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Germans bought an entire town's beer supply before a white supremacist music festival

The town people and local courts worked together to dry the Nazis out.

via Polizei Sachsen/Twitter

German police at a white supremacist music festival.

If you're a white supremacist, I imagine drinking beer (or any other alcoholic beverage) is a nice way to relax and tune out the fact that you're a terrible person who's helping set human progress back at a rate the bubonic plague would be proud of. But for some self-professed white supremacists, it wasn't quite so easy on a June weekend in Germany back in 2019.

According to Newsweek, the hundreds of neo-Nazis who flocked to the "Shield and Sword Festival" in Ostritz found themselves uncomfortably dry when a court imposed a liquor ban at their gathering of hateful bigots who also like to listen to awful music together. The ban's aim was to prevent any violence that might erupt (you know it would...), and the police confiscated more than a thousand gallons of alcohol from those attending the weekend-long event. They even posted pictures on Twitter of the alcohol they'd removed from participants.

But that's only half the story.


"The alcohol ban at the meeting/event site of the Neo-Nazi meeting in Ostritz has been consistently enforced by our forces since yesterday," the force tweeted on June 22. "Alcoholic beverages are taken off before entering the premises."

Residents of the town of Ostritz, who've had to deal with the bigots before (they threw the same festival last year on Hitler's birthday), knew that the ban wouldn't stop the festival-goers from trying to obtain more alcohol while in town. So the townspeople got together a week before the festival and devised a plan which would truly make the white supremacists focus on how terrible neo-Nazi music is: They bought up the entire town's beer supply.


"We wanted to dry the Nazis out," Georg Salditt, a local activist, told reporters. "We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we'll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket]."

"For us it's important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won't tolerate this, who say 'we have different values here, we're setting an example..." an unidentified local woman told ZDF Television.


At the same time the festival was going on, residents also staged two counter-protests and put on a "Peace Festival" that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the local soccer team to drive home the point that bigotry wasn't welcome. If the festival is held in the same town again next year, ticket-buyers should be aware that Ostritz isn't playing around when it says that white supremacists aren't welcome.

Michael Kretschamer, the local state premier, applauded the efforts of the locals and state officials. "I am very impressed with how in such a small town…the citizens stand up to make it clear that right-wing extremists are not wanted here," Kretschmer told the DPA news agency.

There's some good news, too: Aside from the fact that residents aren't afraid to send the message that they're intolerant of intolerance, attendance to the far-right music festival has drastically decreased in the past year. In 2018, 1,200 people attended, according to the BBC. This year? Approximately 500-600. Here's hoping the festival won't have a return engagement next year.

This article originally appeared six years ago.

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A major university in the South just removed its Confederate statues overnight.

Bravo, Texas.

The University of Texas at Austin quietly removed four campus statues honoring the Confederacy on Aug. 21, 2017.

Monuments of generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, as well as Confederate politician John Reagan and Texas' 20th governor, Stephen Hogg, were hauled off campus overnight, just 10 days before fall classes start, The New York Times reported.

Preserving history is important, university president Greg Fenves said in a statement, but the symbolism behind those statues "run counter to the university’s core values."

"We do not choose our history," Fenves said. "But we choose what we honor and celebrate on our campus."

The university's swift decision comes amid a growing movement to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces.

Last week in Tampa, Florida, donations poured in to move a Confederate monument from the city's downtown area. Organizers had 30 days to raise adequate funding to get the job done — they raised it in 24 hours.

The day before that, news broke that Baltimore removed all four of its Confederate monuments in a span of hours. The University of Texas followed in the city's footsteps, taking action in the dead of night.

[rebelmouse-image 19528495 dam="1" original_size="750x872" caption="Workers place statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on trucks in Baltimore. Photo by Alec MacGillis/AFP/Getty Images." expand=1]Workers place statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on trucks in Baltimore. Photo by Alec MacGillis/AFP/Getty Images.

The push to remove Confederate monuments follows the deadly protest by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in reaction to the city's decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. A believed far-right terrorist allegedly murdered counter-protester Heather Heyer with his car, injuring at least 19 others in the attack. Those events pushed the University of Texas to act.

In his statement, Fenves touched on a vital point about many Confederate monuments that often gets glossed over in the debate surrounding their relevance in today's society: Those statues aren't so much about honoring history as they are about upholding racism.

“Erected during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation, the statues [at UT-Austin] represent the subjugation of African Americans," Fenves explained. "That remains true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and bigotry.”

Most Confederate statues, like the ones in Austin, were constructed with less than admirable intentions several decades after the Civil War.

The Civil War ended in 1865, yet the bulk of Confederate monuments were erected between 1890 and 1940, according to a the Southern Poverty Law Center. Another surge in statue construction occurred during the civil rights era of the 1960s.

A worker measures the Jefferson Davis monument in New Orleans ahead of its removal in May 2017. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Most of the new monuments coincided with "the height of Jim Crow, of state-sanctioned segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching," Purdue University history professor Caroline Janney explained to Business Insider. Their construction wasn't so much to preserve history as it was to assert white supremacy in prominent public spaces.

"The fact that they were placed on the grounds of county and state courthouses was intentional," Karen L. Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, told the Tampa Bay Times. "The message: white men are in charge."

To be clear, there absolutely should be a place for learning about the Civil War and Confederate leaders.

But it should probably be in classrooms and libraries — not via monuments that idolize the men who fought to uphold slavery.

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Jimmy Kimmel appealed directly to Trump voters during his monologue.

It's a bold plan, but it might just work.

The third time wasn't the charm for President Donald Trump when it came to addressing what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend.

