How do you write about Nazis?
That very question is so out there, so absurd, so
anachronistic, that’s it’s hard for me to write any other way than in
the facetious tone I used in previous posts on the subject.
But that doesn’t seem appropriate. And yet I can’t react with the urge to violence that the Nazis of old inspire. I can’t even work up the indignation that seemed to inform the protesters who were there to shout back at them. The spectacle was just so grotesquely ridiculous.
But irony isn’t the right response, still less amusement. Because behind their game of dress-up was the ugly fact that Columbia, South Carolina looked like a hospitable place to them. That presents us with a certain challenge.
For the last hour or so, I wrote about the implications of that. I had intended to post it here, but it ended up being as long as a column, yet pretty uneven. I decided to save it as a column, to look at it again on Monday, and if I can whip it into shape, run it on Tuesday or Wednesday. It I decide it’s just to lame for print in the light of day, I’ll come back and post it here.
In the end, though, what do you say about Nazis in front of you on a magnificent spring day right here in Columbia, SC, in the 21st century. Today. Springtime for Hitler — Mel Brooks was making fun of this stuff forty years ago.
But it’s not funny, is it?
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The National Nazi Movement had 80 people show up? This was supposed to be the largest White Peoples March in the U.S. of the Decade!!! according to their website. This was their NATIONAL rally – 80 people.
They are as irrelevant as Christian Exodus – whose members were supposed to be running for offices this past year.
Randy…
I think u and I may be on the same track (what’s up with that?!)…that these issues and people are irrelevant to our lives. Some people wish to make them relevant…but that predisposes that they can drive yet another wedge issue into the public heart. I for one am tired of watching our public life be dictated by elites and their moralizing wedge issues.
There are very important issues we should be addressing…but we are continually placed into groups and divided by silly issues that have no effect on our lives. We are a poor state in need of leadership. As a group, we have chosen our politicians unwisely…and that is our fault. That the State newspaper has left us with out a true “4th estate” in Columbia is something we don’t have much control even though it affects us daily.
But there is always hope…and so while I breathe….
While it’s good news that the Nazis turnout was so small, and heartwarming that many turned out for the counterdemonstration, let’s not forget about what these folks really represent: evil.
Their demonstration in Columbia was neatly bracketed by their fuhrer’s April 20th birthday and today’s 62nd anniversary of the “liberation” of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, courtesy of the Red Army. The camp remains as a memorial:
Who knew that the Nazi’s had such a sense of irony?
I fixed the link.
The camp remains as a memorial.
Brad, I’d love to chat sometime soon. It seems like we’d have some interesting things to cover.
-Morgan Sherman
This is an old article from Southern Poverty Law Center.
July 7, 2006 — Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent Neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces.
Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” said one investigator. “That’s a problem.”
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.
“Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced,” Cohen wrote in a letter to Rumsfeld.
Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow soldiers and the general public. Today’s white supremacists become tomorrow’s domestic terrorists.
“Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives,” said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.
“We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh.”