activists against him only a few months ago when he planned to go there. That is also why, rather ironically, at the same time as certain "anti-German" activists in Germany were concentrating their time and energy on unsuccessfully getting our German winter tour a couple of years ago cancelled on the grounds of us being "antisemitic", we were in fact speaking out on this tour about - and encouraging action against - the planned Winter Solstice gathering of neo-nazis and Holocaust deniers in Germany at the infamous "Collegium Humanum" centre. It is a shame that instead of wasting their time on us, they weren't using their time and energy more constructively against these Holocaust deniers instead.

Alles zusammen ergibt für mich ein geschlossenes antisemitisches Weltbild - auch wenn ihr euch hinter der Maske des Antizionismus verstecken wollt.

Well, as you said, the purpose of these questions was to clear up misunderstandings and falsehoods so hopefully after having seen our position on antisemitism that we've made abundantly clear here and having been reminded of our previous statements - and indeed actions - against antisemitism you can see that you were mistakenly putting 2 and 2 together and making five. Once again thanks for the opportunity to clear this up. Communication is great and we look forward to working with the genuine people amongst you against the real enemy - the fascists. We'd also hope that this exchange would see a debate sparked at KTS about the kinds of people who have been using your centre, in particular those responsible for stuff like the racist "Fuck the Palestinians" sloganeering and that it will see an end to them being able to hide what looks disturbingly like crude anti-Arab racism behind the mask of somehow "fighting antisemitism".

Wishing you a lively and interesting plenum discussion!

Antifaschistische Gruesse aus Edinburgh

Oi Polloi

Das ist ja wie ein Wunder. Die Freiburger Antideutschen dürfen das gern als Niederlage verstehen. Das Auftrittsverbot in der KTS in Freiburg wurde in anderen Städten lange benutzt, weitere Auftrittsverbote zu verhängen und die Band in Misskredit zu bringen. Freu mich schon auf das Konzert und auf die interessierten Spitzel... ;)

dieser fragebogen zeigt leider auf fast schon amüsante weise wie es derzeit in der linken szene vor sich geht:

wir benutzen fragen um meinungen und die dahinter steckenden indivduen zu kategorisieren,einzuordnen und in schubladen zu verstauen.

warum fragen wir die band nicht gleich, wie sie zu rußland und dem kaukasus konflikt, zu bolivien und brasilien, zu gurken und tomaten steht.

ich bin sicher uns fällt bestimmt noch mehr ein um uns gegenseitig noch größere und schwerere steine in den weg zu rollen.

in freiburg zeigt sich leider deutlichst, was die welt so schwierig macht: wenn es keine gemeinsamen feinde gibt, tobt der krieg halt unter gleichgesinnten!

Hier von Niederlagen etc. zu sprechen schießt etwas über das Ziel hinaus. In der KTS wird normalerweise alles mögliche per Veot blockiert. Diese müssen nicht einmal begründet werden. Bei der Diskussion wurde versucht, auf Dialog zu setzen, was allerdings nicht wahrgenommen sondern als Schwäche ausgelegt wird. Hier liegt der eigentliche Skandal. Ob eine Drecksband mehr oder weniger in der KTS spielen, macht eigentlich keinen Unterschied. Wie damit umgegangen wird, jedoch schon. In der KTS sind nunmal unterschiedlichste Gruppen aktiv, da sind gegenseitige Eingeständnisse notwendig. Eine an einen Auftritt der Band gebundene Forderung nach einer Diskussion auf dem Pleum wurde nur unzureichend nachgekommen und diese in eine Zeit verschoben, in der sich viele nicht in Freiburg befinden, bzw. am Plenum beteiligen. Wenn nur noch Macht und Einfluss, politische Strategien und Intrigen eine Rolle spielen und die Frage, wer der/die Stärkere ist, dann hat das nichts mehr mit alternativer Politik zu tun, dann ist die Selbstverwaltung gescheitert.

OiPolloi, bzw. deren Anführer und Sänger, sind/ist schon seit Jahren nicht mehr ernst zu nehmen. Aber so ist das eben mit Punk-Ikonen, es wird immer genügend Blöde geben, die den Scheiss mitmachen (siehe Rubberslime, Daily Terror, etc. ) Wer die scheinbar einfachsten Lösungen parat hält, erhält den größten Zuspruch. War doch eigentlich schon immer so. Warum sollte "die Linke" was daran ändern, wenn doch so gemütlich ist?!

@Wer: Klar über Demos das Maul aufreißen auf denen du selbst nicht mal warst.Diese hat nämlich ganz klar gezeigt das die antideutsche Szene stark rückläufig ist. Und ihr anderen Fahnenliebhaber existiert doch sowieso hauptsächlich nur im Internet. Zum Glück denken viele Leute zu differenziert um auf eure Sektenscheisse reinzufallen. Aber im Internet kann mensch sich ja noch eigene Realitäten schaffen. Aus einer Demo bei der nach dutzenden schwarzroten und Antifafahnen am Ende noch 2,3 Nationalfahnenträger hinterher watscheln wird mit ein paar gezielten Schnappschüssen bei der Abschlusskundgebung der antideutsche Supergau gemacht. Toll für "beide Seiten". Die einen denken "Wir sind viele wir sind krass", die anderen finden mit der FAU noch ein Feindbild mehr.Kleiner Tipp: Geht doch einfach mal raus vor die Tür, da sieht alles gleich ganz anders aus

hallihallo !

Ich kann nicht besonders englisch und habe mir deshalb nur kurze teile der jeweiligen antworten von oi polloi durchgelesen.

deutlich ist wohl trotzdem geworden dass oi polloi antifaschistisch sind, nix gegen homosexualität hat und sogar antispeziesismus denken und texte schreiben. was soll dass das gerade solche bands auftrittsverbote bekommen ?

ist wohl klar dass nicht jeder mit allen meinung von oi polloi klarkommt aber das wird wohl mit vielen bands so sein.

ich glaube dass es gerade gegenüber skinheads noch total viele vorurteile in der "linken szene" gibt und dass sie gerade deshalb so krass kritisiert werden. niemand kann was mit diesen psydo-linken anfangen die versuchen erstmal alles zu kritisieren was ihnen fremd ist anstatt sich mal über das thema (in diesem zusammenhang einer band) zu informieren !

alerta und grüße aus lahr!

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