People across the political spectrum were stunned with what amounted to a full-throated defense of white nationalists. The New York Post's John Podhoretz called it "horrifying," CNN's Chris Cillizza warned that the speech signaled that Trump's presidency could be "headed to a very dark place," and a number of Republican members of Congress publicly distanced themselves from the president after his impromptu press conference in the Trump Tower lobby.

Also, it's not a reporter's job to say something was "nice." Come on, man. GIFs from Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube.

Late night talk show hosts once again got in on the action of criticizing Trump's comments, but Jimmy Kimmel took a somewhat unique approach.

He began with what we all know: that Trump is volatile and at times, can seem "unhinged." He got in some substantial criticism of Trump's comments, such as Trump's claim that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville protest.

"If you're with a group of people chanting things like, 'Jews will not replace us!' and you don't immediately leave that group, you are not a 'very fine person,'" Kimmel said.

That's when Kimmel pivoted, choosing not to simply preach to the choir of "smug, annoying liberals," but instead addressing Trump voters directly.

"I get it. I actually do," he said, offering empathy for people who felt so disaffected by the political system in the U.S. that they just wanted to "shake this Etch-a-Sketch hard and start over" with a political neophyte like Trump. But what does not make sense is why so many are continuing to stick by his side.

Since taking office, Trump's threatened a number of countries via Twitter, called the media the "enemy," skirted nepotism laws, launched a bogus "voter fraud" investigation, repeatedly confused the concept of health insurance with life insurance, divulged classified information to the Russians during an Oval Office meeting, endorsed police brutality, and so much more.

This probably isn't what Trump voters actually voted for, and Kimmel gets that. He urged Trump voters to "treat the situation like you would if you'd put 'Star Wars' wallpaper in the kitchen: 'All right, I got caught up. I was excited. I made a mistake, and now it needs to go.'"

Trump voters: your voices matter, especially right now. He needs to hear from you.

Urge him to take the job seriously. This is not a vanity project to earn him praise. People's lives are at stake.

But if appealing to vanity is the only way to get through to him, well, Kimmel has a tongue-in-cheek solution to that as well: King Trump.

The whole segment is great and is worth a watch by everyone across the political spectrum. We're all in this together.

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Watch Zendaya’s powerful Teen Choice speech in the wake of Charlottesville.

About 2,500 miles stood between the bright lights of Hollywood and the flickering candles at vigils in Charlottesville, Virginia, when Zendaya took the stage at the Teen Choice Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday.

The horrors of the weekend still wore heavy on the hearts of many in attendance, and Zendaya, who has never shied away from speaking her mind, didn't let her moment go to waste.

Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

The 20-year-old star won "Choice Summer Movie Actress" for her role in "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and used her acceptance speech to encourage young people to stand up for what's right.

“'Spider-Man' is about a young person," Zendaya began. "And so right now I want to talk to all the young people in the audience."

She continued (emphasis added):

"With all the injustice and the hatred and everything that is happening — not only in the world, but in our country — right now I need for you young people, I need you guys to be educated, I need you to listen, I need you to pay attention, and I need you to go ahead and understand that you have a voice and it is OK to use it when you see something bad happening."

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

Zendaya wasn't alone in her call to action. While no one specifically mentioned Charlottesville, a number of Teen Choice attendees alluded to the atrocities that happened there over the weekend and promoted hopeful messages of unity, including "Black-ish's" Yara Shahidi and Fifth-Harmony's Lauren Jauregui.

Their messages were ones Americans needed to hear.

The Teen Choice Awards aired as the country was still reeling from unconscionable acts of bigotry and violence.  

On Aug. 11, horrifying images of hundreds of white nationalists marching on the University of Virginia, burning torches in hand, went viral across Facebook and Twitter.

The following day, a "Unite the Right" conference in Charlottesville turned deadly, as alleged white supremacist James Fields ran over a crowd of protesters in his vehicle, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

President Trump's initial response to the violence and Heyer's death was ... not reassuring.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides," the president said on Aug. 12, doubling down on the idea that "many sides" are to blame. "It's been going on for a long time in our country. ... This has been going on for a long, long time."

Notably, there was no mention of white supremacy or racism in the president's initial remarks, which seemed to equivocate the hatred on display by literal Nazis with the actions of those protesting the alt-right conference.

A slew of leaders on both sides of the aisle were quick to criticize Trump, noting the president didn't go far enough in condemning the overt acts of bigotry, including Senator Marco Rubio, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer.

On Monday morning, Aug. 14, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier quit the president's manufacturing council, siting Trump's weak response to the incidents in Charlottesville. (In true form, Trump quickly bashed Frazier on Twitter.)

Trump followed up with an additional statement hours after Frazier's decision, condemning white supremacy using more forceful language. But in a certain sense, the damage had already been done.

The president's reaction to the horrors in Virginia raises another question: Why not call Heyer's death an act of terrorism?

Several other leaders acknowledged that the murder certainly meets the definition of domestic terrorism; even Trump's own attorney general, Jeff Sessions — who carries his own appalling history of racist views — considers it such.

Why can't the president — who's always been quick to call out terrorism when it comes at the hands of Islamists (read: when it's more politically convenient) — call a spade a spade when it comes to Charlottesville?

Zendaya would really like to know.

The actor and singer ended her speech on Sunday reminding young people that they'll soon have the power to make an even bigger difference in our world.

"You’re the future leaders of the world; we are the future leaders of the world," Zendaya said. "You’re the future presidents, the future senators. And you guys are the ones who are going to make this world better. So I’m just letting you know right now that you are the future, OK? So take that very, very seriously, all right?”

Watch Zendaya's speech at the Teen Choice Awards below:

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