The next morning, my last in Berlin, I sit in bed and watch the news. There's a white shinehead sitting inside a car, surrounded by a cordon of police, who are in turn surrounded by a screaming mob of people. I watch as one of these, a scruffy punk, puts his big, booted foot through a window of the car, while the cameraman gets in for a close up of the glass raining down upon the skin's unprotected head. I figure this must be one of the guys responsible for torching the Turks the other day.
The perverse thing, however, is that given my hatred for mobs, especially German ones, I immediately sympathize with the lone skin. Can the millions of people watching this be slaves to their petty fears like me? Is my distaste for violence so engrained as to be ultimately reactionary? Am I so twisted by spineless liberalism?
I return from Berlin disappointed. A full week in Germany at a time when right-wing violence is splashing blood onto headlines everywhere in the world, and my own skin head, the symbol of the whole horror show, provokes nothing more than a gum wrapper. My experience of Berlin is way too calm and decent, especially compared with NYC and this late-night A train I'm riding. Looking out at the lights of Brooklyn, I see my reflection in the window, and realize that I'm in bad need of a shave.
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