PA “Hero” is a Nazi . . . Literally

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Or at least, very much wants to be one.

Untersturmfuhrer Hans Lichterman (yes, really) has a tattoo of the Reichsadler (German eagle) on his forearm, with “Fatherland” stenciled above. He also likes to dress up as an … SS Untersturmfuhrer and pretend he’s the real thing:

Via the Philly Voice:

The Internal Affairs investigation cleared Lichterman of any violations, closing the case in December, police said. They did not respond to follow-up questions inquiring whether any specific determinations were made about the tattoos.

Meanwhile, nearly five months after the controversy erupted, police brass have yet to deliver a promised tattoo policy for its ranks.

Photos of the tattoos, posted to Facebook by Evan Parish Matthews, showed a German eagle beneath the word “Fatherland” on Lichterman’s left arm. The post indicated the photos were taken on July 26, 2016 at Philadelphia’s #BlackResistanceMarch during the Democratic National Convention.

The eagle appears to resemble one depicted in the Nazi Party’s partieadler emblem, a symbol included in the Anti-Defamation League’s “Hate Symbols Database.”

That symbol features an eagle with outstretched wings, its head pointed left, and holding a wreath containing a swastika. The photos of Lichterman’s tattoos did not show whether his eagle was perched on a swastika.

Mayor Jim Kenney, who previously called the tattoos “disturbing” and “incredibly offensive,” released a statement that voiced the same reaction. But without an existing tattoo policy,  Kenney said police could not dismiss Lichterman.

During a series of hacks against Neo-Nazi websites that took place between 2010 and 2012, emails and other identifying information belonging to members were leaked. By some amazing coincidence, an email address belonging to Officer Lichterman and an address matching the house he lives in with his wife (who is also a Philadelphia police officer), along with some photos of him in full Nazi uniform while taking part in war re-enactments, just happened to be included in those leaks:

…during a period from 2010-2012 there were several successful hacks of Neo-Nazi websites that led to the identification of dozens of Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists.

One of the more interesting cases was that of Ian Hans Lichterman. Lichterman was listed as a member of Blood and Honour, an international network of Neo-Nazi organizations started by Ian Stuart Donaldson, the lead singer of Skrewdriver. Upon some investigating, it was discovered that Lichterman was also a Philly PD officer who had even recently been commended at a crime stoppers awards ceremony. The e-mailed listed alongside his name with the leak, philly3155@yahoo.com, seemed to refer to Lichterman’s badge number, 3155. The address that was also leaked with the name and e-mail is owned by Lichterman and his wife, fellow Philly PD officer Susan Bevidas.

Shortly after the hack, Lichterman appeared to leave the Philly PD and to be working as a private security contractor (mercenary) in the middle east, presumably using his connections from his time as a Marine. However, members of the media have noted that during this time Lichterman was still on Philly PD payrolls. So either the move was a ruse because people had been calling Philly PD asking about him and his affiliations… or he was kept on the books while working abroad for some reason. Recently, at the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice’s march during the DNC, someone noticed that one of the bike cops working the event had some shady tattoos. That cop has been identified as Ian Lichterman, back on duty in Philly.

 

7 COMMENTS

  1. I’m wondering, if I had to chose just one of the following to be concerned about, which would I chose. Now, I am going to dislike both, but which would be worse:

    The one with the swastika….or the one with a hammer and sickle.

    Chose just one. Which would bother you more?

      • Eric, don’t get me wrong: This Lichtermann character is vile. That he might have powers of arrest is disgusting.

        But I tire of the Nazi/swastika thing constantly used as the epitome of evil, when the communists were far worse and for a much longer period of time, including today. They’re still at it in places like China, North Korea and Cuba.

        The Black Book of Communism…written by French leftists of all people, was a great catalog of communist mayhem and death. After reading it, you’ll wonder what the Hell is all the attention with the Nazis. The communists made them look like kindergarten class.

        • Agree, Aljer –

          It’s not just the body count differential, either. As vile as Nazism was, the fact is that unless you were unlucky enough to be among the various categories of undesirable people or overtly challenged the regime, you probably didn’t have to worry about being dragged away in the night to a ditch or an oven.

          But in Soviet Russia, everyone – even members of the ruling elite – could be taken away tomorrow. For no specific reason at all. That is truly terror.

          And brilliant – from the standpoint of aborting any nascent opposition by keeping everyone in a state of paralytic fear.

          Hitler was a sentimental softie compared with Stalin.

          • You can hardly find a German, aged 80 or over, who’d admit to sympathy or even nostalgia fror the erstwhile Nazi regime in today’s Germany, as it’s a CRIME. Were this officer a member of the Hamburg Stadt Polizei, he’d not only have been dismissed for getting such a “Nazi” tattoo (actually, unless you can see a swastika below the Eagle, it’s a German rather than a ‘nazi’ emblem), he’d have been charged with possessing Nazi regalia (for non-academic or theatrical purposes, in Germany, a crime) and ‘promoting’ Nazism…so the modern FederalRepublikDesuchtesland combats the ‘thought crime’ of the Nazi era with its own ‘thought crimes’. They would even try to find out where he got the tattoo, and if it was a German studio, that artist and/or shop owner would be fined, jailed, and stripped of the applicable licenses.
            Though obviously Hitler and his Nazi Party and SS were some real honest-to-God SOBs, they honestly believed that what they were doing was good for ‘Das Volk’ und ‘Das Reich’, and saw each other as “Kameraden”. Hence why Hitler was so bitterly angry and vengeful about he 20 July 1944 failed plot to kill him; he considered it a PERSONAL affront, a betrayal of his once FRIENDS. Even at the end, when Himmler attempted (he actually believed that if he made his way to SHAEF at Reims, France, that Eisenhower would see him, such was his delusion) to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies only, and Goring, upon escaping Berlin himself (narrowly having his retinue cart off some 20 truck loads of stolen artwork from his KarinHall estate near Berlin as the Soviet 3rd Guard Tank Army closed in), declared that he would succeed Hitler as the latter was now trapped in Berlin and doomed to capture or death. Hitler likewise was personally affronted at this last ‘betrayal’, even then seemed to be surprised that it’d happened.
            With Stalin, there was NO pretense of friendship or loyalty. There is strong evidence he’d had his second wife murdered. When his own son from his first marriage, Yakov, was captured by the Germans in July 1941, they offered to trade him for a German general, to which Stalin replied, “but why should I trade a General for a mere Lieutenant?” Being successful, and especially having peer recognition, could be DEADLY under “Uncle Joe”. Witness the case of one Marshall Tukaschevsky, a contemporary of Georgi Zhukov and a pioneer in tank warfare, whom the hallowed German ‘tank generals’ like Guderian, Hoth, Rommel, and Von Manstein studied. The Marshal, in 1937, ordered a series of maneuvers in the Moscow Military District, which happened at the same time of the ‘show trials’ under Vishinsky. Stalin freaked out and believed that Tukaschevsky was going to storm Moscow with over a thousand tanks and depose him. He got the Marshal to see him at his dacha, where he held a great feast, and, once the tank pioneer was well-sated and drunk, had him arrested and shot forthwith. The result was that only four years later, when Operation Barbarossa commenced, though the Soviets had almost TEN TIMES the number of tanks that the Germans had (and most of their stock was better, including the new T-34s just rolling out of the factories), their handling of them was so inept that what tanks didn’t either break down or simply run out of fuel on the way to the battle, were easy meat for the German guns as they fought in tactically insensible manners, time and time again. And how Stalin dealt with Tukaschevsky was common. If a prominent official, Party leader, or military officer was summoned to see Stalin, he’d either harangue and lambaste the poor fellow, and have him sent to either the Lubyanka prison or to the Gulags, which meant either a slow death or at least lifelong debilitation; or, he’d praise the man vociferously, decorate him lavishly, and feed him copiously and ply him with much drink (part of the reason for Stalin’s long-term survival was that few could out drink him, especially his favored ‘Pertsovka’ vodka), and then promote him…or have him shot. The saying when, “There’s three possible outcomes with a meeting with the ‘Boss’, and only ONE is ‘good’!”
            Say what one will about Stalin’s ultimate successor, Khrushchev (the Soviet Union was at first, after Stalin, ruled by a ‘troika’ which also included Nikolai Bulganin and Grigory Malenkov, until Nikita asserted both the Premiership and the General Secretary post in 1958)…though he was loyal to Stalin, he was disgusted by the Purges and the brutality, and vowed that the Soviet Union would be ruled under law and not terror. Though the USSR was still hardly a paradise nor a bastion of freedom; it did get a lot better for the average Soviet citizen during his regime, hence why when he was deposed by the Politburo, led by Brezhnev, for his many embarrassing failures, he was quietly retired and pensioned off (but for all practical purposes under house arrest until he died in 1971, and the official mention of his passing epitomized the term, “Damn with faint praise”) rather than assassinated, unlike what happened to Romania’s Ceausescu in 1989.
            At least Nixon, after his own ‘fall from grace’, managed to ‘reinvent’ himself as the ‘elder statesman’, even being asked for advice by his successors on foreign policy matters. And even Stalin, though still largely despised as a brutal aberration of Russian history, STILL has his apologetic and his ‘personality’ cult, especially as the man who ‘saved’ Russia from the Nazis.

        • Venezuela may not be quite communist, but it sure is uber-socialist. Hugo and Fidel had a mutual admiration thing going.

  2. He isn’t threatening to burn down Jewish bakeries or pizzarias or destroy places like SweetCakes or get people fired like Brendan Eich (over CA Prop 8). unlike the LGBTQ community. Ought I fear this “nazi” or the leftists who have proven they will destroy people?

    As long as he is doing his assigned job (which I can argue with), and not trying to destroy people he disagrees with, I may disagree with him, but don’t really care.

    I can’t say that about those who lack tattoos, but will burn down and blow up things like in Berkeley, even people with a make BITCOIN great again hat or were simply bystanders.

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