You can say this about American Nazis, they are persistent.
Nearly ten years ago, a group calling itself the National Socialist Movement (NSM) planned a march through a predominately African-American community in a northern section of Toledo, Ohio, ostensibly at the invitation of white residents to protest alleged gang activity by blacks. On October 15, 2005, at the staging point for their march near a local park, they began taunting local African American residents with racial slurs, inciting incidents of civil unrest and the arrest by mounted and unmounted police of roughly 100 people after the Nazis were pelted by eggs. Now they are back, trying to stir up trouble once again:
TOLEDO — Nearly ten years after angry crowds took the streets of Toledo during a march by neo-Nazis, the National Socialist Movement is planning to rally in the Glass City again. […]
“The Toledo rally was important ten years ago, due to violence in the city, and is just as important today considering things have not improved there,” reads a statement released by the NSM. “The National Socialist Movement is calling upon our folk and allies once again as we make another public stand in Toledo on April 18th.”
The date in April for their return was not chosen at random. It comes one day before official festivities for 419 Day, an annual event in Northwest Toled that celebrates the pride and love that people who live in Northwest Toledo have for their communities there. Manyb events by local businesses, museums and the City of Toledo are planned. No surprise, then, that the NSM chose the day before the 419 Day festivities, in what is no doubt another attempt to create trouble and violent conflict between the African American communities in the city and the local police.
The worst part about this year’s planned visit is the timing. The group is coming on April 18, the same weekend as our newest, unofficial citywide holiday, 419 Day.
419 Day is April 19, or 4-19, and is a 24-hour period where residents are asked to show their love for Northwest Ohio, including on social media. This special day, bolstered in recent years by Instagramers, has caught on to the point where bars and local businesses are now planning events to help celebrate Toledo and all those living in the 419.
419 Day was created to show love and pride for our city. The last thing we need are front-page headlines of a repeat riot, inspired by a group of people who only hate.
Ten years ago, this white supremacist hate group was able to achieve its goal of inciting civil unrest. On October 15, 2005, all it took was fifteen members of the NSM, and protected by police, to succeed through taunting the people they came to denigrate. Here’s an account of what happened in 2005 by Pastor Mansour Bey of Toledo’s First Church of God in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.
The media … gave a forum to [the organizers of the NSM March] , so that by the time Saturday arrived, a lot of people were already angry because of some of the remarks that had already been made, in terms of the neo-Nazis coming to challenge the gangs and to liberate the white people from the blacks who were terrorizing their neighborhoods. […]
Mansour goes on to say that around 200 to 330 people showed up to protest the presence of the Nazis. Although most were local residents, some came from outside
Toledo, including groups of so-called anarchists (Pastor Bey’s words) who brought eggs, which they handed out to the crowd. After the fifteen Neeo-Nazis began taunting the people with the N-word and other slurs, those eggs were thrown. At that point the police escalated the situation:
[T]he police reacted very swiftly and very forcefully by moving in the mounted police.
And that kind of angered the people, also, because when they came in with the horses, they did not discriminate. They were knocking over — not over, but knocking back women, children and even myself. I was pushed back by a horse. So now — and the people are really — they’re angry at the neo-Nazis, but now their anger was beginning to build towards the police, also, who they felt that they were protecting the neo-Nazis, who were, again, in their neighborhood.
You can imagine what happened after that. The small group of NSM racists had achieved their goal of inciting the crowd, with the help, of course of an overreaction by the police to the eggs that were thrown. The unrest spread, after the group of counter-protesters moved to the other side of the park where they believed the Nazis would appear after marching through the park. There the counter-protestors were confronted by a larger group of police who refused to let them approach the park. Tear gas canisters were employed by the cops and things took a decidedly ugly turn for the worse.
[After the tear gas was shot into the crowd] the people came back with their bricks and their rocks. And so it began, the battle began.
During that time the chief of police called off the march and sent the Nazis home. And I happened to be standing right there and saw the Nazis get in their cars and leave. But none of the counter-protesters saw this. So, many of them — this is about 11:00 in the morning, and even as late as 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, some of them were still believing — you know, the residents were still believing that the neo-Nazis were still inside of that park being protected by police. But I knew that they had already left town. And we tried to get that word out, but unfortunately that word did not get out.
