#demonstrations against nazis

[wtfuckevenknows]

[bodecats]

make sure you vote! refusing to vote isn't a "protest demonstration" when a lack of votes is exactly what helps far-right neo nazi parties!

proof of this is with france RIGHT NOW

the french people have successfully defended their democracy by voting against a far-right leader that was going to fuck them up

"Turnout on Sunday was the highest in a parliamentary election for more than 20 years as French citizens took to the ballot box to make their feelings known: they did not want the far right to govern."

do not let polls dissuade you into thinking "well the polls say x so is it even worth it..."

polling percentages are very commonly skewed because it just shows who is more vocal at the time of polling

when it's your time, go vote

[apas-95]

please please vote for hitler and not goebbels in nazi party primaries because yeah they both wanna do the whole 'holocaust' thing (which I peacefully demonstrated against) but goebbels says he'll also genocide some Aryans!!! lookbup project 1935!!!! I don't wanna vote for hitler anymore than you do but- [post cancelled because this is literally just what the liberal 'left' of weimar germany was like]

[ghostingghosty]

On May 4, 1970, during an anti-war protest opposing the war in Vietnam, sprung from the expansion into Cambodia, four students were killed, and nine were harmed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University campus. The students were unarmed. Not one of the shooters went to jail. A national moment that sparked even more anti-war protests and general condemnation for the american state.

Anti-war protests and support have historically been villanised. Under the Vietnam War, opposers were called commies. Under the 'war against terror', opposers were called terrorist sympathisers. When the US went into Iraq, opposers were called traitors. All were known as pushing anti-America sentiment—being unpatriotic—just as we hear being slung around today: opposers are terrorist-supporters, antisemitic and nazis. Creating rhetoric demonising demonstrators is favourable for the state's image and affairs, "they are the mad ones, so PLEASE stop criticising our war, our invasion, and our genocide". Patterned hindsight is why we must not forget that this is a historical tactic, which will only work if we forget. Hold them accountable for this genocide; in the future, they will try to soften their current actions out of embarrassment. It won't work.

The around 300 Kent State University students' demands lay as an echo over those we hear yelled from campuses all over the US this week. Student protests and organising have always been important measures in combating government actions and to all who are attending these protests: the world is seeing you; your demands are echoing through nation borders. I am proud of my fellow students and have, myself, been inspired to look into actions I can partake in at my own university. Thank you. Be safe. Free Palestine.

[sayruq]

Yemeni, Iranian, and Palestinian authorities have spoken out in support of US university students and faculty members who have been targeted by brutal police repression for the past two weeks during mobilizations calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza. The leader of Yemen's ruling Ansarallah movement, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said during a speech on 25 April that the US government “does not respect their laws, their constitution, or any headlines they raise and brag about,” stressing that there is a “concerted effort” from Washington to silence a movement that “has begun to wake up to the horror of what is happening in occupied Palestine.” “With the demonstrations and sit-ins at prominent US universities, the US support for the Israeli enemy became clear, as authorities dealt with the demonstrations and protests … in a bad manner that goes beyond all considerations,” the Yemeni resistance leader added.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also condemned the crackdown witnessed across several universities. “The suppression and violent treatment of the American police and security forces against professors and students protesting the genocide and war crimes of the Israeli regime in various universities of the United States is deeply worrying,” Iran's top diplomat said via social media, adding that this repression is an extension of “Washington's full-fledged support for the Israeli regime and clearly shows the double standard policy and contradictory attitude of the American government towards freedom of expression.”

In Palestine, officials from Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as student organizations in the Gaza Strip, issued statements supporting the grassroots movement that has taken over about two dozen university campuses in the US. “We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist–US genocide against our people in Gaza,” a statement from students organizations in Gaza reads. “From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. Your actions and activism matter, especially in the heart of the empire, in the United States … It is clear that a new generation is rising that will no longer accept Zionism, racism, and genocide and that stands with Palestine and our liberation from the river to the sea,” the statement adds. For their part, the PFLP called on Palestinian and Arab students to “rise for Gaza following the example of American universities.” “Palestinian and Arab universities must take the initiative and break the barrier of silence, following the example of American universities which have ignited an intifada within the campus for the victory of the blood of our Palestinian people, and in rejection of the continuing American support for the zionist entity,” the PFLP statement reads. In a similar vein, Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq said that the government of US President Joe Biden “violates individual rights and the right to expression, and arrests university students and faculty members because they reject the genocide that our Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists, without the slightest feeling of shame about the legal value represented by the students and university professors.” “The Biden administration, which is a partner in the brutal war on our Palestinian people, does not want to acknowledge that [the US public has] discovered the truth about the Nazi entity and is siding with human values and standing on the right side of history. Today’s students are the leaders of the future, and their suppression today means an expensive electoral bill that the Biden administration will pay sooner or later.”

