Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

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Re: Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

Postby admin » Tue Oct 29, 2024 8:56 pm

Puerto Rico Is an “Island of Garbage”: Outrage Grows over Trump’s Racist & Xenophobic NYC Rally
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2024/10/29

They’re trying to restrict what it means to be American and laundering it through racist jokes... it’s interesting that they choose to put these comedians forward, but it’s not a surprise at all. The laundering of white supremacy through so-called comedy is a common tactic...

You know, they want to create an atmosphere of unsafety for communities of color across this nation. And it’s very serious. It’s not a joke....They would be separating millions of undocumented mothers and fathers from U.S. citizen children across this country, leaving them financially and psychologically devastated....

[T]he Trump campaign released a statement saying this joke, talking about the so-called comedian talking about Puerto Rico as an island of garbage, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign...

You are American only, in the American-only vision, if you embrace hatred, if you embrace division and if you embrace this exclusionary vision of America where only certain people who fit the white nationalist agenda belong.


In the final week ahead of the presidential election, Republican Donald Trump’s campaign is facing widespread backlash after his rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden, where conservative comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage” and others leaned into racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. We speak to journalist Jean Guerrero, who has published books on Trump’s white nationalist agenda and her own Latina and Puerto Rican identity. Trump is “seeking to restrict the notion of what it means to be American,” says Guerrero. Trump and his supporters are not only othering immigrants and people of color, she argues, but anyone who does not fit a narrow, right-wing view of citizenship. “If you are a liberal, if you believe in compassion and equality and freedom for all, you do not belong in Donald Trump’s America.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: With just one week until Election Day, outrage is mounting following Donald Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday. The New York Times described it as a “closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism,” unquote. During the event, one speaker described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.” Trump also continued to spew his racist rants and lies about immigrants, doubling down on his promise to enforce, quote, “the largest deportation program in American history,” unquote, and claiming the United States is now an occupied country. Trump also described Democrats as “the enemy from within.”

Other speakers included Trump’s running mate JD Vance, tech billionaire Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tucker Carlson, Hulk Hogan, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s white nationalist, anti-immigrant policies which include the separation of families seeking asylum in the U.S.-Mexico border.
These are some of the voices from the rally.

DONALD TRUMP: The United States is now an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer. … On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.

STEPHEN MILLER: America is for Americans and Americans only!

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s going to be pretty hard to look at us and say, “You know what? Kamala Harris, she’s just — she got 85 million votes because she’s just so impressive,” as the first Samoan, Malaysian, low-IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.

DAVID REM: She is the devil, whoever screamed that out. She is the Antichrist.

SID ROSENBERG: She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch! The whole [bleep] party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew haters and lowlives.

TONY HINCHCLIFFE: And these Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country. Hahahaha! Republicans are the party with a good sense of humor. … There’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico.


AMY GOODMAN: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Those, the words of the conservative so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at Trump’s rally Sunday in Madison Square Garden.

Trump’s campaign has faced widespread anger and condemnation from elected officials, Latino groups, prominent Puerto Rican leaders from both political parties, including the head of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party, as well as Republican Congressmember María Elvira Salazar, who represents parts of Miami and has attended Trump rallies. Vice President Kamala Harris called the remarks “nonsense,” while Puerto Rican music stars Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin quickly announced their endorsement of Harris following Trump’s rally. Reactions to the racist comments included this response on ABC’s The View from co-host Sonny Hostin, whose mother is Puerto Rican. Hostin looked into the camera as she addressed Trump directly.

SONNY HOSTIN: Puerto Rico is trash? We are Americans, Donald Trump. Americans. … And we vote. Pennsylvania is home to almost half a million Puerto Ricans; North Carolina, 115,000; Georgia, 100,000; Arizona, 64,000; Wisconsin, 61,000; Michigan, 43,000; Nevada, 27,000. We vote, Donald Trump. Trash?

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by Jean Guerrero, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of the book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda and Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, which won a PEN Literary Award. She’s a senior journalism fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab.

Jean, welcome back to Democracy Now! Well, why don’t you just respond to what happened on Sunday? Twenty thousand people gathered at Madison Square Garden. Talk about what they heard.

JEAN GUERRERO: Well, what we saw there was an extreme escalation of the Latinophobic rhetoric that has defined the Trump campaign. And I want to respond first of all to the comments that were made about Puerto Rico. As a Puerto Rican woman with family on the island, who was raised by a Puerto Rican mother who taught me to love this country, to work hard for this country, to defend the vulnerable in this country — all of which appear to be foreign concepts to Donald Trump — I felt very personally offended by these comments but also was filled with a renewed conviction to defeat Trump, which I think a lot of Puerto Ricans are feeling right now.

The bottom line is these comments are evidence that the Trump campaign has nothing to offer the American people besides more hate and more division. They want to divide the Puerto Rican diaspora from the residents of the island. They want to divide Mexican Americans from Central American immigrants. They want to divide Latino men from Latina women. But these divisive tactics are not going to work. They’ve become extremely old. And people, Latina women and Latinos in general, are organizing in response to this extremely racist rally and making sure that they’re going to defend their communities.


But, in general, what these comments also showed during this rally is that they’re seeking to restrict the notion of what it means to be American, who is American, as we saw from Stephen Miller’s comments about “America is for Americans only.” They’re trying to restrict what it means to be American and laundering it through racist jokes. But news flash to the Trump campaign: As other speakers have said before, Puerto Ricans are Americans. They are citizens. And they are going to vote. They’re going to make sure that Trump never again steps foot in the White House.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jean, I’m wondering if you could talk about the potential impact of this especially in Pennsylvania, where not only is Philadelphia the home of the second-largest Puerto Rican population in the U.S., of any city after New York, but there are these other cities in Pennsylvania? Reading is 67% Latino; and Allentown, 54%; Lancaster, 40%. There’s an enormous — and most of these are Puerto Ricans. There’s an enormous Puerto Rican population in all these small towns in Pennsylvania, in addition to Philadelphia, that I’m sure this is going to have an enormous effect on — as these folks go to the polls this week.