I’m sure the Neo-Nazi provocateurs in 2005 had a grand old time celebrating all the mayhem they engendered. Of course, local radio shows, just days before the Neo-Nazi rally, gave these hatemongers a forum and the opportunity to do their best to anger and enrage the people of Northern Toledo:
[O]ne of the local radio stations, they have a very popular drive time radio program. And it’s a call-in show. And they had — they were interviewing either Martin or White — In fact, both of them; one day it was Martin the next day it was Bill White, the leaders of this neo-Nazi movement. And on both days, the host tried to be politically correct and, you know, talk about why they had this particular philosophy of hate. But each time the guests would say: “Well, give me my time. It’s my turn. You got me on, let me say what I want to say.” And they gave a forum, to these neo-Nazis.
And they were allowed to really challenge. I mean, they really spoke to the people, to the neighborhood and really challenged, you know, African Americans, the blacks, you know. “This is white man’s time! White power! We’re coming in and we’re gonna be kicking butt!” you know. And they were really saying those types of things.
Yeah, that was a great public service by that radio station, wasn’t it. These hatemongers have a 1st amendment right not to have their speech censored by the government. What they do not have is the right to go on public radio and television and be given broadcast airtime to stir up anger and resentment with their repeated calls for white power and violence against African-Americans.
This time, the reaction to these racist scumbags must be different. If this group of contemptible race-baiting troublemakers shows up, the word must be spread within the community and the local media to simply ignore them. Don’t allow these evil people to cause more misery for the African Americans who live in Toledo. As Jerry Baumhower, columnist for the Toledo Free Press puts it:
This time, let’s not be trolled by the lowest pieces of s*** this country has ever known.
Let’s ignore stupidity and put the focus on love. Let’s choose to not give them any airtime or ink. Let’s not make it worth their time to ever step foot in this city again.
It’s been 10 years, and we are a different city. This time, let’s ignore them.
Amen.
“These hatemongers have a 1st amendment right not to have their speech censored by the government. What they do not have is the right to…be given broadcast airtime…”
It’s the incitement, stupid.
Freedom of speech is a fine thing as an abstraction. As a concrete concern, it has always been confined to the intellectual elite (among whom, I hasten to clarify, I count myself); but it is now and forevermore a dead letter, for the simple reason that no one is listening.
But Justice Holmes’s “shout of ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater” test applies, in its purest form, in its fullest strength, to incitement. A polity that tolerates incitement — in any form, in any amount — shows a “depraved indifference”, in the legal term-of-art, to its own survival as a set of institutions, as well as to the well-being of each and all of its citizens.
I really think the Founding Fathers had political speech in mind, not saying any damn thing you like. Otherwise Freedom of Speech would include the right to lie about what’s in your product and the right to perjury. In GB of the day, one could be arrested and detained for unpopular political speech, say advocating a republic or questioning the legitimacy of the Royal family. Similarly, one could be arrested just for attending the wrong church. Indeed, people had been beheaded for belonging to the wrong church. Many of those wrong church people (Puritans, Catholics and others) came to the American hinterland to be out of sight of the Crown. Hence the Freedom of Religion clause. It didn’t mean that you could impose your religion on your employees and customers as it now does.
This is always the advice that liberals have to offer. And until someone can come up with a historical precedent in which it has worked (meaning: materially discouraged Nazi attempts at organization-building in the communities they target) I’m not buying it.
Think about it: these people are terrorists. When has ignoring terrorists made terrorists go away? They come back a short time later, bolder and more numerous. What we want is to demoralize them internally, intimidate their less consolidated followers, make them want to go somewhere else where they can feel more confident in putting down roots.
You don’t do that by ignoring them. You do that by confronting them, in much larger numbers than they have, and publicly condemning their values and their ideology. Your goal is not to put an end to Nazi-ism for all time, your goal is just to drive them out of your community. And to have maximum effect, this is best done by large numbers of white people.
Violence is neither necessary nor effective, it just feeds their sense of victimization. But you do have to be loud, numerous, angry, and in their faces. That means the anti-Nazis forces have to be organized and disciplined. That’s not easy. But there are some situations where trying to make a strategic virtue out of staying home, and by so doing surrendering to provocation, does not cut it.
“ignore” –> “shun” –> “ostracize”
Don’t get hung up on words; the germ of the idea is not wrong. “Ignore” can also mean “retreat from”, but I cannot conclude that that is the sense that was meant here.
More to the point, no one, in any time or place, has built up a good track record of dealing with this kind of thing. The options are few and easily categorized, and each has serious problems.
I’m not interested in the germ of the idea, I’m interested in whether or not it works. So once again, let’s see an example where a community ignored Nazi attempts to organize in its midst, and the Nazis folded up their tents and left rather than digging in and growing more bold.
