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A rainy night in Georgia? It was raining sausages!

Private property appears to have come under attack in Georgia (Stalin’s Georgia), where a vegan cafe has reportedly been attacked by meat and sausage-throwing ‘Neo-Nazis’ (aren’t they busy, these ‘Neo-Nazis’?).

A vegan cafe in Tbilisi has appealed for public solidarity after being invaded by alleged ultra-nationalists wielding grilled meat and sausages.
More than a dozen men stormed into the Kiwi cafe in the Georgian capital on Sunday evening, the cafe said, shouting and throwing meat at patrons.
A brawl erupted but the attackers fled before police arrived.
The cafe has appealed for public support, saying it was no prank but a case of intimidation by neo-Nazis.

It’s as if Seattle had come to Georgia, and wasn’t welcome. And note the sly elision in the reporting of this incident, linking it with some other, dark forces…

The incident comes amid growing concerns about the rise of far-right nationalism in Georgia.
Last week, hundreds of nationalists marched through central Tbilisi – waving Georgian flags and anti-communist banners, reports said – to mark independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Homophobia is also commonplace in Georgia, correspondents say. The country made world headlines in 2013 when a small group of LGBT activists were attacked by a large mob led by an orthodox priest.

But wasn’t homosexuality disapproved of in the USSR?

So what are we to make of events in Tiflis, as Georgia’s capital is called by some?

Why would neo-Nazis object to vegans when you-know-who was history’s pre-eminent vegetarian?

The Facebook post of the café rounds off with the ominously dreary declaration:

‘…café is continuing to work and is ready to accept all costumers (sic.) regardless of nationality, race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, religious views etc. Equality is the most important thing for us. Animal liberation! Human liberation! ¡No pasarán!…’

But where is ‘political views‘ in that declaration of tolerance?

The local police, however, appear to have had a beef with the vegan café…

The police arrived only after the attackers had left*, but the cafe said even some of those officers behaved aggressively, “yelled with anger, said that we are guilty of what had happened”. Some cafe workers were taken in for interrogation.

Let’s hope the staff weren’t grilled too unpleasantly by the police.

* In the Facebook post, the café reports that ‘…Surreptitiously Nazis left, got away clean…’.

15 comments to A rainy night in Georgia? It was raining sausages!

  • The country made world headlines in 2013 when a small group of LGBT activists were attacked by a large mob led by an orthodox priest.

    Yeah, that was a strange morning. I had just stumbled out of the train from Zugdidi and I attempted to go for a quiet walk in Freedom Square when this enraged mob led by Orthodox Priests started heading in my direction.

    In actual fact, though, on that occasion the Georgian police were highly professional. The LGBT activists were having an entirely legal rally, and when the situation got dangerous the police did an excellent job of getting them away from the mob and ensuring that nobody got hurt. The Russian media made much of the whole event as demonstrating the rise of “fascism” in Georgia, though. As they probably are doing concerning this more trivial event today.

  • Mr Ed

    Surely that would have been an ‘unorthodox’ Priest?

  • Alisa

    First World problems… :-/

  • “The Russian media made much of the whole event as demonstrating the rise of “fascism” in Georgia”

    The Russian media make much of the rise of fascism everywhere as a way of drawing attention away from the fairly fascist nature of the government ensconced in the Kremlin these days.

  • Phil B

    “‘…café is continuing to work and is ready to accept all costumers

    So, if I arrived dressed in an Allgemeine SS uniform, complete with swastika armband, I’d be welcome? Or are only politically correct costumiers welcome? Interested people want to know, you know … >};o)

  • If it was Orthodox priests ganging up on the gays, the Russian Orthodox Church was probably at least partly behind it, most likely with the blessing of Putin.

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker!) Gray

    Raining sausages? Shouldn’t someone tell ‘Fortean Times’? They’re always looking for stuff like that!

  • The brief reports I saw did not mention whether the sausages were frozen or not. Fresh sausages seem rather gentle as weapons – very much on a par with stuff the less peaceful PC types do to disinvited speakers. By contrast, a few years ago it was reported that a woman murdered her partner with a frozen sausage; evidently frozen sausages are not to be despised as weapons.

    I can still recall when the west stood for free speech and any such events in Georgia would have had a simple meaning. Today, anyone viewing what has happened in the west could justly wonder if the cafe’s asserted readiness to accept all except perhaps any who disagree with them is not the thin end of an anti-free-speech wedge. Just one of the ways in which the PC have flung from them and trampled on the moral high ground that could have been theirs.

  • Mr Ed

    I do wonder if this happened at all. It seems more like just another bit of agitprop to put across the narrative of nasty anti-Communist Georgians. It seems rather odd that there are no pictures of the incident in the press AFAICS despite sympathetic reporting.

    Lefties at present often have to ‘airbrush’ people into their ‘history’, but once they get their way it won’t be airbrushing out but something rather more physical.

  • Snag

    But…but…Hitler was a vegetarian!

  • James Higham

    Disgraceful waste of good sausages.

  • CaptDMO

    Here in the US…
    Hashtag Black Lives Matter “Brunch disruptions”
    “Wilding”
    Flash Mobs
    Chinese Fire Drills
    Panty raids
    I’ve heard ancient legends of children who drop on the floor and scream in wild tantrums, when denied candy at the public market check out line candy racks, having been smacked smartly on the ass, and dragged away by their arms. (sometimes to applause!)

  • I once knew a four-year-old who was good at staging a tantrum when denied what she wanted; she would lie on the floor and scream with rage, beating her fists and legs up and down. Being only four, she had not yet realised that the way she carefully selected a comfortable spot to lie on first – she liked sheepskin rugs best – undermined her otherwise impressive histrionics.

  • Eric Tavenner

    CaptDMO

    I’ve heard ancient legends of children who drop on the floor and scream in wild tantrums, when denied candy at the public market check out line candy racks, having been smacked smartly on the ass, and dragged away by their arms. (sometimes to applause!)

    They are not legends, I have done so.

  • Thailover

    Attacking vegans for no reason, and in light of Hitler being a vegetarian, AND the claim that the police then harrased them for no discernable reason afterwards…I smell a rat.