JEAN GUERRERO: Absolutely.
I mean, Puerto Ricans are something like half of the Latino vote in Pennsylvania and are a significant portion of the Latino vote and of the vote in general in the other battleground states. And so, I think what we’re going to see as a result of this completely unacceptable rhetoric is the mobilization of the Puerto Rican vote. And we’re going to see people show Donald Trump that we are not going to be divided, that the Puerto Rican diaspora, regardless of not living on the island, we have family on the island. We are proud to be Puerto Rican.

And what that also means is that we’re proud to be American. When the Republicans are trashing Puerto Rico, they are trashing America. And it’s no different from the way that Donald Trump talks about the United States as a dumping ground. You know, this — love of country has become a completely foreign concept to the Republican Party, as revealed by their complete disdain for Latino Americans, for Puerto Rico and for anyone from the region of Latin America. And what you’re going to see as a result of that open disdain, which has been going on for years but has been significantly escalated as of the past couple of days, is a historic mobilization of the Latino vote. And we’re going to make sure that Donald Trump never again is able to wield his power to oppress our communities.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering if you could comment, as well, about the comedian who opened this rally, the patently and really nakedly racist comments he made about other Latinos, about Palestinians, and, in general, his remarks?

JEAN GUERRERO: I mean, all of these remarks, it’s interesting that they choose to put these comedians forward, but it’s not a surprise at all. The laundering of white supremacy through so-called comedy is a common tactic. But when you look at the white supremacist texts and publications that have inspired top Trump advisers like Stephen Miller, it is very clear that they believe in the racial inferiority of people of color, and that not only that, but that they promote violence towards these communities. The end goal of Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric is violence towards these communities. You know, they want to create an atmosphere of unsafety for communities of color across this nation. And it’s very serious. It’s not a joke.

You know, they are trying to launder this through comedy, but when you look at what these people actually believe, what they have advocated for, and the policies that they have put in place previously and that they plan to put in place in a second Trump term, these are extremely serious and potentially deadly actions that would separate millions of mixed-status families across the United States
. Trump’s mass deportations in a second term would be — they would make his family separations from his first term look restrained. They would be separating millions of undocumented mothers and fathers from U.S. citizen children across this country, leaving them financially and psychologically devastated. We’ve already seen the consequences of this in a first Trump term, and it would be unimaginably worse in a second one.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a few clips, Jean Guerrero. First, Trump’s former lawyer, the former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, who went on an anti-Palestinian rant as he took the stage.

RUDY GIULIANI: Hamas is not there for us! Iran is not there for us! They want to kill us! And the Palestinians are taught to kill us at 2 years old!

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, a federal judge ordered Rudy Giuliani to hand over his luxury Manhattan apartment and other costly possessions to a pair of Georgia election workers who he defamed after Trump lost in 2020. Now, as this, what the Times called a carnival took place, Kamala Harris lost no time especially on the attack on Puerto Ricans. On Sunday morning, she went to a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia. She also had released an ad there. But after this campaign rally of President Trump, Kamala Harris released another ad.

TONY HINCHCLIFFE: A floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.

DONALD TRUMP: Puerto Rico.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I will never forget what Donald Trump did. He abandoned the island and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults. Puerto Ricans deserve better. As president, I will always fight for you and your families. And together, we can chart a new way forward. I’m Kamala Harris, and I approved this message.


AMY GOODMAN: Now, we should say that the Trump campaign, after the enormous outcry, after Bad Bunny endorsed Kamala Harris right after all of this took place, the Trump campaign released a statement saying this joke, talking about the so-called comedian talking about Puerto Rico as an island of garbage, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign, Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. That was one comment they referred to. But there were many for hours at Madison Square Garden. I want to go back to former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller, who immediately launched into an anti-immigrant, racist tirade when he took the stage at Madison Square Garden.

STEPHEN MILLER: Who is going to stand up and say the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone? America is for Americans and Americans only!


AMY GOODMAN: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Now, Jean Guerrero, you are an expert on Steve Miller. You wrote a book about him, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. People don’t usually get to see him speaking unless they’re at some of the rallies where he introduces President Trump. But he is very prominent in writing speeches and in creating — and in working with Trump on this particular issue. Your comments on his significance and in — one in a new Trump administration, where so many of the officials have left Trump at this point in his former administration, but not Stephen Miller?

JEAN GUERRERO: Exactly. He is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, who shaped his immigration agenda, including the family separation policy, as you noted earlier, Amy. And when he says that America is for Americans only, it’s extremely important to note that when it comes to a second Trump presidency, it’s not only undocumented immigrants who would be deemed undesirable and disposable; it would also be Puerto Ricans, as we saw from this racist rally, even though Puerto Ricans are American citizens. It would also target legal immigrants. If Trump revives the Alien Enemies Act, as he vows to do, countless legal immigrants would be subject to mass internment and expulsion.

But it doesn’t even end with the foreign-born. When it comes to the vision of Stephen Miller and Trump’s other close allies, when they talk about Americans only, they’re talking about the far-right only. And I know this based on the fact that when Trump talks about a, quote-unquote, “enemy within,” he is echoing the title of a book called The Enemy Within that was written by Stephen Miller’s longtime mentor, a man named David Horowitz. And in this book, The Enemy Within, the entire political left is framed as an existential threat to the United States, one that must be defeated at all costs.

And so, when you listen to Stephen Miller talk about Americans only, a lot of people might feel safe, thinking, like, “Oh, you know, like, I was born in the United States.” A lot of Latino voters who are voting for Trump might think that they are immune from these expulsions and these really terrorizing plans that they have in place for the Latino community, but that’s absolutely wrong. They not going to stop with people who are undocumented. They’re not going to stop even with the foreign-born. If you are a liberal, if you believe in compassion and equality and freedom for all, you do not belong in Trump’s America. You are American only, in the American-only vision, if you embrace hatred, if you embrace division and if you embrace this exclusionary vision of America where only certain people who fit the white nationalist agenda belong.

AMY GOODMAN: Jean Guerrero, we want to thank you for being with us, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda and Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, which won a PEN Literary Award.

Coming up next, we speak with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor and fascism expert. We’ll also speak with a journalist who looked back at Madison Square Garden in an Oscar-nominated film, 1939, a Nazi rally held in the middle of New York City. Stay with us.
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Re: Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2024 12:32 am

A Night At the Garden [ENTIRE DOCUMENTARY, 1 HR. 59 MINUTES]
directed by Marshall Curry
Produced by Field of Vision
February, 2019
https://www.wnyc.org/story/when-nazis-r ... re-garden/


A Night at the Garden: An American Nazi Rally in 1939 [ONLY 7 MINUTES]
Field of Vision
PBS
Jul 12, 2020 #ww2 #Documentary #History
Official website: https://www.pbs.org/pov/

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A Night At the Garden uses striking archival fragments recorded that night to transport modern audiences into this gathering and shine a light on the disturbing fallibility of seemingly decent people.

Transcript

(crowd cheering)
(melancholy music)
(crowd cheering)
- I pledge
undivided
allegiance
to the flag of the United States of America
and the republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
(crowd cheering)
(ominous music)
- Ladies and gentlemen,
fellow Americans,
American patriots.
I am sure I do not come before you tonight
as a complete stranger.
You all have heard of me
through the Jewish controlled press
as a creature with horns,
a cloven hoof,
and a long tail.
We, with American ideals,
demand that our government shall be returned
to the American people who founded it.
(crowd cheering)
If you ask
what we are actively fighting for under our charter,
first, a socially just, white, Gentile-ruled United States.
Second, (applause)
Gentile-controlled labor unions,
free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.

(rumbling and yelling)
Here come the police!
(muted crowd rumbling) (high-pitched tone droning)
(crowd yelling drowns out speech)




Image
Image
Stage backdrop used by German-American Bund for February 20, 1939 rally. ( Photo courtesy of The New York Times )



Nazis Rallied at Madison Square Garden
by Andy Lanset
May 1, 2019

Marshall Curry's recent documentary A Night at the Garden (produced by Field of Vision) about the German-American Bund rally in Madison Square Garden in February 1939 and The Radio Diaries piece When Nazis Took Manhattan reminds us that the notion of a fascist America may not just be the stuff of fiction by Sinclair Lewis and Philip Roth, but a real possibility. Given the right social, political, and economic conditions, a significant number of the voting public can indeed be persuaded by demagogues. When Radio Diaries asked the WNYC Archives if we could help with their piece, we were able to come up with two hours' worth of the raw audio from the rally.

Image
A poster used to promote the German-American Bund Rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. (Poster courtesy of Lorne Bair Books, Inc.)

Why then have we decided to make this hate-filled event available? Well, it wasn't because it's enjoyable listening or that we endorse any of the ideology, perceptions, or language used by the speakers. On the contrary, the rally is a raw, unedited 1 hearing of an infamous event that takes place during a critical period in American history; just months away from the outbreak of World War II, when isolationist and 'America First' sentiment was gaining traction daily. The public rhetoric used by the German-American Bund played to the underlying assumptions of these movements by raising the fear-mongering specter of an internationalist 'Jewish cabal' 2 out to deprive America of its sovereignty and bring Soviet-style communism to our shores. Bund leader Fritz Kuhn put it this way:

We, the German-American Bund, organized as American citizens with American ideals and determined to protect ourselves, our homes, our wives and children against the slimy conspirators who would change this glorious republic into the inferno of a Bolshevik paradise.


Back then the 'cabal' was composed of FDR's treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the financier Bernard Baruch and the Rothschild banking family. Today, for those on the alt-right, the Jewish billionaire bogeyman is the progressive George Soros and his supporters.

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Original program cover for the German-American Bund rally Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. Notice, the snake's head has a hammer and sickle on it. (U.S. Holocaust Museum via Wikimedia.)

The speakers relied on a white supremacist tautology with a bizarre American twist that employed George Washington, the nation's founding father, as the patriotic foundation upon which to build their racist non-interventionist platform. The event, orchestrated to coincide with Washington's birthday, (February 22nd), featured a thirty-foot image of the first President flanked by red, white and blue bunting and swastikas as the visual backdrop to a succession of uniformed Bund speakers who drew on Washington's inaugural admonition about avoiding 'foreign entanglements.' One speaker even argued that if Washington was alive today, he would be a 'staunch friend' of Adolph Hitler. To this they added time-worn tropes, stereotypes, and falsehoods about criminal Jewish refugees taking American jobs, Jews creating degenerate art and music, and Jewish teachers corrupting Aryan children.

America's home-grown legacy of slavery, the Klan, Jim Crow laws, and, nativism fed into this anti-Semitic Nazi ideology of racial purity, making it easy for speakers to talk about Jewish carpetbaggers during Reconstruction along with miscegenation or 'race-mixing' and 'lustful Negroes' who only wanted to rape white women. After all, one speaker noted, intermarriage is already illegal in more than half the nation, implying that lawmakers should just finish the job.

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Father Charles E. Coughlin broadcasts in Royal Oak, Michigan, Oct. 26, 1936. (AP Photo)

But perhaps no better domestic factor was utilized by the Bund than that of America as a Christian nation with Christian values. Here, the notoriously anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin, the outspoken radio evangelist, was held high as a martyr and victim of the 'Jewish-controlled' media. No doubt rally goers were disappointed the controversial preacher was a no-show since Kuhn had repeatedly promised a "prominent Catholic" would attend to discuss "the Jewish question" in the days leading up to the event.

This certainly didn't dampen the address by Bund publicity director Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, who harped on the Jewish domination of American culture and called for news and culture without "a Jewish accent." Kunze, who fancied himself an American Joseph Goebbels, complained there is "no free speech for white men" in the United States and condemned 'parasites' like Walter Winchell, George Burns, Leonard Bernstein, and Eddie Cantor, for polluting the ether and taking the rightful places of Aryan Americans in the cultural milieu. In brief, he called for the ethnic cleansing of the airwaves. It's not too much of a stretch to go from the Christian Nationalist rhetoric of 80 years ago to current alt-right allusions to Jewish control of Hollywood studios and other media outlets.

The Protests

Towards the end of Kuhn's speech (beginning 1:57:00) you will note there's a disruption of some kind. While we can't see it, Kuhn asks people to remain seated and says, "one fanatic doesn't make any difference, ladies and gentlemen...see, that's the way we never do it." This is the moment when protester Isadore Greenbaum mounts the stage and attempts to reach the podium but is grabbed, beaten, and, stripped by uniformed Bund members. It is Greenbaum's story that is the focus of the Radio Diaries production. The savage assault on him is clearly shown in Marshall Curry's documentary film produced by the short documentary unit Field of Vision.

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Isadore Greenbaum being beaten and subdued by Nazi storm troopers at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times)

The number of protesters on the streets of New York that cold evening depended in large part on your source, with police estimates ranging anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000.3 Nevertheless, the anti-fascists were hemmed in by at least 1,700 policemen, many mounted on horses, outside of the Garden and at various points on 8th Avenue. (In 1939 the Garden was located at 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan). The New York Times described the police cordon the following day as "a fortress almost impregnable to anti-Nazis."

Image
New York City's mounted police forming a line outside Madison Square Garden to hold in check a crowd that packed the streets where the German American Bund was holding a rally. (AP Photo/Murray Becker)

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A mounted police officer attempts to take the flag away from an anti-Nazi demonstrator outside of Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939. (AP Photo courtesy of The New York Times)

The event received broad national coverage that reflected these divergent takes on what happened. The Brooklyn Eagle reported thirteen people were arrested and eight received medical attention, including four police officers in street skirmishes between Nazis, anti-Nazis, and police. Yet overall, "Despite the scattered fighting in the streets, no serious trouble resulted, and the rally failed to produce the bombing and rioting predicted."4

Image
Socialist Workers Party protest poster against German-American Bund Rally (Poster courtesy of Field of Vision/Marshall Curry Productions.)

People from a wide range of political and Jewish organizations protested, although only the Socialist Workers Party (whose poster is pictured here) was actually noted by the city's paper of record.5 The communist Daily Worker, of course, avoided mentioning the Trotskyist SWP, and pulled no punches in its lead:

"The fetid stench of Hitler Fascism billowed and eddied through Madison Square's vastness last night. Nazidom's outpost in America, the German-American Bund, carried its war on democracy into the Garden with shouts, heils, a band of uniformed storm troopers -- all the made-in-Berlin trappings, including a thin 'Americanism' veneer craftily plotted by German propaganda headquarters."6

My guess is the paper would not have been as damning six months later (August 23, 1939) in the wake of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. Still, the Daily Worker that February remained the only newspaper to mention a simultaneous counter-rally "for true Americanism through brotherhood, through democracy," that was held at Julia Richmond High School in Queens. Speakers there included Acting Mayor Newbold Morris (La Guardia was out of town), Judge Anna M. Kross, Professor David Efron of Sarah Lawrence College, and WHN News Commentator George Hamilton Combs. 7

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With a pair of Bund "storm troopers" beside her, columnist Dorothy Thompson is pictured still seated, just before being escorted out after laughing and heckling a Nazi speaker. Police later allowed her to return. (AP Photo.)

It Can Happen Here 8

Columnist Dorothy Thompson of The New York Herald Tribune (and wife of novelist Sinclair Lewis, the author of It Can't Happen Here), was escorted out of the rally by two New York City police officers and a Bund stormtrooper after she laughed mockingly when Kunze said the Aryan race follows the Golden Rule while Jews only follow the 'rule of gold' (approx 1:16:50). Thompson was allowed to return after it became clear she was there as a member of the press. Nevertheless, Thompson called Americans 'saps' for allowing such rallies and wrote:

I saw an exact duplicate of it in the Berlin Sports Palast in 1931. That meeting was also 'protected' by the police of the German Republic. Three years later the people who had been in charge of that meeting were in charge of the Government of Germany, and the German citizens against whom, in 1931, exactly the same statements had been made as were made by Mr. Kunze, were being beaten, expropriated and murdered... Whenever he made one of his blanket indictments against all Americans not purely Aryan, the audience applauded and howled with joy. Between Mr. Kunze's speech and a wholesale pogrom is a very short step...I laughed because I wanted to demonstrate how perfectly absurd all this defense of 'free speech' is, in connection with movements and organizations like this one.9


Religious and other groups had, in fact, petitioned New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, an outspoken anti-fascist, to ban the rally. A few days before the scheduled event the Mayor suggested featuring Hitler in a chamber of horrors at the World's Fair but said that he wouldn't stop the gathering. He told reporters, "I would then be doing exactly what Hitler is doing in carrying on his abhorrent form of government."10

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German-American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn at the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939. (National Archives/Wikimedia Commons)

The Banality of Evil 11

With the U.S. entry into World War II, the German-American Bund was disbanded and the leaders who spoke at the rally did not fare well. The German-born Fritz Kuhn (the last speaker) was found guilty of tax evasion and embezzling more than $14,000 from the Bund. He was sent to Sing Sing prison for two-and-a-half years. While there his citizenship was revoked on the grounds it had been obtained falsely. He was then rearrested for being an enemy agent and interned at a camp in Texas until the end of World War II when he was deported to Germany. He died in obscurity in 1951.

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Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze at the Madison Square Garden Rally in 1939. (National Archives/Wikimedia Commons)

Bund publicity director Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze succeeded Fritz Kuhn as head of the organization. He reportedly provided the New York District Attorney with the financial documents needed to prosecute Kuhn. After the U.S. entry into World War II, Kunze fled to Mexico with the intention of making his way to Germany but was arrested and extradited to the United States, where he was prosecuted and sent to prison for espionage and violating the Selective Service Act.

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James Wheeler-Hill, National Secretary for the Bund. (Daily News clipping)

Bund national secretary James Wheeler-Hill was described by the Daily News as "the boy orator of the Bund." He opened the rally and acted as emcee. Wheeler-Hill resigned his post in January 1940 following his arrest for falsely claiming he was an American citizen. A Russian-born (Latvian) national, Wheeler-Hill was convicted and went to prison for a year on Welfare Island. In March 1942 he was interned as an enemy alien by the FBI and may have been deported after the war. This is unconfirmed. His brother Axel was sentenced to 16 years in prison for being a Nazi spy.

Isolationist Pastor Sigmund G. Von Bosse was the rally's second speaker. Described by the Daily Worker as "a frequent headliner at Philadelphia Nazi rallies," Von Bosse was, in fact, a clergyman, heading up the Bethanien Lutheran Church of Roxborough, Pennsylvania from 1934-1941. According to an obituary in The Morning News of Wilmington, Delaware, Von Bosse then went into seclusion. It reported his death in Miami Beach, Florida on November 29, 1958.

Russell J. Dunn was the third speaker. Dunn was a founder of the Catholic Common Cause League and was involved with the founding of the Flatbush Anti-Communist League. He spoke often for the Bund and the Christian Front and had ties to the American Nationalist Party. No other information is available at this time.

The German-born Rudolph Markmann was the fourth speaker. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1933. He led the Atlantic Coast District of the Bund. He was one of eight Bund leaders whose citizenship was revoked in June 1944 on the grounds he violated his citizenship oath by joining the Bund. The Brooklyn Eagle reported (March 21, 1944) that Markmann testified in Brooklyn Federal Court that he eventually quit the Bund's many activities because it interfered with his family life and made him "tired and sleepy." It's not clear if Markmann was ever deported.

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A Bund color guard as it marched in Madison Square Garden are saluted by followers on February 20, 1939. (AP Photo courtesy of The New York Times)

Closing Thoughts

After listening to two hours of raw audio and then watching Marshall Curry's six minutes of archive footage, it's almost as if there were two different rallies. Missing from the audio is all of the pageantry and choreography that went into making it a spectacle. Add to that, the earnest looks, the stormtrooper uniforms, and the Nazi salutes. Sure, we hear the crowd roar its approval at what is said, but seeing it, even for a moment, is so much more powerful. Perhaps, this is because it now seems so bizarre, I can't begin to imagine it in my mind's eye.

From a strictly audio perspective, as rallies go, this one had some pretty boring stretches. Kunze was the most dynamic if not rabid of the speakers while Kuhn's revisionist history, though ponderous and tedious, made him, perhaps, the most dangerous. Still, what is remarkable is that their organization was able to muster 20,000 like-minded true believers to fill Madison Square Garden in the name of George Washington and white Christian nationalism. Add to that those around the country who agreed with them but couldn't make the trip and we're talking about a significant number. As filmmaker Curry says:

It’s scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to forget. We’d like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Americans were instantly appalled. But while the vast majority of Americans were appalled by the Nazis, there was also a significant group of Americans who were sympathetic to their white supremacist, anti-Semitic message.

Eighty years have passed. For some, however, the language and attitudes of that time and place have not faded. Indeed, the ideas and beliefs never really left. It's as if they were a person that went into hiding, kept below the radar and out of sight, waiting patiently for an opportunity to come out into the open. It seems that opportunity has arrived. Some of the persons and groups attacked have changed along with the circumstances, but contemporary discourse and events, sadly, have some eerie echoes from that night at the Garden.

_______________

Notes:

[1] There are a few gaps in the original recording, not necessarily due to an effort to censor or omit material, but simply because that material was missing from the original recordings done on a series of instantaneous lacquer-coated aluminum discs. Based on the original event program, what appears to be missing here is the music and singing.

[2] The notion of a global conspiracy by rich and powerful Jews is hardly new. Members of the German-American Bund were no doubt inspired, at least in part, by The Elders of the Protocols of Zion a late 19th-century anti-Semitic tract published in Russia that purports to be the minutes of meetings held by Jews plotting to take control of the world. Although a proven forgery, it was published and widely distributed in the United States in the 1920s by auto magnate Henry Ford through his weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.

[3] 22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in Garden; Police Check Foes, The New York Times, February 21, 1939, pg.1. This contrasts with The Albany Times Union front-page headline the next day proclaiming: "RIOTS AT N.Y. BUND MEETING 100,000 Jam Area as Army of Police Quells Outbreaks."

[4] "Army of Police Cuts Bund Rally Casualties to Only a Few Injured," The Brooklyn Eagle, February 21, 1939, pg.3. But did any of the injured include the 13 Nazis who attacked Joseph L. Greenstein, a.k.a. The Mighty Atom, who ripped down a Nazi banner outside the Garden? It may never be known, but you can listen to Greenstein's story by Nate DiMeo following the Radio Diaries piece at: When Nazis Took Manhattan or go directly to: The Year Hank Greenberg Hit 58 Home Runs.

[5] Ibid., The New York Times.

[6] "Nazi Rally Hails Hoover's Foreign Policy," Daily Worker, February 21, 1939, pg. 1

[7] Ibid, pg. 4.

[8] This refers to the Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here, a political satire describing the election of a 'patriotic' demagogue to the presidency and his Nazi-like take over of the country. This is also the same pitch line filmmaker Marshall Curry used to advertise his documentary on Fox News. The network, however, refused to air the ad as written, calling it "inappropriate." See: Hollywood Reporter.

Fox News Rejects National Ad for Oscar-Nominated Anti-Nazi Documentary (Exclusive). Fox News has rejected a national advertising buy for a 30-second spot that warns viewers about the potential dangers of American fascism after an ad sales representative said network leadership deemed it inappropriate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
by Jeremy Barr
Hollywood Reporter
February 13, 2019 3:05pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... y-1186379/

Image
Courtesy of Marshall Curry Productions

Fox News has rejected a national advertising buy for a 30-second spot that warns viewers about the potential dangers of American fascism after an ad sales representative said network leadership deemed it inappropriate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The spot was to double as a promotion of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary short A Night at the Garden, which recounts a 1939 Nazi rally in New York City, and a warning — “It Can Happen Here” — to Sean Hannity’s largely conservative viewers about the potential dangers of President Donald Trump’s brand of populism.

An ad was bought to air locally during Monday night’s edition of Hannity’s primetime show through a regional advertising buy on Charter Communications’ Spectrum service in Los Angeles, but was precluded by breaking news — coverage of President Trump’s rally in Texas.

The film’s distributor, Field of Vision, then decided to purchase a national spot on Hannity’s show, but was rebuffed by the network, which controls national advertising.

A Fox News national ad sales representative told the distributor’s media-buying agency on Wednesday that CEO Suzanne Scott (“our CEO”) said the ad was “not appropriate for our air,” according to email correspondence viewed by THR.

Cable networks like Fox News do not oversee locally bought ads but can reject national advertising spots. In August 2017, CNN declined to run a paid advertisement from the Trump re-election campaign because it portrayed some of the network’s news personalities as “enemies” of the president, a decision the campaign decried as censorship.

“The film shines a light on a time when thousands of Americans fell under the spell of a demagogue who attacked the press and scapegoated minorities using the symbols of American patriotism,” Night at the Garden director Marshall Curry said in a statement to THR.

He added, “It’s amazing to me that the CEO of Fox News would personally inject herself into a small ad buy just to make sure that Hannity viewers weren’t exposed to this chapter of American history.”

To fulfill Monday’s aborted local ad buy, the documentary’s ad will run during Thursday night’s episode of Hannity in Los Angeles, through Charter. The film’s backers also plan to advertise on other national cable news networks.

Night at the Garden marks Curry’s third Oscar nomination, following nods for his 2005 documentary on now-Sen. Cory Booker (Street Fight) and the 2011 film If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

Field of Vision, the documentary unit of First Look Media, was created by Citizenfour filmmaker Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook.

A Fox News spokesperson has not yet responded to a request for comment.


[9] Thompson, Dorothy, "Miss Thompson Issues Statement on Bund Rally," The New York Herald Tribune, February 21, 1939, pg. 3.

[10] "La Guardia Lets Bund Hold Rally," The Daily News, February 18, 1939, pg. 3.

[11] This phrase refers to Hannah Arendt's description of Adolph Eichmann at his 1962 trial in Israel. Eichmann was the Nazis' chief architect of the genocidal 'final solution' for the Jews of Europe. In Arendt's 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, she writes about the 'normalization of wickedness'. In this regard, I highly recommend reading a piece by writer Maria Popova.

Special thanks to Andrew Golis, Jim Schachter, Joe Richman, Sarah Kramer, Marshall Curry, Ben Goldberg and Lorne Bair.

Audio recording source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).


Image
Wearing the shirt which storm troopers ripped when he interrupted a speech given by Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, anti-Nazi protester Isadore Greenbaum is reunited with his wife and son after his ordeal, February 20, 1939. (AP Photo courtesy of The New York Times)
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Re: Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2024 3:29 am

A Mexican Fourth of July
by Charles Carreon

[Tony Hinchcliffe] I welcome migrants to the United States of America with Open Arms, and by Open Arms I mean like this. [Spreads arms wide, w/both hands waving Migrants away.] It's wild. And these Latinos they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.




Image
[Charles Carreon's Declaration of Independence: "Take two, they're small! Forever yours, Charles Carreon"]

There once was a man named Columbus
Italian I think that he was
He got lost on the way to the Indies
And laid claim to this country instead

The people who lived here were Mayas
Olmecas, Toltecas and such
We worshipped among the volcanoes
And lived in traditional huts

We lived mainly on beans and tortillas
With tomatoes and chilies for spice
We built pyramids bigger than Walmarts
But the greeters were not very nice.

When Cortez arrived sometime later
He kidnapped the Mexican King
We had heavy clubs and obsidian knives
But against bullets they don't do a thing.

The Padres and Popes screwed us freely
And the Spanish gave way to the French
Benito Juarez strung up Maximillian
Ruling Mexico's never a cinch.

Of course, we once owned California
Arizona, New Mexico, too
We mined gold, silver and turquoise
But not like Americans do.

Then you dammed up the water, you bastards,
The Colorado no longer flows free
To the Golfo de California
You took it for nothing from me.

You make fun of our clothes and our English
Even though Espanol you can't speak
You deride us for tanning so darkly
While you hide from the sun like a freak.

Go on laugh, you pinche Cabrones
Laugh until you piss your pants
We are the ones with cojones
Move aside, so that we can get past.

We won't spit in your milkshake, hermano
In fact let me supersize that
More fries? Absolutely senora,
When compared with a pig, you're not fat.

You watch porn like you're all maricones
Jerking off while your wives waste away
When you forget how to screw altogether
I will call that a wonderful day.

When cute Mexicanas are flirting
Red blooded chamacos must play
It's true we don't do much computing
You don't make Mexicanos that way.


You're going to build walls on the border
With Mexican Labor I hear
The Israelis tried that in their desert
Soon we'll have suicide beaners here.

You are laughing, I see mi amigo,
Your sonrisa is smiling so bright
So have one of these chili poppers
On a Mexican fourth of July.
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Re: Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2024 3:42 am

Explode on the Border
by Charles Carreon




I’m the man in the taco stand
With the detonator in my hand
Please don’t come one step closer
Unless you want more cilantro

Explode on the border
In a tarpaper shack
Explode on the border
Cause they’re never gonna take me back

I got a dark nefarious plan
To make this place like Afghanistan
Make everyone speak Spanish
They’ll all be beaners when I’m finished

Explode on the border
It’s a culture war
Explode on the border
I’ll show you what this burrito’s for

You gotta hate the people you exploit
Demonize them, make the crawl
Never show a speck of thanks
Now you wanna roll out the tanks

So we’ll explode on the border
Won’t that be fun
Explode on the border
Golf carts burning in the sun

They ask me for my papers
I got the detonator in my hand
They’ll never take me alive
‘Cause I’m the suicide taco man

Explode on the border
Gimme my desert back
Explode on the border
And enjoy your a heart attack
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Re: Nazis Treat Trial in Charlottesville Like a Joke

Postby admin » Wed Oct 30, 2024 3:58 am

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Trump’s Dehumanizing Rhetoric Is Adopting Franco’s Language of Fascism and Violence
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/29 ... transcript

We speak with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism, who argues that Trump’s use of the hallmarks of “fascism and violence,” including dehumanizing rhetoric, profane and crude discriminatory language and threats to the “enemy within,” echoes the rise of midcentury fascist rulers like Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Vice President Kamala Harris makes her closing arguments to voters tonight at the Ellipse near the White House, where Donald Trump gave his speech on January 6, 2021, just before his supporters rioted at the Capitol. Trump made his closing arguments Sunday at Madison Square Garden. As he did so, local democratic socialists protested nearby at Bryant Park.

For more on Trump’s closing arguments and the rise of the authoritarian right, we’re joined by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She’s the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present and a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. She also publishes the newsletter Lucid on threats to democracy.

Professor, welcome back to Democracy Now! In the lead-up to this final week of the election, if you can talk about the comments of President Trump, everything from arresting his enemies to the enemy within, and what this echoes for you?

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yeah. So, you know, fascism started almost a hundred years ago in both Italy and Germany with a core of combatants from World War I who brought the war home and turned their wrath and their force and their violence on liberals, on leftists, on progressive priests, on anybody who did not — was not in their leader cults. And so, when Donald Trump talks about America being an occupied country that he’s going to liberate, this is the language also of Francisco Franco. This is the language of fascism and violence.

And, you know, when we think about all the dehumanizing rhetoric and the explicit references to Hitler’s Germany, you know, Trump doesn’t want people comparing him to Hitler, even sued CNN for $475 million, claiming they were comparing him to Hitler, but he himself has — his campaign has explicitly made these parallels, even releasing a campaign ad that talked about him creating a, quote, “unified reich” and, of course, calling people “vermin.”

And I want to say something about the use of profanity and the crudeness of all of these remarks at the Madison Square Garden rally, which of course was the site of the American Nazi rally, because we think about authoritarianism as imposing controls on people and silencing people, and it certainly does that. But it also is designed, from fascism forward, to make people become their worst selves, to give them permission to be as violent and unrestrained as possible. And so, deregulation, just as, you know, Project 2025 wants to deregulate environmental protections and food safety things, following what happened during the Trump presidency, there’s also a deregulation of inhibitions, of morals, and so that you will be not — less bothered when the violence starts. You will turn the other cheek, or you will participate in it. And this kind of profanity, you know, at women, the misogyny, anti-Black statements, calling Latinos garbage, it’s not only a tradition of dehumanization that starts with fascism and goes through authoritarian movements up to our day, it’s also designed to make people feel, the foot soldiers of MAGA, that there are no restraints, there are no controls, and everything will be accepted as long as it is in the service of targeting the enemy within.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to two clips of Donald Trump, and these have become quite familiar. He called for the National Guard or U.S. military to be deployed on U.S. soil to target what he called radical left lunatics. Trump made the call, at least this particular one — he said it repeatedly — during an interview on Fox News.

DONALD TRUMP: I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Donald Trump speaking in Aurora, Colorado, earlier this month.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with, that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, we know what John Kelly said, his former, longest-lasting chief of staff, the general, who called him the “definition of a fascist.” Your response, Professor Ben-Ghiat?

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: So, you know, retired military officers, especially generals, don’t speak out unless they feel there’s a real need to do so. And the fact we’re seeing General Kelly, General Milley, former Defense Secretary Esper speak out and use the “F” word, calling Trump a fascist, means that they are highly concerned about a possible misuse of the military, because, again, this goes back. When Trump talks about scum and perhaps needing to use the military against them, this echoes Francisco Franco and the whole discourse of the subhuman, which was integral to fascism.

But there’s also a geopolitical dimension that’s very important, because if you’re Putin or Xi or North Korea and you have your expansionist aspirations, the power and professionalism of the U.S. military is a huge problem. The global reach of the U.S. military is a huge problem. So, here comes Donald Trump, who’s the latest partner of Putin — there’s been Gerhard Schröder, Silvio Berlusconi, now we have Trump — who wants to give the U.S. military a new role, concentrating them on domestic repression, withdrawing from NATO, calling troops back from abroad. And so, we have to think about who benefits geopolitically from this rerouting of the military. I’m not saying the military would go along with this, but this is what Trump is saying by — when he declares repeatedly, and as does JD Vance, that the bigger problem — you know, Russia and China are not the biggest problem; it’s the enemy within. So, this refocusing of military and armed force on American people benefits Putin, benefits Xi, benefits any autocrat who has expansionist ambitions.

***

Trump’s Night at the Garden: Racist Campaign Rally Evokes Infamous 1939 Nazi Gathering in NYC
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/29 ... transcript

We take a close look at Donald Trump’s campaign and racist rally at Madison Square Garden with filmmaker Marshall Curry, who attended the rally and also directed the short film A Night at the Garden, about the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, and notes, “The demagogues in 1939 used the same tactics that we see today.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring into this discussion Marshall Curry. Marshall Curry went to the Madison Square Garden event, but he also did an Oscar-nominated film. That film was called A Night at the Garden, about the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. This is a clip.

FRITZ KUHN: Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, American patriots, I am sure I do not come before you tonight as a complete stranger. You all have heard of me through the Jewish-controlled press as a creature with horns, a cloven hoof and a long tail. We, with American ideals, demand that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it.

If you ask what we are actively fighting for under our charter, first, a social, just, white, gentile-ruled United States. Second, gentile-controlled labor union, free from Jewish, Moscow-directed domination.

AMY GOODMAN: A Night at the Garden. That was an excerpt not of Nazi Germany, but of a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, from the Academy Award-nominated short film directed by Marshall Curry. That voice, explain what we just saw and listened to, and the person, the protester, who came up and was beaten up.

MARSHALL CURRY: Sure. So, in 1939, there was a rally in Madison Square Garden where 20,000 New Yorkers gathered to celebrate the rise of Nazism. And when I first saw that footage, I was completely shocked to see the American flag and George Washington and, you know, hear people singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and then offering a stiff-armed salute and cheering white supremacy.

So, the man who was speaking was named Fritz Kuhn. He was the head of the German American Bund, which had camps all around the country, had quite a big following and some significant power. The protester who runs out on stage and is beaten up was a man named Isadore Greenbaum, who was a Jewish plumber’s assistant who just went to the rally that night to find out what was going on, and was shocked and appalled by what he saw.

AMY GOODMAN: And you went to Madison Square Garden Sunday?

MARSHALL CURRY: I did. So, I made this film seven years ago out of archival material that we sort of found in the National Archive and UCLA’s archive and Grinberg Archive. And that was, you know, seven years ago, at the beginning of Trump’s administration. I saw some similarities between some of the demagoguery that was happening on stage in 1939 and what Trump was doing at his rallies. And so — but I had never actually seen a Trump rally personally. And so, when I heard that he was going to be at Madison Square Garden, I thought I needed to go and see it for myself.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Marshall Curry, as you mentioned your surprise, many Americans are not aware of how extensive the fascist and Nazi movement was in the U.S. back in those days. Could you talk about that?

MARSHALL CURRY: Sure. I mean, when I grew up, I always learned in school that America took on the fascists and we fought the Nazis and defeated them. And we did, and that’s a great, you know, point of pride for our country. But we were not entirely united. As today, there were people in our midst who were antisemites, who were anti-immigrant.

And I think the thing that struck me the most about seeing that footage was the way that the demagogues in 1939 used the same tactics that we see today. You know, they use this kind of dark humor. They wrap their ideology in the symbols of patriotism, and they go after immigrants and the press and minority religions. And they do it to distract people from the fact that they really want to cut taxes for rich people and take away healthcare and do policies that people wouldn’t support.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, this Madison Square rally has happened numerous times in U.S. history. People forget that in 1968, when George Wallace, the white supremacist governor, was running for president, he held a rally at Madison Square Garden in October of 1968. And it was filled, as well, with segregationists from right here in New York City. And in fact, the police were picking up people in the streets, anyone who was trying to protest the Wallace rally. I know because I was a young college student at the time trying to get down to Madison Square Garden, was picked up by the police blocks away from Madison Square Garden, and we were held in vans until after the rally was over, hundreds of people. The reality is that filling Madison Square Garden is really not that hard for a political movement. You’re talking about less than — in a metropolitan area of 20 million people, being able to get 20,000 zealots in an arena is basically two-tenths of 1% of the population.

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yes. And the other thing is that this rally, all the different strains of it, playing “Dixie,” this Trump rally, you know, Trump has always provided a big tent, from the very beginning, 2015, ’16, for every possible kind of racist and extremist in America. He addressed himself to Southern racists, people who — he addressed himself to Proud Boys, to neo-Nazis, famously, at the Charlottesville rally — every type of person with a grievance, and then enlarged that with espousing great replacement theory, and, of course, in partnership with Fox, with the GOP elite, etc.

And so, all of this was represented at this rally, together with people from the fields of business, like the businessman Grant Cardone, who said, “We have to slaughter these people,” referring to people who aren’t supporting Trump. And you had people from the world of entertainment and from sports. And so, Madison Square Garden, you know, a seat of spectacles and sports spectacles, entertainment spectacles, political spectacles, was the perfect place, actually, for MAGA to show how many people are fitting into its big tent of racism and extremism.

AMY GOODMAN: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, we want to thank you for being with us, expert on fascism and authoritarianism, wrote the book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Her newsletter is called Lucid, on threats to democracy. And we want to thank Marshall Curry, director of the Oscar-nominated short film A Night at the Garden about the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939.
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