Confronting Madison's NaziFest

[Octafish]

This author below Heartfield's portrait of Prescott's fave spells out an excellent strategy for dealing with NAZI bastards making their case in public today: 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

Grab 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the pants.

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

[w13rd0]

1. Haha...

...spokesperson Bill White? The counter protest should show up with the pictures of him dressed as an infant and crapping himself that are floating around on the internet. He has some serious issues. That guy is a total nutjob, although saying a one of these knuckledragging white supremists is a nutjob is beating a dead horse...

[Octafish]

3. Thanks for the heads-up. The guy's a real turdball.

Thinking people know the Truth, however today's Corporate McPravda is not known for telling it.

The uninformed masses hear these NAZI turds are "victims" denied their free speech rights or assaulted by counter-protesters.

Here's a nice forum I found, thanks to your post, w13rd0, for battling these schmucks:

http://mkeanarchy.bravehost.com/index.html

[DemonFighterLives]

7. Wikipedia on Bill White

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_White_(neo-Nazi)

White came to public attention in 1999 after expressing support for the teenage killers of 12 students and a teacher during the Columbine High School massacre. He was in the news again in 2005 when the New York Times quoted him as having "laughed" when the husband and 89-year-old mother of United States district court judge Joan Lefkow were murdered. Lefkow had previously ruled against white supremacist Matthew Hale in a trademark dispute. The paper quoted White as having written on his website: "Everyone associated with the Matt Hale trial has deserved assassination for a long time. I don't feel bad that Judge Lefkow's family was murdered today. In fact, when I heard the story, I laughed." <10>

----
:dem:

[xchrom]

2. finally -- more people are starting to make the point that hate speech

cannot be countered with more speech or better speech.

that does of course make it necessary for people to show up and resist.

to make certain that fascists of all stripes know that they they are rigorously opposed.

[Octafish]

4. Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor

There wouldn't be fascists or commie dictators or whatever authoritarians are the flavor of the day and place IF the courts could apply the law of the land and the world to war criminals.

Parallels In History Department:

Once a NAZI, always a NAZI.

Germany started "pre-emptive" and illegal wars.

Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor

by Aaron Glantz
Published on Friday, August 25, 2006 by OneWorld.net

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferenccz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war--from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs--were highly predictable at the start of the war.

Which wars should be prosecuted? "Every war will lead to attacks on civilians," he said. "Crimes against humanity, destruction beyond the needs of military necessity, rape of civilians, plunder--that always happens in wartime. So my answer personally, after working for 60 years on this problem and who hates to see all these young people get killed no matter what their nationality, is that you've got to stop using warfare as a means of settling your disputes."

Ferenccz believes the most important development toward that end would be the effective implementation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is located in the Hague, Netherlands.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0825-06.htm

I'd add that Poppy should also be in the dock with Saddam, seeing how he spearheaded efforts to arm Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War, enriching his (BFEE) friends foreign and domestic in the process.

[xchrom]

6. most certainly. n/t

[DemonFighterLives]

5. Thanks for the alert

I was not even aware of the "shrine". I don't see how anyone can stand these hateful bastards.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=435393

"He's just a mixed up old man," Sugar Creek Town Chairman Loren Waite said.

Waite said Junker told town and county officials that he was going to build a tractor shed, not a memorial to Hitler, and he has not applied for a conditional-use permit for such a venture.

[Octafish]

8. Oliver North's name Poppys up.

The confused old NAZI's not the worst of Them.

THE MAFIA, VATICAN, CIA, NAZI CONNECTION

Posted By: Phoenix
Date: Sunday, 9 December 2001, 2:39 a.m.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 7, Number 5 (August-September 2000) or September-October 2000 in the USA only.

EXCERPT...

FROM RATLINES TO DRUG SMUGGLING ROUTES

This highly secretive operation was part of the Operation Sunrise negotiations conducted between Allen Dulles--the then senior wartime OSS officer in Switzerland, but later to become the Director of the CIA--and SS General Karl Wolff. This debonair and well-connected SS officer commanded the SS and Gestapo contingents in Italy at the time.

The result of these negotiations (at least those parts that are now known about) was an agreement affording amnesty to an extensive roster of SS&endash;Gestapo forces, in exchange for their agreement to shift their allegiance to the West in the pre-planned, covert battle aimed at defeating the Soviet communist "menace"--in other words, the "Cold War".

One spin-off of these Dulles—Wolff arrangements were the Vatican-run "ratlines" that aided wanted Nazi war criminals to slink to safety. Tens of thousands of SS and other Nazis escaped capture as a result of the ratlines. These included such figures as Franz Stangl, commandant at Treblinka extermination camp, and his friend Gustav Wagner, who ran the Sobibor death camp. Others to escape in this manner included Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. Eichmann was later captured by Israeli intelligence agents, smuggled to Tel Aviv where he stood trial and was eventually executed. In comparison, Dr Joseph Mengele--known as "the White Angel", a war criminal wanted for his cruel and inhuman experiments on death camp inmates at Auschwitz--escaped to Argentina and lived a long life.

