Friday, October 03, 2003

California Recall: Arnie the "Antifa"?

The independent Vienna paper Der Standard is running a piece called "Antifa-Arnie?" "Antifa" is a German short form for "antifascist." A bodybuilding mentor of Arnold's, Alfred Gerstl, a former president of the upper house of the Austrian Parliament, says how he recruited Arnie in 1964 to help bust up a neo-Nazi demonstration when Arnie was 17. Their report is based on an interview with Gerstl in NU, a publication of Vienna's Jewish Kultusgemeinde, the main Jewish organization there.

The neo-Nazis were demonstrating in Arnold's home city of Graz, the capital of Styria province, against a local official of the People's Party, Austria's Christian Democratic party. According to Gerstl's account in NU, he organized Arnold and some other bodybuilders to, basically, kick their butts. The bodybuilders marched into the crowd of demonstrators. "There was a hubbub, and Arnold and the other bodybuilders chased them out of the Herrengasse [the street where they demonstrated]. (My translation)

Gerstl's father was a Jew who converted to Christianity in the 1920s, but that still made Alfred Jewish under Nazi race laws. Gerstl fought with Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia against the Germans, and a picture of Tito hangs on his wall, along with Arnold's.

Gerstl says Arnold's ex-Nazi father was glad to have Arnold be friends with Gerstl's son Karl. He also says that Arnold often had contact in Gerstl's house with people who had been persecuted by the Nazis, including Jews. He mentions that Albert Kaufmann, whose father was in the British army and who Gerstl counts today as his best friend, was also friends with Arnold in the 1960s.

Gerstl's account is certaily favorable to Arnold's disavowal of any Nazi sympathies. But it complicates Arnold's story. Not that people don't change back and forth during their lives. But when confronted with the Hitler quote this week, why didn't Arnold just say, "Hey, I was busting the heads of Austrian neo-Nazis back in Graz in the mid-1960s. I was no admirer of Hitler"? Conversely, if Arnold had been a militant "antifa" at 17 and had been well acquainted with Jews who had been persecuted during the Third Reich, it makes it all the more bizarre that he would describe an admiration for Hitler at 28 or 29 the way he has been quoted as doing.

Tags: ,

No comments: