Sitting in the middle of it

[Skybird]

Next weekend, Neonazis will do a demonstration right in the place where I live. They will do so with official permission by the mayor and the police. Police has announced that they will start blocking the area from early morning on.

Now do not get me wrong, the district I live in is quite burgoise, anything but crowded with foreigners or Nazis alike, and many British families still living down my street, and in the vicinity, from 1st Batallion Yorkshire Regiment. simply nobody knows why the brown pest has decided to march here. Here is nothing of interst for them. It is far away from any media centres, communiction hotspots, monuments, history institutes, whatever. I assume the city told them to march here right in the middle of nowhere - or to f#ck the hell off. So they will do a pathetic little march of dwarfs, a pitiful 2 kilometers, one oval 360° right around the street I live in. Not in my street, but in the street next to mine in the north, the West, the South, and the East. And us sitting right in the middle of that oval, with plenty of police all around.

It's not that I am worried. Probably nothing much will happen. I have experienced much worse violence while being right on scene in my life, from police battles in Westberlin in the 80s over the Libyan terror bomb in Berlin in 86 to a Turkish artillery strike against the Kurds in the mid-90s. The one question that drives me around is simply this - what should I do?

I am not the typical demonstration guy. If it is worth it, you can have me for a real fight. But standing in the street, yelling and holding fists or posters into the air - that is something that makes me feel like an idiot. Childish in a way. So joining a counter demonstration is not my taste. Chances for civil disobedience or cheating the state are no option here either. Nor will I join a civil rights movement like I once did against a mosque over here.

I read that the few stores and services affected due to the marching route leading past their entrance doors, will not open on that day. All but one - a small supermarket, a discounter. I use to not go there, the vegetable often is old and their arrangement of goods is not the stuff I buy. They said that they will open, despite the fact that many of their staff are foreigners, and most of them women. On that day, they said, they will open nevertheless, but only male staff will be there, plus security.

I think next week I will do an exception from my rule, and go there, and if it is only a bottle of milk that I'll buy. To get there, I will need to cross right through the marching lane, and I will make sure my timing is right. Because what else is there to do? What else - except of maybe living your life as usual and not allowing this brown smelly stuff to effect it in any way, and by not allowing them to effect me, by showing them how meaningful they are for people's everydaylife - not any meaningful at all? Are they even worth to be taken note of? Being reported about in the press?

I dispise Neonazism as much as I dispise Scientology, Islam, Stalinism and the like. If i am lucky, one thug of theirs will try me and start a fight over the milk I just bought. Good opportunity to make him feel sorry when defending my milk.

Because that is the only message I have for Neonazis: even just a bottle of milk is more worth than any of you.

Nazis. Brown, smelly, slimey stuff. Bah.