Operation Amadeus was exclusively concerned with the flight of SS and Nazi war criminals to the South American continent and their later ferocious covert actions against the indigenous populations justified under the banner of "anti-communism". One individual engaged in Amadeus activities was former Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, known to the world as "the Butcher of Lyon".

The principal means of funding Operation Amadeus activities was the hugely profitable narcotics business. Large stocks of SS morphia had been smuggled out of Europe and into "Catholic" South America at the end of the War in accordance with the Sunrise agreement. The morphia was accompanied by looted SS gold and large quantities of counterfeit British banknotes, forged in concentration camps by captive but skilled counterfeiters as part of an SS scheme known as Operation Bernhardt.

The escape "lines" used to move wanted men around South America, away from the prying eyes of Israeli agents, also proved ideal as smuggling routes for drugs. Decades later, the stocks of heroin smuggled into the United States for distribution by the CIA-protected Mafia would be complemented with locally grown cocaine.

One of the figures to emerge into the spotlight during the 1980s who was deeply involved in this narcotics traffic was Colonel Oliver North, who authorised the exchange of guns for drugs to finance Contra operations. Oliver North was known to Al Carone under his "work" name, "John Caffrey". This was the time when Carone was engaged in CIA-controlled cocaine transactions with Joe "Pickles" Percilia, a member of the Colombo crime family.

CONTINUED...

Many superNAZIs even had children and grandchildren.

Some Master Race, that.

[DemonFighterLives]

13. I don't see how the octopus and spider can keep things straight

There are so many connections and tie-ins, it must be difficult.

It seems that nothing is as it seems. :silly:

:hide:

[struggle4progress]

9. Neo-Nazi group held event in Washington state

by Bob Hague

The Nazi group planning a protest in Madison on Saturday was at Washington's state Capitol last month.

Adam Wilson, a reporter for the Olympian newspaper in Olympia, Washington said the appearance by the National Socialist Movement drew a large counterdemonstration. "That counterdemonstration was the primary focus of the Washington State Patrol's efforts to control the crowd," said Wilson. "They didn't want the two groups to get anywhere near each other." Wilson said there was a considerable disparity in size between the two groups. "We used the official count of 13 Nazis," he said. And although some Olympia residents advocated for ignoring the Nazis, many did turn out to oppose their message; the official estimate was 500 ... http://www.wrn.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=50CEF04B-3D62-44D3-A3708DF51F8B27CA&dbtranslator=local.cfm

[rodeodance]

10. Let Nazis speak to an empty street

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/opinion/index.php?ntid=96291

....... FRI., AUG 25, 2006 - 6:39 PM

Let Nazis speak to an empty street
Wisconsin State Journal editorial
Humorist Sam Levenson once said: "It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."

No one should accuse the National Socialist Movement of being wise.

This brownshirted bunch of neo-Nazis comes up with a wide variety of stupid things to say, and then says them. For example:

They compare America's Founding Fathers favorably to Adolf Hitler.

[Swamp Rat]

11. Ein tritt für Helmut Hertzfeld

[Karenina]

12. The Nazis are NEVER ignored

in these parts. As soon as they get a permit, the many menschlich groups get busy plastering the town with the date and route. They are ALWAYS surrounded by a LARGE, very hostile crowd. Some years back they published inflated numbers of their expected participants. Good folks went NUTS and nearly 10.000 citizens of this fair city took to the streets, which meant the city government had to call in reinforcements from all over the region to protect 200 punks. The permit was denied the next year for financial reasons. ;-)

[mucifer]

14. This is today and it's a 3 hour drive from my home here in Chicago.

If I would have had more notice I might have gone. Oh well.

[struggle4progress]

15. Hundreds jeer neo-Nazis at Wis. rally

TODD RICHMOND
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. - Hundreds of people jeered and taunted a group of neo-Nazis who rallied against immigration policy and the Iraq war Saturday on the steps of the state Capitol.

Police estimated about 800 people showed up to counter the Minneapolis-based National Socialist Movement's speakers, but a brief rainstorm thinned the crowd.

Police said 64 neo-Nazis lined the Capitol steps ... http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/breaking_news/15370379.htm

[DemonFighterLives]

16. Thanks for the update

From Minneapolis= :scared:

How are these Fascists against corporations? Corporatism is sometimes confused with Fascism is it not? What am I missing? The zig heilers should also like was shouldn't they?

:shrug:

[rman]

17. Fascists against corporations

Possibly to try and foster some sympathy for their movement - their being deceptive is common practice.

Corporatism isn't so much "confused" with fascism - it is equivalent to fascism, at least according to the man who invented it:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, for it is the merger of corporate- and state power" - Benito Mussolini

[DemonFighterLives]

18. That's what I thought I knew

Deception has to be the key.
My goodness, their agenda seems too close to good dems.- against corporations and the war. Deceptive nutballs that need to go back to school. :silly:

[kilgore65]

19. For more information on this topic...

I suggest the Dave Emory website: http://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

[DemonFighterLives]

20. Thanks,

Any program in particular?