In many ways, this is the most sharply revealing photograph to emerge from the debacle in Cologne last weekend when leftists, much to the shameful approval of the local authorities including the mayor, seized control of the streets and prevented a political demonstration against Islamization from taking place. The photo was taken by "Aviel," whose eyewitness account is posted at Gates of Vienna. He says it "shows a band of some sort of humans preventing the police from moving about. I find it odd that even they were powerless to deal with that lot. However, I think that they were probably just unwilling."

These policemen, mere instruments of a corrupted state, were not just "unwilling" to "deal with that lot." I think they were also unable. They, like their state, are bereft of the core beliefs that, under unfortunately outmoded moral corcumstances, would have guided them in their duty to preserve civic space for freedom of assembly and speech. Bedazzled by the rainbows, they failed to see the totalitarian heart underneath--or, worse, they recognized it as their own.

Here is an excerpt of Aviel's account:

I myself came upon one of these barricades on Eibahnstrasse that morning on my way to attend the conference on Heumarkt. I approached the Antifa thugs and demanded that they let me pass. I was wearing my Kippah and readily identifiable as a Jew; however, they screamed at me “Nazis Raus”.

This is the paradigm: rainbow dictators eliminating dissent and the freedom necessary for dissent by, first, smearing dissenters as Nazi dictators. This  glorifies themselves--very important--and rationalizes their own Nazi tactics. The fact that Aviel is Jewish only compounds the evil. Aviel continues:

One of them showed me backwards and a woman spit on me and called me a fascist pig. At this point I had had enough and put my head down and started to try and break through the barricade. I was pummeled in the head several times and then shoved to the ground were I was beaten and kicked with steel toe boots in plain sight of the police who did nothing.

What separates this from 1930s Germany and 2008 Germany are mere decades. But Aviel fought back:

I grabbed the boot of one of the attackers and pulled him down to the ground. I, despite the beating I was taking, proceeded to give this bastard as much or more than I myself was getting. Unfortunately, and I say unfortunately because he was just a kid in his early twenties, I really hurt this one. It was then that I heard the police shouting and blowing whistles. They stopped kicking me and I got up and stumbled away. I didn’t realize that I had a broken rib until later.

He goes on to describe other barricades and more violence:

This included the savage beating of a man with all white hair well into his sixties. I had also heard of an elderly woman who was assaulted but I myself did not see this. In short, due to the police and the Antifa, nobody was able to pass through to attend the conference. I myself never made it though some of my friends did because they arrived at about 7am in preparation. At about 1 or so I was resting up, licking my wounds over a liter of Kolsch in a pub when I heard celebratory shouting and cheering. I assume this is when the people got word that the conference had been officially shut down.

The streets from that point on were entirely controlled by the Antifa and other thugs. ... Despite my earlier troubles I decided I was not running back to my hotel. I stayed out and documented the absolute anarchy that carried on throughout the day and night. I got into a couple more scuffles that night over being called a “Jew” by so-called anti-fascists but mostly I just watched Germany descend into the worst chaos and darkness since the 1920s and 30s. I finally went home around 11:30pm Saturday night and noticed that I had a major problem with my ribs. ...

Later that night, I was disgusted by how the television reports boasted and bragged about how the citizens rose up and drove out the “fascists”. They gloated about how the “Nazis” had no support and “nobody showed up to attend the conference”. Now I can’t tell it like Fjordman can tell it, but that was definitely propaganda produced by brute physical force and condoned by the local government.

Speaking of Fjordman, the perceptive European essayist has posted at Atlas Shrugs about the event, and how its significance is missed and distorted in anti-jihadist movement.