Reply #11: Confronting Madison's NaziFest [View All]

[Octafish]

This author spells out an excellent strategy for dealing with these NAZI bastards: Make OUR voices drown out theirs.

Meet Me on State Street

Confronting Madison's NaziFest

By CHRIS DOLS
Counterpunch 17, 2006

Just when the hot August stench (of roadside cat-piss-stained sofas and the contents of fruit-fly infested college apartment sinks) has gone with the passing of Madison's move-out week, the funk is about to get worse: More than a hundred Nazis are coming to spew their filth about the Capitol steps on August 26th. Predictably, the perennial debate--"ignore them" versus "confront them"--has emerged among activists and community organizers. Arguments in favor of ignoring them range from the strategic ("They thrive on attention; just ignore them and they'll go away") to the legal ("They have the same 1st Amendment rights as anyone else") to the understandably frightened ("These crackers are crazy! I'm not going to stick my neck out to oppose them"). While I'm sympathetic to the last of these objections the first amounts to a grave misunderstanding of history and the legal argument is a red herring. I maintain that Nazis should be countered everywhere they rear their ugly heads and the point of this article is to convince you to join that effort when these scumbags show up in less than two weeks.

Learning from the Skokie experience

SNIP...

This brings to light two important mistakes. Firstly, the fight against Nazis cannot be based on a legal strategy denying them their 1st Amendment rights. Secondly--and this is the most important point--Nazis do not marginalize themselves with their message. On the contrary, their message helps to organize and give confidence to the presently unorganized and separated individual racists with white supremacist sympathies.

Legal strategies are ineffective

Many have voiced opposition to our efforts to mobilize a counter-demonstration on the basis of the 1st Amendment. Aside from the glaring contradiction ("Defend free speech by keeping quiet!"), a civics refresher is in order: The Bill of Rights limits what the state (i.e. not citizens) may do. In all my organizing for this demonstration I have yet to hear one person argue for governmental intervention (deny the Nazis a permit, etc.). Those who did pursue such restrictions on speech in Skokie thirty years ago only did so to prevent a counter-demonstration of Holocaust survivors. Downs described this development, "As word spread around the community, survivor resistance and threats of counter-demonstration violence mushroomed, forcing the village to abandon the quarantine policy and to seek legal means of keeping the Nazis out." Note the common element (shared by Downs and the ADL) between 'ignore them' and 'deny the permit': both tactics avoid organizing a counter-demonstration. The legal approach only emboldened the Nazis who now--with the infamous assistance of the ACLU--had a legitimate legal grievance which would overshadow their countless illegitimate racist grievances.

The Nazis will not - despite the efforts of some - be ignored

More often, I hear the argument that Steven Morrison, the executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Council, made in the Wisconsin State Journal. "It's well-known that a counter-protest is just what the neo-Nazis want and count on. Without a counter-protest, they have only themselves to hear their hate-filled messages." Ironically enough, the very same day, the same newspaper relayed to its readers the Nazis' hate-filled message. And just in case some borderline white supremacist needed an extra nudge (or just the details of the rally) the State Journal was kind enough to oblige: "The rally will be held at 2 p.m. The Nazi group will commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of the white nationalist movement's founder and rally against increased political repression of working-class white people, spokesman Bill White said in a press release." No mention of our counter-demonstration and no mention of their racist central demand against immigrants. Anti-racists should take comfort knowing that the State Journal stopped short of explaining how to tie a noose for a lynching party. So much for Morrison's, "they only have themselves to hear their hate-filled messages."

SNIP...

"It Can't Happen Here"

While the threat of Nazi rule may seem distant today, even when fascists were in power across Europe liberals in America minimized the threat of their movement. If you're still not won to the importance of countering these scum then I highly recommend a trip to the library and the video store; if history doesn't convey these lessons then maybe well-produced fiction can. Read Sinclair Lewis' brilliant satire It Can't Happen Here (1935) and watch William A. Wellman's 75-minute classic The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) starring Henry Fonda.

It Can't Happen Here follows liberal newspaper editor Doremus Jessup as he belittles the threat posed by aspiring fascists with a paramilitary following called, presciently, the Minutemen. Confronted with the reality of their rise to power liberals "simply could not believe that this comic tyranny could endure. It can't happen here, said even Doremus--even now." The point Lewis makes, of course, is that it can happen here and it does us no good to wait until it happens to realize that point.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/dols08182006.html

This dim fellow's grandfather
struck it rich
arming the NAZIs: