The UK Independent reports Feb. 14 that over 5,000 neo-Nazis swarmed the official 60th anniversary commemoration of the Allied bombardment of Dresden, effectively "hijacking" the event in the east German city. Bused in from all over Germany, they overwhelmed the proceedings outside the rebuilt Semper Opera House, which had been destroyed in the bombing. They violated German law by singing the Nazi-era national anthem. It was the largest Nazi rally in Germany since the fall of the Third Reich.

A cordon of riot police with water cannons separated the crowd from a group of anti-fascist protestors (who apparently used counter-productively self-hating slogans like "No Tears for Krauts"). Under the slogans "Dresden: not forgotten, not forgiven," "Anglo-American bomb terror" and "bomb holocaust," the neo-Nazis engaged in a perverse twist on the usual Holocaust revisionism, claiming that 350,000 had been killed in the bombing of Dresden, rather than the officially-accepted 35,000.

Holger Apfel, leader of the deceptively-named National Democratic Party (NPD)--which won seats in the Saxony state parliament in Dresden last October despite efforts to have it banned as the successor to the Nazi Party--denounced the Americans and British as "mass murderers and gangsters."

"They have left a trail of blood that stretches from Dresden to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and possibly Iran," Apfel told the crowd to enthusiastic applause and chants of "murderers." He added: "We must not allow Germany to become the accomplice of American gangster policy."

Gee, sound good, eh? Are the idiot leftists who line up behind any anti-Americanism, no matter how reactionary, going to jump on Herr Apfel's bandwagon too?