#horst wessel

[er1chartmann]

The Myth of Horst Wessel

Who was Horst Wessel?

Horst Wessel was a German soldier and member of the Nazi Party. He is best known for composing the lyrics of a song which, shortly after his death, became the party anthem, the Horst-Wessel-Lied.

His assassination provoked a nationwide reaction from the NSDAP, Goebbels took advantage of this to exploit the event and transform the dead man into a martyr for the National Socialist cause

He was celebrated even years after his death and Goebbels continued to use his figure as propaganda.

These are some photos of one of these celebrations on January 22, 1933, shortly before the Nazis took power in Germany:

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in Berlin at the grave of Horst Wessel in the Nikolaifriedhof

Adolf Hitler in Berlin at the ceremony for Horst Wessel in the Nikolaifriedhof with Joseph Goebbels and Prinz Auwi (the Kaiser’s son)

[kriegsabstieg]

[deutschland-im-krieg]

Italian Fiat G.50 Freccia (Arrow) fighter and Messerschmitt Bf 110D-2 (3U+CS) of 8./ZG 26 Horst Wessel in flight, North Africa, 1941. Note large drop tanks on the Bf 110. For more, see my Facebook group - Eagles Of The Reich

[skulldozer]

Corey Comperatore is the Republican's Horst Wessel

[marinetti-dinner-party]

Getting into bonkers pan-Turanism because their music EATS

[opheliaintherushes]

That "is your fave author a Jew...sorry a 'Zionist'" list is hilarious, because 1) step a toe into the wide world of reading books by authors who have no use for you! Now you know what it's like to be a Jew! 2) Salman Rushdie?! Amazing.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Horst Wessel Song, anthem of the Nazi Party

German vintage postcard

[castilestateofmind]

Verdi’s Requiem: “Dies irae”. Herbert von Karajan.

[queersatanic]

Satanic Temple co-founder "Lucien Greaves" talks about high school bullying as Nazi national anthem plays

Via The.Satanic.Wiki

On Sept. 11, 2003, future co-owner of The Satanic Temple Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko, his friend and collaborator Shane Bugbee, and Shane Bugbee’s wife Amy Stocky hosted a 24-hour Internet radio stream with guests and callers to mark the release of their new edition of the proto-fascist manifesto Might Is Right. The following year, Doug Misicko continued to appear on Internet radio streams with Shane and Amy. “The ABCs of the Alphabet” was one such program. This is an excerpt from one of those recordings.

CW: n-word slur, fascism, arson, bullying, fatphobia, ableism

Full transcript:

24:47 Doug Misicko 

I once lit a pep assembly on fire, and I did not get expelled for it. All those people! I used to get in trouble for most everything I did, and I thought it wasn't fair. And then I was sitting at this boring pep rally because they caught me trying to leave. And there's a big paper banner, and I just lit it on fire. The thing went up. [German marching music starts playing] And I thought, "Oh shit, it's all over." But they put it out and they never figured it out. And apparently nobody saw me do it. (Amy Bugbee: Wow, you never got caught?) It was the most amazing thing I never got caught for... (Shane Bugbee: I love it.) But speaking about whacking you on the head with a big book or whatever. There was a- in my high school...

25:27 Shane Bugbee 

Doug, you don't mind I'm playing "Hitler Youth" songs underneath you, do you? (Doug Misicko: No, it's fine.) It's a good march there. We got four minutes.

25:34 Doug Misicko 

Maybe I can tell a story then. (Shane Bugbee: Marching, Doug, like this. [goose-stepping noises]) In high school I used to have a swim class first hour. Yeah? And this was when I was like, yeah-

25:42 Shane Bugbee 

He's like saying that because I get high. And then I, in high school. I always, if we had if you had swim class first period, that means you could roast bowls — yes, I'm stuck in the Eighties — all day. And you could just say, "I had a swimming class first period." Ha-ha, ha-ha.

25:58 Doug Misicko 

And chlorine made you bloodshot, right? (Shane Bugbee: Yeah.) But anyways- I didn't do that. But, we had this stupid teacher in the class who would sit in his office, and then we're all supposed to not get in the pool. "Don't get in the pool until he comes out and takes attendance," which was us lining up and calling off a number. Every fucking morning we get there. And there's this fat kid, Jeremy something.

26:19 Shane Bugbee 

Hey. That's like saying "[n-slur]" in front of a Black guy. I'm fat. You can use, the "rotund".

26:25 Doug Misicko 

Right- (laughing) Pleasant- pleasantly plump lad. Every morning. Every morning, the dumb shit wouldn't figure it out. This kid would walk out, we throw him in the pool. He'd splash around screaming yelling and the teacher would come out and yell at him every time he said (shouting) "JEREMY! GET OUT OF THERE!" (laughter) But it happened Every. Single. Morning. They were both so stupid. (shouting) "JEREMY! GET OUT OF THERE!" (laughter) ...High school was all provoking people and getting in fights.

26:57 Shane Bugbee 

High School was all about gettin' high.

26:59 Amy Bugbee 

Yeah, high school was all about getting high, and not going.

[ltwilliammowett]

Ship's cat in a compass case on board the sail training ship Horst Wessel (1936), later USCG Eagle WIX-327 (1946)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Nine people died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that Republicans pretend was a "normal tourist visit." Four rioters and five police officers lost their lives during the attack or in its immediate aftermath, in ways that likely would not have happened but for the Capitol riot. This death toll is rarely discussed in the media coverage of the attack, likely because journalists don't want to argue with gaslighting fascists who want to get into bad faith debates about whether the assault "caused" the heart attacks and suicides that took lives. But there is one death that no one can deny was due to Jan. 6: That of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon-believing insurrectionist who was shot by a Capitol police officer as she attempted to lead a charge of rioters to run down fleeing members of Congress.

Instead of erasing her death in their efforts to pretend the riot was "peaceful," Donald Trump and his goons have turned the 36-year-old conspiracy theorist into a MAGA martyr. As with much of Trump's campaign antics, it calls back to the tactics of the Nazis, who turned a murdered scumbag named Horst Wessel into a fallen fascist hero honored in iconography and song. Babbitt is even easier to prop up as a sympathetic figure, she was both pretty and female.

Trump in particular likes to get maudlin, calling Babbitt an "innocent, wonderful, incredible woman." He also spent months demonizing the Capitol police officer, Michael Byrd, who was forced to shoot Babbitt that day. (Byrd's actions have been exonerated through multiple investigations, though anyone who has seen the footage of the shooting can see he had no choice.) Trump has suggested Byrd should face extra-legal execution, complaining, "if that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung." It's language that should remind us that his "bloodbath" talk is both serious and literal.

So really, it should be bigger news that recently released testimony from a White House valet shows that Trump's reaction when told about Babbitt's death was utter indifference. It's buried in a New York Times report on this recently released transcript of an interview the anonymous valet did with the House committee investigating Jan. 6. The Times reporters are more focused on the valet's recollections of how Trump told his vice president, Mike Pence, that it would be "a political career killer" if Pence refused to steal the election for him. In passing, however, they also mention Trump did not care about Babbitt's killing — and the timeline suggests he understood perfectly well at the time that Babbitt was to blame for her own death.

As the transcript shows, the investigator asked the valet about a note that was given to Trump, shortly after the shooting, informing him that "1X civilian gunshot wound to chest at door of House Chamber." The valet affirmed that he saw Trump with the note, and that they also knew of the killing because it was being reported on cable news, which Trump was watching avidly throughout the riot.

"But there was no, like, reaction" to the news, the valet explained. Trump said nothing. But shortly after being informed, he did send out a tweet telling the insurrectionists "to remain peaceful, no violence," and to "[r]espect the law and our great men and women in blue."

Everyone understands — and understood at the time — that the tweet was just a CYA measure from Trump, who stubbornly refused for hours to ask the rioters to chill out, despite drinking in all the violent images on TV. But that he issued it after being told a supporter of his was shot makes it all the more clear that his main focus at the time was disavowing responsibility for the violence he fomented.

That Trump did not actually care about Babbitt's death, outside of fears that it made him look bad, is not a surprise to most Salon readers, journalists, or anyone who is honest about Trump's utter lack of morality. Perhaps this is why this revelation isn't getting more press attention. There's a tendency in the jaded press to assume "everyone" knows that Trump has never in his life cared about anyone but himself. But not all voters know that Trump is for-real sociopathic, and they may be surprised to find he reacted to a deluded woman dying for him like normal people react to stepping on an ant.

But this should be a huge story. Trump is making his phony concern about the fates of the January 6 insurrectionists the centerpiece of his campaign. He opens his rallies with elaborate ceremonies to honor the rioters, characterizes them as "hostages" and "unbelievable patriots," and promises pardons for people convicted of assaulting police and seditious conspiracy. He pretends to care about these people to valorize his selfish efforts to overthrow democracy. His feigned love of them is also about keeping up morale among the nastier members of the MAGA movement because Trump unsubtly expects them to use violence on his behalf again.

Trump's exploitation of Babbitt's is also part of a larger habit of faking outrage over imaginary threats to innocent white womanhood from dark-skinned men. Trump loves to brag that "I protect women," which is a lie like most words that come out of his face. But he definitely likes to share his elaborate fantasies of men of color raping and killing white women. That goes back to his 2015 campaign kickoff when he said Mexicans were "rapists." He has falsely declared that, because of immigration, "women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before." He's recently been hyping the murder of Laken Riley, a Georgia woman who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant.

Trump's lurid obsession with violence against women is dishonest on two levels. First, he's lying about the racial dynamics of gendered violence. Most men who sexually abuse, beat or kill women target those they know, and who are usually of the same race. It's not the dark-skinned strangers lurking in bushes of Trump's imagination. Trump knows this personally, as nearly all the over two dozen women who have come out with stories of being sexually abused by him are white women who met him through normal work and social situations.

Thus, Trump not only doesn't care about violence against women, he's a big fan of it. He bragged about sexually assaulting women on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. A New York jury found he did sexually assault journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 90s. He's repeatedly used the word "fortunately" when asked if he thinks rich men have the privilege of sexually assaulting whomever they wish. Over and over, Trump goes out of his way to defend other men who are accused of sexual harassment or abuse.

Babbitt's death is an outlier in the sense that she was the person at fault and gender had nothing to do with it. Still, Trump talks about her with the same tones of fake outrage he brings when exploiting the deaths and rapes of genuine victims. Pretending to suddenly care about violence against women when it suits his political needs is doubly gross, given Trump's otherwise lengthy record of cheerleading for gendered violence. But the mainstream media tends to avoid contrasting his pretend views on this issue with the substantial real-world evidence that he has no problem with violence against women.

The Babbitt case is especially egregious because, ultimately, her death is his fault. If Trump hadn't spun up ordinary people with lies about a "stolen" election, she wouldn't have been in the Capitol, foolishly dying for a man who does not care about her. That he's now using her corpse as a campaign prop is disgusting. Most MAGA voters will refuse to see this, of course, or make false claims that "all" politicians do it. But if they knew how little he cared, maybe a few would wake up and see that Trump would happily let them all die for him.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 14 January 1930, communist gangster Albrecht "Ali" Höhler shot Horst Wessel, a unit leader of Berlin's Nazi stormtroopers (SA), who died as a result of his injuries on February 23. Höhler was a member of the German Communist Party's paramilitary organisation the Roter Frontkämpferbund (League of Red Front Fighters). After his death, Wessel was raised to the position of martyr by the Nazis, while Höhler was sentenced to six years in jail for manslaughter, only to be dragged out and murdered once the Nazis came to power. Pictured: Ali Höhler. We have items featuring artwork by 1930s German anti-fascists in our online store available to help fund our work: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/anti-fascist To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2186012238250581/?type=3

[kriegsabstieg]

Adolf Hitler in Berlin at the ceremony for Horst Wessel in the Nikolaifriedhof with Joseph Goebbels and Prince Auwi

[er1chartmann]

Hitler’s Special Train

These are some facts and curiosities about Hitler's special train:

The train was originally named Führersonderzug "Amerika", purportedly because Hitler wanted to pay homage to the European conquest of the Americas.

After Germany declared war on the United States, on December 11, 1941 the train was renamed to the Führersonderzug "Brandenburg"

It was a fortress on rails that served as Hitler’s mobile headquarters for confidential meetings with Pétain, Mussolini and Franco.

While the best Nazi engineers built the super train, it was Hitler himself that designed the luxurious interior of his special train.

Otto Dietrich indicates that the Flakwagen never had to be used when Hitler was travelling. The "Pressewagen" was to receive and release press reports, not for journalists.

In late April 1945, Hitler ordered his aide and adjutant Julius Schaub to travel to Austria to destroy the Führersonderzug.

The train also had flak batteries mounted on flatcars at the front and rear of the train. 

Hitler had a few iconic pieces of transportation, from a famous Mercedes to the SSS Horst Wessel sailing vessel, but his headquarters train was one of the most famous during the war.

Sources:

Wikipedia: Hitler's special train

This article

I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM,FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST

[theworldatwar]

German Bf 110’s of Zerstorergeschwader 26 ‘Horst Wessel’ in front of Mount St Giullano - Trapani, Sicily, exact date unknown

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Spotify has removed Mohammed Assaf’s Palestinian resistance hit “Dammi Falastini” from its streaming service.

No explanation has been given, but we know damn well it’s not because of antisemitism.

Firstly, Dammi Falastini has absolutely no remotely antisemitic or violent content.

Secondly, Spotify DOES still offer multiple versions of “Horst Wessel Lied/Die Fahne Hoch” - a famous Nazi march. Including one performed by what appears to be a white supremacist band.

Read more here: