Fascism on Display 

Seventy two years ago, the Second World War ended. Surrounded and trapped, Adolf Hitler took the coward’s way out and killed himself. The Allied forces were victorious, after over 5 years of war, incurring countless deaths, unimaginable suffering and devastation, and the horrendous crimes against humanity that the nazi war machine, under the direction of Hitler, committed. 

Some estimates say that over 60 million people were killed during the war, which in 1940 terms, represented 3% of the world’s population. The fascists lost. The nazis lost. The Japanese lost. As a result of the war, it is estimated that the USSR lost about 26 million people during the war (soldiers and civilians), estimated to be about 13% of the 1940 USSR population. 

The world also lost over 55% of the world wide Jewish population; the Jews were specifically targeted by the nazis for complete extermination. A goal of the nazi machine, besides creating a thousand year ‘reich’ or empire, was to eliminate the sub-human race of Jews. Racism, specifically antisemitism, was the central feature of the nazi regime under Hitler. The master race, the thousand year empire, lasted 12 years. Those 12 years witnessed the worst world wide devastation ever. To this day, no monuments were erected anywhere to memorialize any of the nazi leaders.

In the United States, 1865 saw the end of the bloodiest war our young democracy had ever seen; a war fought over slavery. Southern states wanted to keep their way of life, which included owning slaves, and the government of the United States (the northern states) was against slavery, under the leadership of President Lincoln. Between April 2, 1861 and April 9, 1865, about 700,000 people died, split almost equally, depending on what resources you use, between the two opposing sides. For the next 40 years, no monuments were erected anywhere in the healing United States memorializing any of the Confederate leaders. There were a few statues built in the late 1890s in places liked Alabama and South Carolina. 

Suddenly, beginning in 1906, a spate of monuments, privately paid for, sprung up throughout the south. By the 1920s and 30s, more monuments honoring Confederate leaders were installed in places like Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee and North Carolina, just to name a few. The bulk of monuments erected were funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Most were erected between 1909 and 1930. 

The United Daughters of the Confederacy was established in 1896. It promoted the ideals of the KKK in its early years for its heroic accomplishments toward anglo-saxon supremacy. These monuments were not erected as a post-war remembrance honoring heroes. For 40 years after the end of the war, no statues or monuments were erected anywhere. It is curious, perhaps not so curious, that the spate of monuments and statues started at the same time that ‘Jim Crow’ laws began to be enacted in southern states. For reference, in 1896, there was a landmark US Supreme Court decision (Plessy v Ferguson) which essentially allowed individual states to enact brutal segregationist laws. Between 1896 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks. So, starting in 1896, and continuing for decades after, southern states began limiting blacks in all sorts of ways, which precipitated a mass exodus of blacks to northern states. 

By the early years of the 20th century, those northern states were struggling to absorb all these people, and the black population, along with many white supporters and leaders in government, looked to ways to help. It is interesting to note that in 1909, when hundreds of statues and monuments were put up (almost all paid for by the United Daughters of the Confederacy), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP) was established (on February 12, 1909 to be precise - the centennial birthday of Abraham Lincoln). It is also interesting that in 1910, the National Urban League was established, created to help black families who were flocking north (called the ‘Black Migrations’ at the time) integrate into the cities and towns of the northern states. 

The south continued to be free to segregate and demonize the black population living there. The KKK and white supremacists had almost free rein to persecute, and kill, blacks for almost no reason at all. Indeed, between 1900-1910, at least 790 blacks were lynched or burned alive in the US; almost 600 people are lynched or burned alive during the next decade. Almost all of these murders took place in southern states. 

It is estimated that over 1,500 statues and monuments exist honoring Confederate leaders and soldiers. Almost all of the them were erected as a political response to a cultural shift that went toward helping blacks integrate into America. The Daughters of the Confederacy, who supported and gave honor to the KKK, were less interested in placing statues in the central square than they were in showing the population who had the power. Those statues and monuments were erected as a political message to educate the white folk of those towns and cities to know that the Confederacy lived, that blacks had no power. 

In a convoluted way, the pro-Confederacy supporters melded with the white power and the nazi folk (through the KKK) to create a new master race nazi machine, one that believes the slavery is okay, killing blacks is okay, killing Jews is okay. This machine believes that the focus of the Confederacy and the focus of Hitler align. This is why the images and videos coming out of Virginia show flags of the Confederacy along side nazi flags. This is why the images and videos of the people marching chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us” as they taunt blacks and stand opposite synagogues in full militia garb, carrying automatic weapons, and chanting that they will ‘burn it down’ (referring to the synagogue). 

This is why, when a deranged nazi drove his car into a crowd and murdered an innocent peaceful ant-fascist marcher, other nazis saluted the murder as necessary and correct. 

Being labeled an anti-fascist should not be a separate stand alone description. A normal state should be defined as being against fascism, being against supremacist movements, being against racial profiling, being against nazis. I’ve read descriptions of white power supremacists clashing with anti-fascists. Shouldn’t that description be that the white power supremacists were clashing with people? “The good people of Charlottesville confronted the Nazi marchers.” “The citizens of Charlottesville marched against the white supremacists.” 

This is not an argument about who’s right, who started it, who had weapons, who had a permit (although I’ve learned that the anti-fascist marchers did indeed have a permit to march on that Saturday). It’s about right and wrong. It’s right to stand up to hate, bigotry, fascism, supremacists, nazis. We fought a war against these people, a big war, a world war. The world determined that nazis and the master race mentality should not get any oxygen for survival. We won. The good guys won. The nazis lost. The white power guys lost. 

Supporting and giving comfort to these degenerates, these dangerous bigots, should be called out. We cannot be silent. Elie Weisel (a Holocaust survivor) said “the opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference.” When the leadership of our own country, the country that went through the horrors of a civil war, and engaged an enemy as terrible as Hitler; when those people who have the responsibility of presiding over this great nation stand silent, or worse, give support to the white power supremacists, the nazis, the fascists by saying they are “fine people” and that there is a moral equivalence between those people and the citizens who stand and march against them; when that happens, we have a responsibility to act. Stand up for our democracy. Stand up for our freedoms. Take a stand. Make a comment; do something. Our president, Donald John Trump, supports racism. His words and inaction prove he supports the white supremacy movement. This cannot continue. 

Neal Elyakin
August 20, 2017
Ann Arbor, MI