Due to steady change of our web content, we are not able to keep a second English language version up-to date. Nevertheless, feel free to write us in English (mail / web-mailer). For publications on the topic, we can translate particular articles on request: Please do not rely on web translator services, they produce trash only (e.g. Google: »lion fans approximately right«, »we invite you to our table reserved for regulars«, »it a whole row error there will also always give« etc.)
Not only in Germany, right-wing extremists try to abuse the stadium audience for propaganda, racist slogans and violence (English language link to the topic: F.A.R.E¹). We do not want to become these people's accomplices by silent agreement, and we do not want the public image of football-fans to be put on the level of nazi hooligans. This is why we oppose actively. Football unites, football is multi-cultural and multi-lingual, and we will not give the ball away to hatred and violence!
We are fans of TSV 1860 Munich, traditionally a club rather of workers than of the rich, a club with ups and downs and loyal fans who keep faith to their »lions« even if they did the worst games of sports history (yes, we claim this world record).
Yet before Hitler came to power, his NSDAP party gained influence in German labour organizations and sports clubs as well. Primarily workers' and lower-class sports clubs were abused for propaganda in order to gain the sympathy of their politically not very conscious members and fans. Nostalgic sentiments in favour of pre-war »good-old-times« made them believe and follow those who promised 1000 golden years of a strong new empire. Our TSV played an unfortunate roll in this period, was the first club to report »free of jews«. We take this fact as another reason to continue our active work against racism and neo-nazi subversion.
We are not an organization, we are not an official committee of the TSV 1860. We startet up by some people taking a banner against right-wing activities to the stadium. They just were fed up with monkey-like yelling at players from Africa, with nazi slogans and swastika symbols on jackets and scarves, and so on. More people gathered to us, and the idea was born to form a counter-weight to the neo-nazi and racist nuisance.
Today, there are some 40 regulars writing banners and leaflets, doing various public work via media (like this homepage), and organizing events. In 2002, the LFGR took the exhibition »Target Stadium. Racism and Discrimination in Football«¹ to Munich, kept it open for 2½ weeks with guided tours for primary school classes and a supporting program with music, theater, football acrobatics, readings, addresses by officials from politics and culture. The support and approval was overwhelming for us. Early 2003, we were awarded by the »Alliance For Democracy And Tolerance¹« as an »exemplary project¹« with an official act in the Munich town-hall with official addresses by mayor Christian Ude, Charlotte Knobloch (president of Munich jewish community) and Gabriele Fograscher (member of Parliament and the Alliance's advisory board). This proves to us that our activity is important, and that it is supported by significant democratic powers of society.
Of course, we are present in the stadium, supporters can get t-shirts, scarves, stickers and pins with our logo. And we are present at political events from May Day to demonstrations for tolerance and against political violence. As well, we support the struggle to regain honor to the nazi-dictatorship victims: Quite some of them have been active sports, cast out for reasons of provenience, religion, or just world view. Of course, we are as well present celebrating the games with fans of our guest clubs (well, except the fans of the local rich heroes' company which we definitively dislike). We want football, as all sports, to be a party for the audience, not a battlefield. And we want the public to see that fans may be a little crazy, but are not violent scum – at least the majority of the fans. Every house, even every palace has a toilet, and there are always 100 confessional assholes in a crowd of 20000 or more. You can easily experience this on your local highway.
We meet every first tuesday of the month (8 pm) at the fan-house near the old 1860 stadium. There we talk on current topics and decide on everything we do democratically. Everybody who comes to our meeting is invited to speak and vote. We are not an organization, we are a living process. Our website as well is a living process, a documentation of contemporary history, not a virtual press release. You may spot faults, and you may keep them, or else report to us. We are not perfect.
We ourselves are a living mixture of what-so-ever likes sports, young and old, male and female, marathon-runners and handicapped, vegetarians and burger-addicts, taxi-drivers and state officials. It lives, it works. People just do what they promise, and they make friends. We have one thing in common, the colors of white and blue. Football really unites, we are an example for the fact.
Besides of political extremism and racism, there are other topics menacing the game. Commerce is growing like yeast (a kind of fungus which spreads until it dies on its own excrements). We want to regain the ball, we do not want to pay for the owners of a money machine. We do not want to pay for air-conditioned VIP-lounges and other megalomanic dreams of club presidents. We want humans play on the green, not gladiators without any relation to their clubs. We oppose to any kind of discrimination, we want women to watch the game safely, strangers not to be menaced, we do not want any minority to be excluded. What is wrong about homosexuals in the stadium? Or on the green? Football is the topic, not moral or what-so-ever. There is just one thing that can not be tolerated: Violence. Definitely not in a crowd of 20000 or more. Violence is crime, not a personal attitude. Nor are fascism, discrimination and intolerance.
There is a press-text available in English language. You may publish it on request (just send a mail to www-op). Please send an author's copy. Download as ».rtf« (6 kB, an interchange data format which any text system should be able to import, even the Redmont ones).
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