Khaberni - The world of football faces difficulties in getting rid of Nazi symbolism, following the rejection of a proposal in the Berlin Football Association against the use of the number 88, associated with the Nazi salute "Heil Hitler".
The ban on the "Heil Hitler" salute, which the Neo-Nazis disguise using numbers (with the letter H being the eighth letter in the alphabet, thus the numeric symbol 88 represents the salute to Hitler), was scheduled to be discussed as a jersey number in the general assembly of the Berlin Football Association, but the proposal was rejected by a majority of 52 votes against, compared to 48 votes supporting the ban.
Bernd Schultz, the president of the regional association, stated: "This is the second proposal that has failed on this issue."
Far-right groups use various combinations of numbers to promote Nazism. Besides the number 88, the number 18 also refers to the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, representing the initials of Adolf Hitler.
Some letters or emotive symbols also refer to right-wing extremist ideology, and according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the German domestic intelligence agency), these symbols may indicate an affiliation with these groups, but they do not yet constitute grounds for criminal responsibility.
The club "BFC Germania 1888" insists on keeping the numbers of its founding years as part of its emblem.
Opponents of the movement to ban symbolic numbers in the Berlin Football Association believe that the numbers of "BFC Germania," which indicate its founding history as the oldest continuous club in Germany, are therefore no reason to ban this number.
