A German clothing retailer popular with far-right extremists has sparked outrage in Germany with a controversial store opening in Saxony.A new Thor Steinar store in the city of Chemnitz has opened with the name "Brevik." This is considered by many Germans to be a tribute to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer.Anders Behring Breivik has become a hero in some far-right quarters in Germany following the massacre of 77 people at a camp of the Workers Youth League (affiliated with the Labour Party) on the Norwegian island of Utøya. I've been following some of the fall-out since the massacre, including a proposed play about Breivik. It's no surprise that there are those on the far-right who view his criminal assault as "heroic."Thor Steinar claims the store name "Brevik" really refers to a town south-east of Oslo, but few people buy their explanation. The name also shows up in the window of their central store festooned with Norwegian flags.The citizens of Chemnitz are outraged by the presence of the store.Der Speigel reports that:On Monday, several thousand Chemnitz residents gathered to protest against right-wing extremism and neo-Nazis in the city. The city's mayor, Barbara Ludwig, told the local Freie Presse newspaper that 2,000 people had gathered in the inner city, to send a "message of a peaceful, cosmopolitan, diverse and tolerant Chemnitz in which there is no place for Nazis."Thor Steinar clothing is banned from being worn in the German Bundestag. Norway has taken exception to the company's use of Norwegian symbols and place names.Der Spiegel:According to the Freie Presse, Norway has long sought to distance itself from Germany's Thor Steinar brand, which has used the Norwegian flag and other Nordic symbols on its clothing in the past. "We consider it very regrettable that Thor Steinar uses Norwegian place names in order to associate Norway as such with Thor Steinar and the extreme right-wing scene," Anne-Kirsti Wendel Karlsen of the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin told the newspaper.In Germany Nazi symbols are banned so extremists have had to become innovative. As with the store name "Brevik" far-right words and symbols that appear on Thor Steinar clothing can have an ambiguous aspect to them. Symbols associated with Nazism - for example the numbers 18 and 88 - can be taken to mean "Adolf Hitler" and "Heil Hitler." On the other hand they can be passed off as "just numbers."The far-right advertises its presence in surprising ways in Germany - for example license plates have also been used to signal extremist sympathies.I posted on Thor Steinar a while back along with a set of photos - here.More on the story from The Guardian.

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