Franco Frattini has called for a wider debate on totalitarian symbols
Posted on 02/08/2005 5:50:01 PM PST by RWR8189
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Franco Frattini has called for a wider debate on totalitarian symbols
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EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini said it would not be appropriate to include the red star and the hammer and sickle in a draft EU law on racism.
But he called for a wider debate on the use of totalitarian symbols.
A group of MEPs from the former communist bloc had urged a ban on Soviet symbols alongside Nazi ones.
In a letter to the European deputies, Mr Frattini said the Europe of today was united and free precisely because it had freed itself of the two great authoritarian regimes of the 20th Century - Nazism and communism.
They differed in their origin and fate, Mr Frattini added, but were similar in having slaughtered perfectly innocent people regarded as objective enemies.
'Unwise' move
While calling for a wide-ranging debate on Europe's past experience with extreme ideologies, the EU justice commissioner said it would not be appropriate to include a ban of Soviet communist symbols in a proposed Europe-wide law on racism and xenophobia.
His spokesman, Frisco Roscam Abbing, said it would be better to leave it to individual EU countries to ban specific symbols.
"I think it would be hard to explain and unwise if we tried to harmonise it at European level," Mr Abbing said.
 MEPs say the hammer and sickle is a reminder of a painful past
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He said EU citizens would find it difficult to understand such a ban, saying the case was one which would be best left to individual member states, under the principle of subsidiarity.
The draft law will be discussed by EU justice ministers on 24 February.
Until recently, it had been blocked by Italy, Mr Frattini's own country, whose government includes the National Alliance, a party which traces its roots to Italy's wartime fascists.
But the debate was reopened last month by a row over pictures showing Britain's Prince Harry wearing a German soldier's uniform with a swastika armband at a fancy-dress ball.
'Double standards'
Last week, several conservative Euro-MPs from the former communist bloc - led by former Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis and Hungarian Joszef Szajer - asked for communist symbols to be treated in the same way as Nazi ones.
They said it would show that Europe condemns on equal terms the evils of communism and Nazism.
They agreed, however, that any pan-European ban could be construed as an infringement of freedom of speech and might be better left to national governments.
Germany has banned the public display of Nazi symbols, while some new EU members, like Hungary, have bans on both fascist and communist symbols.
But despite the EU's recent embrace of its former communist neighbours, views on recent history still differ.
Some centre-right MEPs went as far as to accuse Western politicians of double standards, not only in dealing with the past, but also with present-day communist regimes.
The group said they opposed EU moves to ease sanctions on Cuba and plans to lift an arms embargo against China.
As unpleasant as some symbols are, even the repugnant crescnent moon, I'll still say it's a bad idea to try and ban them.
"W" and the Congress should seriously reconsider all of our treaty agreements with these pitiful people.
The difference is that there are probably only a few thousand nazi sympathizers, but there are millions of commies.
ban it? I am surprised they have not ADOPTED it!
In my opinion, they should not ban ANY symbols. Let people learn from their history and draw their own conclusions instead of forcing rules on them what they can and cannot look at and what symbols are "evil". Outlawing symbols is just going to make them become more popular.
Maybe just a little help from the USA?
Don't be so sure.
Its a pretty open secret or common knowledge, that europe fears if they allowed Nazi parties to exist again, they may actually win elections, and its possible, come into power somewhere.
Its hard not to be frightened of a nation or union, where a party and its ideas, while repulsive, need to be banned, lest they spread and rise.
Europeans may hate Nazi symbols, but I don't think they have ever totally rejected every part of the Nazi idea and platform, just look at the raging anti-semitism.
They must like their "Che" Guevara t-shirts in the EU.
I wonder if the NAZI symbol ban covers the Asian sun symbol which Hitler lifted and reversed to make the Nazi symbol.
Le Pen's party in France sounds like a throwback to the Vichy government as well.
The difference may be in the collective guilt that Europe still feels about the Nazi and fascist movements, while communist parties are still alive and well. The fact that the communists killed more people than the Nazis is conveniently ignored.
In theory, it shouldn't, since they are different symbols, but these people are not prone to logic or rational thought, so probably or at least in error though somone would complain that any nazi group could or would co-op the sign.
BTTT
Commies and Nazis are the SAME thing!
Nazi is short for National Socialist Worker's Party.
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system
for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries,
with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and
property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all
determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
--Adolf Hitler, May 1 1927
"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on
those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National
Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from
radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also
applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on
other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been
strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and
interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all
building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year
with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the
Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized
agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."
(Source: Time Magazine; Jaunuary 2, 1939.)
"The Fuhrer is deeply religous, though completely anti-Christian. He views
Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish
race... Both [Judaism and Christianity] have no point of contact to the
animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed. The Fuhrer is
a convinced vegetarian, on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any
serious basis. They are totally unanswerable."
---Joeseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
Even as late as February 5, I941, Adolf Hitler boasted in a speech that,
"basically, National Socialism and Communism are the same." [The Nazi high
command was, of course, riddled with Communist agents. See Walter Goerlitz,
History Of The German General Staff, Praeger Inc., New York, 1953.]
Don't forget that they were on the same side, and invaded Poland together. After WWII was over, some Nazis even went to work for the commies in East Germany.
What else was a part of Hitler's agenda?
Anti-Tobacco
Pro-Animal Rights (Hitler was a vegetarian)
Pro-Gun control
Pro-Abortion
Pro-Euthanasia
Anti Christian/Jew
Hmm, that mirrors the left's agenda!
Hitler was a leftist:
http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/
Don't forget, Saddam was a socialist too (Ba'ath Socialist Party) and loved Stalin.
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