The Rapid City Journal reprints an article from the Exberliner about the awkward freedom-of-speech case of Yankton Sioux artist Robert Packard. We can't call it a First-Amendment case, because world-traveling Packard isn't in the U.S.; he's in Germany, where he's been convicted of hate speech for giving a Nazi salute.
Packard has lived in Berlin for 15 years. He used to enjoy the hospitality of a local artists' group that gave him free sculpting and living space. But as Packard tells it, the relationship went sour a couple years ago:
In May 2013, Packard says, the provocations culminated in some of the Vorstand members destroying the two-metre wide medicine wheel he had installed in the courtyard of the building, tearing the sacred sculpture out of the ground, even driving over it. “This was a religious altar, which I prayed at every day. They knew exactly what it meant to me,” says Packard.
Later that day, the dispute escalated: “Backed up against the wall, in a corner in my studio, I told them they were acting like fascists, like Nazis. And I raised my hand in a Hitler salute and said 'Sieg Heil!'” [Seymour Gris, "Sioux Indian Found Guilty of Nazi Salute," Exberliner, 2014.07.18]
Nazi salutes are illegal in Germany. Packard's penalty: 300 euros or 90 hours of community service. Legal fees drained his wallet, his conviction cost him a job, and he's relying on friends for food and couch space.
Gordon Howie's obscure and obtuse blog sidekick Brad Ford thinks the headline here is that Packard won't accept welfare and calls Packard a Reagan disciple advocating less government. Go there if you want, but Ford has screwed his ideological lenses onto his head so tightly that he can't see straight.
The primary question here is whether Packard's expression deserves punishment. We can question Packard's punishment on two levels. Working within German law, we could argue that the intent of anti-Nazi laws is to prevent hateful expressions of support for the evil with which Germany forever stained itself. Packard was not hailing Hitler's victories or urging his hosts to install the Fourth Reich. Packard was telling his associates to stop acting like Nazis. When the outlawed speech actually upholds the spirit of the law, should the speech be punished?
The broader question, of course, is whether Germany's anti-Nazi laws are justified. Packard would face no legal penalty, regardless of his intent, for his expression here in South Dakota. Various scum parade down our streets waving swastikas and the symbol of our own history-staining treason, the Confederate Stars and Bars, and democracy and civil rights survive and march on.
But culture matters. Nazi expressions in America don't carry the same potency that they do in Germany. Nazi expressions in Germany lured a civilized nation into devastating a continent and murdering millions of innocent non-combatants. Is a nation with such an awful history entitled to take extreme measures to douse any lingering embers of fascism?
Perhaps there is an analogy to alcohol (which, interestingly, Packard says partly provoked his conflict with the artists' group: he says they harassed him for being a teetotaler). It's o.k. for you to have a drink, but the alcoholic has to say no. If a woman gets drunk, smashes her things, and hurts her family, she's allowed to say, "No hooch in my house. None. Ever."
Are Nazi expressions a sort of alcohol, a historical poison that Germans should purge from their bloodstreams and never reintroduce in even the smallest dose? Or must historical shame and fear take a back seat to our fundamental freedom to say even those things current prevailing opinion deems vile?
Related Reading: A July 29 Exberliner article discuss the complicated relationship of Germans with American Indians. Rachel Glassberg discusses a Wild West theme park in Brandenburg where Germans dress up as American Indians. Apparently there are thousands of Germans who participate in pow-wows. German-Cherokee-Apache writer and counselor Red Haircrow suggests this cultural appropriation has connections to the Nazi Holocaust:
Even in the case of well-meaning, educated enthusiasts like Stahl, Haircrow rhetorically asks, “Why, if you have your own culture, would you feel the need to go into someone else’s?” The question practically answers itself. Many German folk traditions remain off-limits till this day by their association to the Nazi past; German folk dances, for example, virtually disappeared during post-war de-Nazification.
Perhaps there is in the Germans a further desire to identify with an exotic people who were themselves the victims of genocide – whom Karl May had already mythologised as being heroic, natural and pure [Rachel Glassberg, "Cowboys and Indianer," Exberliner, 2014.07.29].
What a strange, sad story. I have always heard from people that have traveled Europe that Germany was one of the ones noted to be the unfriendliest. It seems like there should be more to this story. He shouldn't have been charged, and the 'nazis' that damaged his medicine wheel should have. Smells like racism to me.
Nazi-era salutes and proclamations said in Germany are akin in the US to shooting, "fire!" in a crowded theater. Free speech is conditional for good reasons.
When I think of the genocide committed by our government against the Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, it helps me understand the thinking behind objections to particular language and behaviors, such as the current controversy about the Washington "Redskins" name and the behavior of the teams "mascots." If the story accurately portrays the context in which Packard acted, however, I would think that he did not deserve either arrest or punishment.
The first question I have is did Mr. Packard have permission to set up his "alter" in a public common use area (courtyard) area? If he had kept his alter within his apartment, would it have been destroyed?
Is it any different if I set up personal alter for me to worship at inside the Falls Park area without permission? I know that if I were to put up an alter in the outside common area (or even in the common use hallway,) of the apartment complex where I live, it would be removed and/or destroyed within hours. Is that infringing on my free speech right?
If I set up my alter at Falls Park, I have no doubts that there would be protests, and it would most likely to be destroyed.
If I were to start screaming all kinds of profanity in public to protest the destruction of my alter, could I be arrested for being a public nuisance? Would my arrest be justified?
Good questions JeniW. Would shouting heil hitler with the salute be the equivalent of disturbing the peace in the US?
Then you report it to the city if you want to question a display not having permission. You don't destroy it.
The impact the wild west shows in Germany and other European countries had has always interested me. The tribal elders would tell how some Indians died on these tours and were buried in faraway lands.
There were also the stories of many from different tribes that remained in Europe at the shows end. They stayed, married and started a new life.
It was from these events and the German pow-wows that we often heard that "Germans like Indians". Even after the wild west shows, you will often hear of various Native dance groups going on tour in Germany and Europe.
In our country we see the tea party and other fringe groups use Nazi techniques in an attempt to place fear and threaten American minorities.
Which brings me to my question, are there still Nazi fringe groups operating in Germany, if there are still Nazi faithful in America, are there still those believers in Germany?
John has an interesting observation. What if a theater was filled with open carry loonies and there really was a fire would whoever yells fire have to make a clear distinction between a noun and a verb?
Yes Roger, there are still Nazi factions in Germany as well as fascist factions in Spain and Italy to name a few. Of course Italy was one of the partners with Germany in World War II while Spain did send a division of troops there as volunteers called the Azul Division or Blue Division in English.
Hate and racism run rampant in Israel as well so no matter where you go, you are here.
The irony of ironies is that the swastika, the very symbol of Nazism actually is a peace sign that has been around for centuries. If you have ever been in the Hotel Alex Johnson in Rapid City you can view them at your leisure while getting your room, just look up and all around that area there with no fear of a sieg heil or anything. There is also a bar on the same floor where you can go and have a few shots of Jagermeister. Be careful though, if you have to many of them, you might fall down looking up at those symbols
I wonder if there is a continent, outside of Antarctica, where some version of Nazis do not exist? There are many Nazi groups in this country. I saw that grotesque confederate flag in the Black Hills on a little forest service road. That was in the early 90s. There used to be one flying from a house along I 90 near the Black Hawk exit from the north in the 00s. Shame.
Deb,
As you may know, the Sturgis bike rally has kicked off this weekend. You'd be surprised to see the number of bikers and other vehicles flying the confederate flag as well as the Nazi swastika.