“Ignore”, “shun”, “ostracize” … whatever. I want “confront”, “intimidate”, “demoralize”, “disorganize”.
And I want the people who are involved in that activity to get a sense of the power and the utility of the tactic.
I personally lived through one situation in 1977 in Milwaukee, where the Nazis came up from Skokie and tried to organize a white, working-class, mostly Polish/Czech neighborhood on the south side against school integration. Silly Nazis — the people in that neighborhood had a sense of history that the Nazis weren’t aware of; they beat the crap out of them and sent them back to Skokie with their tails between their legs.
They didn’t come back here again until fall of 2012 when they tried to rally in West Allis. We had an overwhelming crowd of mostly white people show up and shout them down. They came in a police convoy and they had to leave in a police convoy or it would have been 1977 all over again.
So far we don’t have a Nazi problem in Milwaukee. That’s how you do this stuff.
OH, WOW.
Where to begin?
You seem to assume that I do not live in a coercive community. I don’t appreciate that assumption.
So you’re proud of an instance in which your community got coercive, but it was okay, because it was your community and it was for the right reasons…? Sorry, I’m not seeing any difference.
And finally, Milwaukee? Really? While you were indulging your recursive, projective fantasies of breaking-the-heads-of-headbreakers, there was something important happening, right behind your left ass cheek. Its figurehead (today) is a chinless little dweeb named Scott Walker. You had one job, VidaLoca. You had one job!
(I have never addressed anyone, publicly, in this kind of tone before and do not expect ever to have another occasion to do so.)
Frank, I have no idea what kind of community you live in. I’m making a political, not a personal point: I think the liberal response to Nazis, KKK, etc. — “ignore them and they’ll go away” — has no historical credibility. If you want to argue that it does, please proceed.
Absolutely. We’d do it again in a heartbeat.
To start with, if the Nazis can, they’ll kill you.
In this instance “ignore them” is the optimal response. They’ve been around for a long time now and haven’t grown nor shrunk in size. They aren’t inherently attractive enough to attract a larger proportion of new recruits today than they have in the past and that severely limits their ability to engage in violence/terrorist acts. Unlike ISIS, the internet hasn’t been an effective recruiting tool for them.
Not saying not to keep an eye on them as a hate group, but publicly engaging with them elevates their profile and there are enough nuts with guns in this country that are quick to rush into a fight. What little leadership there is in these neo-Nazi groups is so marginal that they soon enough discredit themselves and disappear and their replacements are no different.
Bears watching. As long as US self-identified neo-Nazis continue their crude racist language and style (skinheads, etc.), they’ll remain a very small fringe group that gets mostly bad press. Violence by any fringe group is always problematical, but at this time police departments (quasi-neo-Nazis) are more problematical for their unwarranted perpetration of violence.
They’ll need guys with IQs above double digits to move up a notch from being “a very small fringe group.” Get flattering press coverage as the Aidar volunteer battalion in Ukraine got a few days ago in The Guardian: Ukraine Women Fighting on the Frontline. That report neglected to identify the Aidar voluteer battalion. Newsweek 9/14/14 told it like it is in Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes.
right-wing Ukrainian nationalists have direct and actual roots in Nazism. Strikes fear in the hearts and minds of Russian speaking eastern Ukrainians because their relatives experience the ruthlessness of those Ukrainian Nazis in WWII. There was after WWII a legitimate reason why the USSR was assigned to stamp out Nazism in the east while the Allies took on the task of doing it in the west.
“There was after WWII a legitimate reason why the USSR was assigned to stamp out Nazism in the east while the Allies took on the task of doing it in the west. “
Yes, the Soviet Army was occupying the East and the US and Royal Armies were occupying the West.
Occupation zones were agreed to before the end of the war. Also agreed that Germany would undergo demilitarization and denazification. (Did the US appreciate that there were entrenched Nazi/anti-USSR factions in Poland and Ukraine?
The Allies couldn’t succeed without the USSR on the eastern front, and also wanted USSR assistance in the Pacific Theater meat grinder.
All very true.
How big does the Nazi presence have to be before it’s time to move from “bears watching” to “shit we’d better do something”?
“Bears watching” means acting long before “shit we’d better do something.” What to watch: leadership, messaging, activities, and recruiting. The first two so far remain crude, and hence ineffective for expansion. Their activities are small, underground cults and because their leadership and messaging are crude, their activities can’t tolerate the light of day and that means they can’t grow. All three restrict/limit attracting new recruits other than the ever present tiny portion of loser nuts in any society.
Also add to the watch list, formal alliances, compacts, and consolidations and crossovers with similarly inclined marginal and not so marginal groups. Not all that common because absent an easily identifiable and discrete opponent that could more easily be decimated by a concerted effort, fringe groups like to hold on to their franchise. Thus, Westboro Baptist continues to go it alone because other fundies don’t want to be seen associating with them. There was probably just enough crossover between Operation Rescue and individual fundies to make OR very dangerous, but that also reduced its aggregate support.
Promise Keepers — “Christian” male bonding — worries me a bit more than the neo-Nazis because it has leadership and continues to grow.
I think you’re pointing to valid metrics here and looking at them — and the way they change over time — is important. I also agree with the other point I think you’re making which is that the right-wing mass-based groups like Promise Keepers are potentially more dangerous than groups like the Nazis or the KKK because they don’t have the historical legacy and they aren’t as consolidated around a vision of terrorism and violence. They are more capable of flying below the radar, and confronting them is harder.
Nazis in Toledo, though? I still don’t buy the strategy of ignoring them. “Let’s ignore stupidity and put the focus on love.” — really? The article points out the coincidence between the Nazi rally on April 18 and the municipal celebration on April 19. There’s no way of making that fact go away any more and pretending you’ve done so by ignoring it won’t work (and won’t make the Nazis go away either). Why not use that as an opportunity to make the weekend of 4/18-19 a celebration of community solidarity against fascism? The Nazis want to politicize a community event? Fine, that can be done, and not in a way that they’ll appreciate.
It’s a local issue. Regional and national news aren’t interested in Toledo’s muni celebration or the nazi-nuts holding their sideshow the day before unless it bleeds. If 5,000 nazi-nuts show up there with their guns, then it’s time to take them down.
Hm. I thought you had a stronger argument going when you seemed to be saying that Nazis could never get to that point.
If 5,000 Nazis ever show up anywhere with guns, it’s game over. Taking them down is not in the cards. That’s partly why I’d be in favor of standing up to them when their numbers are more on the order of 5 than 5,000.
The other point I’d make is that I don’t think news coverage is the main issue here. Best you can hope for is the Nazis decide to try to organize somewhere else AND that the people involved in resisting them learn the power of the tactic and how to apply it.
5,000 isn’t a large number, but maybe in Toledo it is. Reduce it to whatever number showed up at Cliven Bundy’s protests. They were armed and directly threatened government officials. That was a novel situation for all those anti-government/gun-nut types to put their butts where their mouths usually are. Not many made it. And this was within spitting distance of the home of the Oath Keepers (another worrisome operation — one of 1,200 active anti-government “patriot” groups according to the SPLC in 2011. National membership claimed to be 35,000, but only a handful showed up in response to their national call for counter-protests in Ferguson). It didn’t escalate because government officials kept their powder dry and no counter-protesters showed up. It petered out because it got stale and Bundy was able to talk enough on camera that who he is became quickly apparent.
Glen Beck’s Restoring Honor rally drew a crowd of near 100,000 (far less than Beck expected) and where is he today? Jon Stewart’s subsequent response rally drew in twice as many people but it received less media coverage. Other than participants how many remember that those rallies took place?
My recommendation:
With the new technology, the good people should take photo’s of these psychopaths, and put them on social medial.
Let their family, friend’s, and employers, have a good look at these psychopathic haters, and decide how they want to deal with them!
A picture is worth a thousand evil/stupid/ignorant/bigoted words!!!
Sorry, but that’s incitement, too. Sauce for the goose, two wrongs, etc. etc.
Then I’ll leave you to sit back, tally the wrongs, mix up the sauces, score things according to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. I expect when it’s all over you’ll have some criticisms of the way people who feel like I do handle these situations but I’m fairly confident that we’ve got the right idea. If that’s true, it means that the Nazis will be leaving the kinds of places where we are and heading toward the kinds of places where you are and all I can say is good luck. They have a record of eating people with your fine sensibilities right up.
I shouldn’t want it, but I’d love it if the police stayed home and the people of Toledo kicked the crap out of the neo-Nazis.
So: unaccountability for some people, under some circumstances? Who? When?
This stuff’s not easy.
(What is easy is becoming one’s enemy.)
I know. That’s why I said I shouldn’t want it.
That’s sort of what happened here in Milwaukee in the 1977 situation I referred to above. It worked great! The police were so concerned about protecting the Nazis’ precious free speech rights from the leftist counter-demonstrators that they didn’t pay attention to protecting them from the white people from the neighborhood.
Too bad. So sad.