[septictankie]

[antifainternational]

Elgin reportback!

Neo-Nazi Highland Division outnumbered & driven out of Elgin

On Saturday 17th June antifascists, trade unionists, anarchists and socialists gathered from across Scotland to demonstrate against an anti-immigrant rally being held in Elgin by Hitler fanboy Alek Yerbury and his neo-Nazi Highland Division.

A vigil for refugees was organised on the Plainstones by Moray TUC on one side of the church, where people started to gather from around 11am, while a handful of fascists began to gather around the other side. A self-described libertarian wandered around the vigil with his young children while filming, generally being an arse, and trying to get antifascists to debate him. Despite the clear advantage in numbers, Moray TUC were reluctant to go around the church to confront the fascists, aiming instead to focus on their own peaceful vigil – fortunately they were unable to maintain control over the situation.

Just before noon, a 17 year old punk boy upheld a glorious antifascist tradition by punching Alek Yerbury and was cautioned by police. Shortly after this, antifascists spontaneously began to pour around the side of the church, quickly surrounding Yerbury and the 7 Highland Division Nazis and forcing the police to form a protective circle around them.

Susan Slater of Moray TUC made a weak attempt to stop people chanting “fascist scum off our streets” and stick to “positive slogans” – there’s always one liberal telling people how to protest. This request was promptly ignored. Susan Slater later told a Northern Scot journalist she was disappointed that the Nazis were confronted directly – maybe Moray TUC needs new reps or to up its commitment to antifascism!

For two hours Highland Division were drowned out by between 200 and 300 antifascists, trade unionists and locals. There were chants of “fascist scum off our streets”, “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here”, “when refugees are under attack what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” as well as such hit songs as “you can shove your Nazi flag up your arse” and “the master race? You’re havin a laugh,” with a special shout-out to comrade vuvuzela. Several times Alek Yerbury tried to start speaking, only to be drowned out with a wall of noise and forced to give up.

Eventually the Nazis had enough and the police line fell back to try and offer them an escape route, which was met by antifascists immediately surging forwards and pushing the tightly protected Nazis into an alleyway while victoriously chanting “who’s streets? Our streets!”

Some antifascists then broke off and ran down a parallel street to cut the Nazis off at the other side, sandwiching them in. After some half hearted threats to charge the antifascists blocking the other side of the alleyway with participating in an illegal moving protest, the police let the Nazis out of a side entrance. Yerbury and Highland Division were then pursued all the way back to their minibus, with police forming a defensive line across the entrance to the car park.

Other than the boy who was cautioned there were 0 arrests, the fascists were outnumbered at least 20 to 1, and they were driven out of Elgin in one of the most humiliating defeats anyone could expect.

We’ll never let Nazis have a platform in Scotland, nae pasaran!

~ Antifascist Action Dundee

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

does it not bother you that your position on trans people is the one consistently held and demonstrated by fascists? does it turn your stomach when nazis come to rallies for causes you believe in? i only hope you feel some remorse for being such a vile person

Does it bother you that Ben Shapiro supports gay marriage? Are you going to stand against gay marriage because a conservative man supports it? No? Do you think that makes you vile?

How about this:

You have two people who support abortion. One person supports abortion because they hate children, think that the world should end, and people should stop reproducing.

The second person supports abortion because they think women should have full control over their own bodies.

These people both support abortion but are they really the exact same? Can you look me in the eye and say that they really support the same exact thing?

The things is: I don't believe what fascists do. I have no problem with men who are feminine. I have no problem with women who are masculine. I don't want a world where every man is Kratos and every woman is Jessica rabbit. Fascists and nazi's don't care that someone is trans. Do you think they'd be happy with a man who wears women's clothing? Do you think they love effeminate gay men? You think they'd love seeing hairy butch dykes everywhere? Do you think their issue is REALLY with trans people in general? Or is it people not living up to their assigned, religion based, gender roles?

I have no problem with men who wear make up or nail polish or who love other men. I have no issue with butch lesbians who talk loudly about wanting to eat pussy. It genuinely makes me very happy to see gnc gay people out and about, regardless of it they're gay men or lesbians. It's instant vibes every single time.

How about another question for you, anon. Does it not bother you that teenage girls are being told that teenage males should be allowed access to their dressing rooms just because they say they "feel" like a girl? Does the discomfort and fear of those girls not churn your stomach? Do you have zero sympathy? Do the feelings of girls and women take a backseat to the feelings of men? Does it bother you that gay people are being fed homophobic rhetoric in a progressive package? Does it bother you that gnc kids are being told that they're doing boy/girlhood wrong and they should transition because no boy/girl would dare act how they do? Does it bother you that males are openly talking about wanting to fuck lesbians and how lesbians make their dick hard? Does it bother you that gay men are being told they're missing out on not eating pussy? Does it bother you that gay people are being called bad people for not liking the opposite sex?

Because it bothers me. If that reads as me having an issue with trans people then I think that says more about your ideology than mine.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Four days before the Hamas attack, the newspaper Ha’aretz published an editorial under the heading ‘Israeli Neo-Fascism Threatens Israelis and Palestinians Alike’. One month earlier 200 Israeli high school students declared their refusal to be conscripted thus: ‘We decided that we cannot, in good faith, serve a bunch of fascist settlers that are in control of the government right now.’ In May, a Ha’aretz editorial opined that the ‘sixth Netanyahu government is beginning to look like a totalitarian caricature. There is almost no move associated with totalitarianism that has not been proposed by one of its extremist members and adopted by the rest of the incompetents it comprises, in their competition to see who can be more fully full fascist,’ while one of its editorialists described an ‘Israeli fascist revolution’ ticking off all items in the checklist, from virulent racism to a contempt for weakness, from a lust for violence to anti-intellectualism.  These recent polemics and prognoses were anticipated by prominent intellectuals like the renowned historian of the far Right Ze’ev Sternhell, who wrote of ‘growing fascism and a racism akin to early Nazism’ in contemporary Israel, or the journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery, who escaped Nazi Germany at age ten, and who, not long before his death in 2018, declared that  the discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.) The rain of racist Bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call ‘Death to the Arabs’ (‘Judah verrecke’?) is regularly heard at soccer matches. There is nothing new in the analogy, of course. The likes of Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein signed a letter to the New York Times in the wake of the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 decrying Herut (the predecessor to  Netanyahu’s Likud party) as ‘akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties’.

[fdelopera]

Exactly, Anon. Exactly. This is why the Ivy League Universities being turned into Hamasnik terrorist bases is so horrifying. Especially with Jew-hating students attacking Jewish students and professors on campus, with the Universities' sanction. The Universities could shut these Jew-hate riots down. The fact that they don't shows that they want them to continue. They're trying to chase away the Jewish students and professors from these schools. That's always the first step. That's what the Nazis did first, too.

This article is taken from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. I highly recommend that everyone read the whole article. But even if you read the first paragraph, you'll see the parallels to what is happening on Ivy League campuses today:

.

After Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1933, the new Nazi government began an effort to completely reorder public and private life in Germany. 

The Nazi regime quickly targeted German universities—among the most elite in the world at the time—for restructuring according to Nazi principles. While the Nazi Ministry of Education initiated reforms, local Nazi organizations and student activists worked to bring Nazi ideals to German campuses. These forces, along with increasing antisemitism under Nazi rule, transformed everyday life at German universities. Throughout this period, students, faculty, and staff made individual decisions that both upheld and opposed Nazi ideology.

With the passage of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" in 1933, most Jewish professors in Germany were dismissed from their positions. Others, such as Professor Eugen Mittwoch, were able to keep their posts temporarily only due to the political value of their research. After purging Jewish and "politically undesirable" faculty, the regime then targeted the student body with the "Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities." As German authorities continued to "Aryanize" German universities, Jews increasingly lost the opportunity to teach or study. Many non-Jewish Germans sought to benefit from their persecution. 

The daily business of university life continued in the wake of these new policies, but political concerns increasingly influenced the way professors and students worked and studied. The practice of denunciation, as demonstrated by the "Request for the Investigation of Professor Hans Peters," illustrates the danger posed to both students and faculty if they failed to follow new ideological norms. Those willing to voice support for the new regime—whether out of enthusiasm or practicality—often received promotions or other rewards. Meanwhile, many others quietly accepted the new policies and passively benefited from the persecution of their Jewish peers. Very few, such as the small student group in Munich known as the White Rose, took any significant action to resist the Nazi dictatorship.

The Nazi government and its supporters manipulated several aspects of the country's traditional university system to turn German higher education into a crucial source of support for the new regime. For example, the German student population had been largely male long before the Nazi rise to power, and German campuses were dominated by fraternities.  Those organizations maintained traditional military discipline and dress codes, and their alumni groups exercised significant political power both before and after 1933. Fraternities—often working with the Student Council and Nazi Student League—served  as a powerful and violent force for implementing Nazi principles at universities, often going beyond the party platform in their radicalism. A Report on the Camaraderie House for Female Students of Göttingen shows how Nazi student groups used the format of traditional student organizations to train both men and women to become the next generation of Nazi leaders.

Although the regime could rely on many committed student activists, the Third Reich also sought the support of German professors to lend legitimacy to their policies. Because German universities were state institutions, professors' academic careers became vulnerable to the whims and wishes of the Nazi state. While only a small minority of professors had been Nazi Party members before 1933, several prominent professors quickly voiced their support for the Third Reich. In the new German university, political loyalty was valued over academic ability in the assessment of students and in the selection and promotion of professors. Authorities infused university classrooms with Nazi ideology—as shown in the document, "Foundation of the Advanced School of the German Reich". But prioritizing politics over academics affected the quality of German higher education. 

Nevertheless, professors—even enthusiastic supporters of the new regime—often spoke out against some aspects of Nazi policy. The case of Eduard Kohlrausch shows how his opposition to  student-led book burnings caused his removal from the university administration. Dissent against individual policies, however, did not give rise to any concerted resistance movements. German universities as a whole formed a solid base of support for the Nazi regime, contributing valuable knowledge to the development of technology for the war effort as well as logistical support for the Holocaust.

The Nazification of universities overwhelmed the daily lives of students with new requirements, including mandatory lectures, physical exercises, labor duties, and political assemblies. Many students resented those requirements, even if they supported the Nazi Party. In Heidelberg, for example, where the daily life of students was dominated by political instruction and mandatory physical training, large numbers of students withdrew from the university in search of other educational opportunities. As illustrated in the "Memo Regarding Maria-Elisabeth Koch," students also showed varying degrees of enthusiasm for the labor service that was often required of them in territories occupied by Nazi Germany.

The Nazi government's project of remaking German universities was broadly successful, but it produced unintended consequences. The quality of education suffered significantly as classes were regularly cancelled for political assemblies and students' schedules became filled with ideological and paramilitary training. Moreover, purging Jewish faculty deprived German universities of valuable expertise. Within a few years, many observers in Germany and abroad became deeply skeptical about the quality of German higher education in the Third Reich. Propaganda efforts such as the Carl Schurz tour for American professors and students—documented with a slickly produced video—did not prevent protest. The 550th-anniversary celebration of Heidelberg University met with opposition in Europe, even while prominent American universities such as Harvard accepted invitations.

With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, Allied forces occupying Germany began a long-term effort to remove the influence of Nazi ideology in German society. Many German academics who made significant contributions to the Nazi war effort fled to the United States, where they lived comfortable lives and their expertise was highly valued by American universities and the US military. In postwar Germany, many faculty and students who had benefited from the Nazis' discriminatory policies without being especially vocal or enthusiastic supporters of the regime sought to cast their dissent or their silence as forms of political resistance to obscure their own complicity. Although many Germans denied having supported the Nazi regime, antisemitism persisted in postwar Germany. The case of Hermann Budzislawski shows the difficulties encountered by the relatively few German Jews who decided to return to Germany after World War II.

Sources in this collection document the choices facing students and faculty pursuing their everyday lives in the shadow of Nazism and the Holocaust. Over the course of this period, as antisemitic discrimination escalated to mass murder, the higher education system proved to be a source of support—rather than opposition—to the party's project of remaking German society.

[jesse-pinko]

I know there’s a lot of material for us Walt-haters to work with but I still don’t think we’ve covered how much of a miracle it was that Skyler and the kids got out of there alive when he not only put a target on their backs but also did absolutely Fuck All to shield them from the danger he brought into their lives… like this man is constantly bringing up his family-he-loves-so-much-and-does-everything-for around incredibly dangerous people who will absolutely use that against him (and who also did not ask) bc he needs everyone to know he’s not like the other drug dealers and he needs to reassure himself of his lie that he’s doing this for his family and he needs to be seen as The Provider… he doesn’t call it quits even after his brother-in-law is almost assassinated bc of him and SKYLER is the one who insists they pay for Hank’s rehab w the blood money that almost got him killed while Walter waffles ab it and sulks bc she (demonstrably) thought of a better cover story than he ever could… every time he has a chance to back out of the business he doubles down and when he’s finally exposed and Saul points out that he’s throwing Skyler under the bus by going on the lam he skips town anyway and a neo-Nazi cult breaks into their home and threatens to kill their baby unless she agrees to withhold information from the police… you mean to tell me you have all of this moolah to throw around and you never once over the course of the series thought about hiring an armed guard to discreetly watch over your family 24/7?? Fuck you dude lol

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

I've seen the following headline discussed on several news sites:

And most of the discussion surrounded the issue of why are the terrorists shirtless (which takes the gold medal at the "turn a simple answer into a pointless debate" olympics. They're shirtless to make sure they're not carrying suicide vests, that they plan to detonate in the vicinity of the soldiers). What people should be noting about this, is that these armed terrorists were coming out of a hospital. It's another needed piece of evidence that Hamas has been using Gazan hospitals for their military operations. I am once again encouraging you to think about the UN, the Red Cross, the journalists reporting from Gaza, and every "respectable" human rights organization, like Doctors Without Borders, which operated in these places, and COVERED THIS UP for Hamas for the past 16 years.

Denmark's police announced that they have arrested 3 people (with one additional person arrested in The Netherlands) for planning to carry out a terrorist attack against Jews and Israelis.

Israel's top satire show continues to ridicule the inability of the world to have any moral clarity, of even the most basic kind, when it comes to antisemitism.

And that's how you could have done it, SNL.

In the same context, I watched the House debate on the bipartisan resolution calling for the presidents of Harvard and MIT to resign. Some of the arguments against the resolution were absolutely infuriating, either types of "whataboutism" ("But what about all the other things we should be doing to combat antisemitism?" Well, Karen, you can do those, too. There's absolutely no contradiction. At the same time, you say that you've dedicated many years to fighting antisemitism, and yet look at the state of your fight. Maybe holding people in position of educational power personally responsible, maybe making people see that there is a price to pay for taking Qatari money and allowing antisemitism to thrive, would make a difference, on top of those other measures that should be taken to fight Jew hatred) or just repeated, "But free speech!" (as if that line of defence wasn't obliterated during the hearing, when it was demonstrated that other marginalized groups' right to protection has been treated as superseding the right to free speech, on the same campuses where these presidents failed to define a call for the genocide of Jews as harassment, which means that not only did these universities fail to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, they engaged in discriminatory behavior towards Jews themselves).

Thankfully, the resolution passed, 303 to 126.

Here's a reminder of what Jewish students have been dealing with:

On the last day of Hanukkah, I wanna share with you this story. You might have seen this picture before:

This is the Posner family's hanukkiah. In Dec 1931, a moment before the Nazis' rise to power, and when their imminent threat is already well felt by German Jews, Rachel Posner puts this hanukkiah at the window, knowing that the Nazis' headquarters in Kiel, the German city where her husband is the community's rabbi, is situated right across the street from their home. After lighting the candles, she's suddenly inspired to take a picture of the hanukkiah with the Nazi banner in the background. When she gets the picture printed, she writes on the back:

"Judea, drop dead!" says the banner. "Judea will live forever," answers the light.

"Judea, drop dead!" was a part of a common Nazi slogan back then. It went, "Germany, wake up! Judea, drop dead!"

The Posner family heeded the warning signs, and left Germany in 1933, one of the last moments when that was still possible for Jews. The family moved to Israel, and was saved. Once established, they decided to donate the hanukkiah to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority, to be displayed at our museum. The family only asked for one thing: to get to light the hanukkiah every Hanukkah. Now, museums are not supposed to say yes to this. If you donate something to a museum, that's it. The artifact belongs to the museum, you don't get to ask to use it, and in fact, for preservation purposes, it's not supposed to be used. But YV understood from the start that our museums is not going to be like other ones, and that when people donate artifcats to us, these are not just inanimate objects. These are the remainders of people who are lost, innocence that was robbed, a world that was destroyed. These are reminders of hope and life in the face of hatred and murder. And we can't take that away from people. That's why YV agrees to this type of request.

So, when I take people on a tour of our museum during Hanukkah, and go into our "German Jews room," and I show the corner where a large "window" bears an imprint of Rachel Posner's photo, I have to explain why the display next to the "window" is empty, other than a small note that reads, "temporarily removed." And why Hanukkah is the only time of the year when visitors can't see this hanukkiah.

This year was no exception. Hanukkah came, and we got the Posner family hanukkiah out of the glass display case... Except this year, after the Oct 7 massacre, things are different. The hanukkiah first traveled to Germany, where it was lit by the families of the hostages asking for their loved ones' return, and then it traveled back to Israel, and from there to Gaza, where it was lit by a great grandson of Rabbi Akiva and his wife Rachel Posner.

This is 41 years old Tal Haimi.

Tal was a third generation at kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. He's one of many Israelis, from which there was no sign of life since Oct 7, though there was an indication that they're held in Gaza (most commonly, their cell phone signal was picked up there). Yesterday, his family got confirmation that he was murdered during the Hamas massacre, and it was his body that was kidnapped to Gaza. His wife Ella is pregnant, and was documenting the course of the pregnancy for the past two months, hoping to share that with him, when he returns from captivity. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

1939 MSG Nazi rally

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 27, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 28, 2024

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies. 

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.” 

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied. 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “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.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins. 

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” 

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”  

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. 

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. 

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan. 

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there. 

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris. 

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters. 

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020. 

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[germanpostwarmodern]

From its foundation in 1919 onwards the Bauhaus was a preferred and frequent target for nationalist and National Socialists due to its international orientation, alleged communist activities and overall avant-garde position. At the same time its students were regarded as immune to totalitarianism and National Socialism in particular. Five years after the Bauhaus centenary the Klassik Stiftung Weimar reviews the relationship between Bauhaus and the Nazi regime and does away with a number of long-held beliefs. Until 15 September the tripartite exhibition at Museum Neues Weimar, Bauhaus Museum and Schiller-Museum for the first time sheds light on an uncomfortable part of the school’s history.

Alongside the exhibition Hirmer published the present and very insightful catalogue, edited by Anke Blümm, Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler, that discusses the manifold hostilities brought forward by conservatives and nationalists but also examines the dealings of former Bauhaus students and teachers with the Nazi regime. The first third of the catalogue is thus devoted to a chronological history of the Bauhaus’ and its opposition and how the school’s situation gradually worsened. A harbinger of what was looming was the Weimar iconoclasm of 1930: the newly elected government of the federal state of Thuringia included the NSDAP and Wilhelm Fricke became minister of the interior and public education. In this capacity he released a decree against progressive art and culture with which he e.g. forced the Weimar art collections to remove their strategically built collection of Bauhaus artworks.

In the following and larger part the catalogue collects a total of 58 biographies of former students and teachers and how they fared under the totalitarian regime: included are of course the well-known stories of figureheads like Gropius, Albers and Mies van der Rohe but also those of e.g. Fritz Ertl who drew the plans for the Auschwitz extermination camp and Friedl Dicker who was killed in the very same camp. At the same time others like photographer Otto Umbehr (Umbo) fared well as regime-linked contractors.

The collected biographies again demonstrate that history isn’t a black or white business but spiked with shades of grey as proves the fact that a Bauhaus education can’t immunize individuals from adapting to an inhuman regime. A pivotal book and exhibition!

[howtofightwrite]

Sorry if you’ve already answered this, I’m having trouble finding different posts in your blog.

I know a lot of your asks are more practical-related, but how do you suggest fully encapsulating the horror and tragedy of war in a (fantasy) battle scene? I really need that emotional and gory impact but it also to seem reasonably realistic.

My favourite references are Battle of the Bastards in GoT and scenes from Lord of the Rings.

Thanks!!

Martin and Tolkien are not two authors I’d ever expect to find together when discussing thematic and abstract concepts like the horrors of war in their writing. One of them is extremely deep, and the other is a puddle. Neither of them are particularly “realistic” but only one of them claims that pretense while drawing from real history. If you’re wanting horrors of war, you’re much better off moving away from Martin and taking a gander at the actual War of the Roses.

Let me explain.

Tolkien served as an officer during World War I. By sheer body count, The Great War was one of the most bloody and brutal wars in human history. As a point of reference, over a million soldiers died during the Battle of Somme. Perhaps as importantly, World War I killed the cultural concept of the Summer War. Before World War I, the British upper class viewed war as a game. War was an adventure, something young men did between reaching manhood and getting married. Watson from Sherlock Holmes is an excellent example of the end result for this particular outlook. They figured they’d go off, have some jolly good fun, get a few scars, and be back in a few weeks in time for tea. What they got was a meat grinder. Two of Tolkien’s close friends died during the war. He also lived through the bombings during World War II while working as a professor at Oxford, he experienced the devastating effects that war had on the civilian population first hand, and, likely, saw a few of his students die. Despite his hatred of allegory, the man was working through some shit in The Lord of the Rings.

If you’re interested in learning more about World War I or even about effectively demonstrating the horrors of war, I do recommend reading All Quiet on the Western Front. I read it once in high school (more years ago than I’d like to admit here) and, much like Elie Wiesel, it has stuck with me. It was also such an effective anti-war novel the Nazis banned it and it was one of the first books they publicly burnt, so you know it’s good.

Back to Tolkien.

What they don’t tell you about fantasy is that it’s real life, just with elves and dwarves and magic. The real world forms the foundation of fantasy and it’s the humanity of the emotional experience in war, the good and the bad, with both ends cranked all the way to eleven that really makes Tolkien’s work so impactful. LOTR is operatic by design, but what keeps the narrative from falling into melodrama is the core thematic message underneath the pageantry. One of the major themes is hope, which gets symbolized in light, and hope’s interplay with despair, symbolized in darkness. Not just a rosy view of it either, but the genuine struggle to keep the light burning against all the overwhelming reasons to give up or give in. Tolkien allows his characters to be corrupted and redeemed, their struggle with temptation before ultimately choosing the better path or failing and falling into darkness. He commits to the idea that hope can be restored in the unlikeliest of places.

Boromir’s death is, perhaps, one of the best examples of Tolkien’s philosophy in action. Boromir is a character we’re not sure of, he wants the one ring from the outset, he’s the only one advocating that it shouldn’t be destroyed. The hearts of men are easily corrupted. When he tries to take the ring from Frodo, he falls into his worst instincts and breaks the Fellowship. But then, against the overwhelming flood of Uruk-hai, Boromir tries to save Merry and Pippin. He fights wounded, shot again, and again, until he’s felled by twenty arrows and he fails. Yet, in his failure he restores Aragorn’s hope in his people, gives him a reason to fight for Gondor, and inspires the audience to believe in Man’s potential for greatness.

Tolkien could have left Boromir in the dark, but he didn’t. He could’ve given into cynicism, but he didn’t. In every adaptation, Boromir’s death never fails to get me bawling. Boromir is both good and bad, both dark and light, his best and worst instincts are driven by the same underlying, sympathetic reason—his desire to save his people and fulfill his duty to his father.

On the whole, I find Tolkien’s presentation of the human condition and war to be more compelling and realistic than Martin’s. Tolkien’s underlying themes have more in common with All Quiet on the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan, and HBO’s Band of Brothers. For all that his characters often feel larger than life (by design, he’s telling an epic) there’s always a grounding quality that allows the audience to connect with them. Whether we agree with Tolkien’s core thematic message or not, Tolkien genuinely has something to say about warfare and its effect, both on personal and world changing levels, and he communicates that message very well.

The irony about the “horrors of war” isn’t about the horrors of war. Thematically, the “horrors of war” is about who we choose to become in the face of them when trapped in the crucible. Do we rise to our best selves? Do we fall to our worst? When every illusion about who we believe we are is stripped away, what’s left? It’s an existential question, not a “realistic” one.

You can’t write about the horrors of war in fiction if you have nothing to say about war, humanity, and its effects. All you’ll end up with is gore for shock value. The world becomes hopelessly depressing, and, in the end, all the blood turns brown before it’s finally shat out.

Hi, Martin.

Don’t get me wrong, Martin is a very skilled writer. His prose is genuinely beautiful and his first book in ASOF, A Game of Thrones is actually a pretty decent deconstruction in the traditional fantasy narrative and a fairly realistic treatment of how events would go for the standard well-meaning fantasy protagonist. And that’s… the deepest we get.

Martin comes out of the 24/Joss Whedon death for shock value school of writing and the land of Iron Age comics that doesn’t have anything to really say beyond, “people suck.” Underneath it all is a level of cynicism in the human condition that would make Garth Ennis blush. The deaths are just shock value. There’s nothing more to it than that. Once you’ve acclimated to the gore, there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to think about. Ironically, out of his contemporaries, Robert Jordan is better at giving both war and death in his narrative lasting effect, driving character growth, and real meaning.

Martin and Tolkien are opposite ends of the spectrum in their approach to war and their outlooks are utterly incompatible. One of them is a complete cynic and the other is facing himself honestly, openly, fearlessly, and without a smidgen of irony. (The true irony here is that the latter is the Englishman.) Following Martin’s blueprint won’t bring you to a Tolkien outcome. Tolkien’s genuine emotion is the subject of mockery in Martin’s world. Season 8 may’ve been clumsy and infuriating, but it was the natural end of Comic Book Iron Age cynicism. There are no good people, people with power can never be trusted, and all heroes, no matter how noble, reveal their true colors as villains in the end. As Christopher Nolan said, “You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.” This philosophical outlook may be sold as realistic but it’s really just Political Both Sidesism, Fantasy Edition.

The irony is that the real history Martin draws from, The War of the Roses, is simultaneously crueler, kinder, more noble, more horrific, more impactful, and ultimately more hopeful than Martin’s own work. And this was post the Hundred Years War and all the wars that preceded it.

I bring you, the Duality of Man.

If you want to write a realistic battle scene, start with real war. If you want to write about the horrors of war, start with real war. Pick a war, any war, and dig in. Reading the experiences of others is a way to gain insight into experiences you yourself don’t share and start to process the different philosophies born out of those experiences. The horror of war is a human one.

The most important lesson is that you won’t get there by focusing on the battle itself. To truly feel the impact, every character needs to be carefully built from the very beginning with a through line to every horrific event that happens to them. If you want to learn how to do that, then you need to go study every single war movie from good to bad (including the jingoistic rah-rah ones) like Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, Battle for Iwo Jima, etc, to really start internalizing the underlying storytelling structure and character design formula that makes those films tick. There’s no one better at portraying the horror and humanity of war than the war film industry. Part of what makes the best of these films really good is their willingness to allow their characters to be emotional and vulnerable. Which you won’t find in a lot of fantasy novels that run on machismo, but is the secret sauce that gives Tolkien his impact.

Having the confidence to allow your characters to struggle, be vulnerable, experience humiliating circumstances, and appear weak is an aspect of writing that a lot of men and women struggle with. Cynicism is a form of self-protection to keep those emotions away, to keep one from being emotionally invested, and is a means by which we protect ourselves from being hurt. We may portray cynicism as the more realistic reality but it’s just a cloak we hide behind. Martin’s approach to warfare is less realistic than Tolkien’s. Tolkien’s characters approach warfare with an eye toward protecting their civilians, safeguarding their future, or, in the case of his villains, focus on genocide. War for Tolkien is the eradication of civilization and the destruction of the future. Characters from experienced combatants to innocent civilians are willing to risk their lives for a world and for the people who matter to them. Martin has the Summer War. It’s there in the title, A Game of Thrones. An entertaining charade of musical chairs. And while all of his characters are chasing power, almost none of them have any sort of vision or goal for the future beyond the accumulation of more. In Martin’s world, the only way to truly win is not to play, but in the real world playing is the only way to create the world you want. Cynicism ends with no seats at the table and no means to change or save anything.

It’s funny because England during the War of the Roses had been in a state of near constant warfare for hundreds of years with their own domestic powers and France prior to the War of the Roses kicking off. The concept of a Summer War didn’t really exist for the medieval nobility. Much as we joke today about war being a game for medieval nobles due to their ransom protections, it really wasn’t. The peasantry was also much, much more dangerous en masse than they are in ASOF. They drove traveling monarchs to hide in monasteries plenty of times and, while that’s funny, it’s not actually a joke.

Now, picture Joffrey dragged off his horse in the middle of a riot and having his skull crushed by a local fishwife right before being trampled into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp by sharp hooves.

Or enjoying the Agincourt bathing route.

You’re welcome.

-Michi

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[calabria-mediterranea]

A high-profile Italian author has accused Rai of censorship after his antifascist monologue was abruptly stopped from being aired, in what he called the “definitive demonstration” of alleged attempts by Giorgia Meloni’s government to wield its power over the state broadcaster.

Antonio Scurati was due to read the monologue marking the 25 April national holiday, which celebrates Italy’s liberation from fascism, on the Rai 3 talkshow Chesarà on Saturday night.

But as he prepared to travel to Rome, he received a note from Rai telling him his appearance had been cancelled “for editorial reasons”.

Scurati is well known in Italy for his books about the dictator Benito Mussolini and the fascist period. The cancellation of his monologue provoked fierce reaction from Rai journalists, fellow authors and opposition leaders.

His speech referenced Giacomo Matteotti, a political opponent of Mussolini who was murdered by fascist hitmen in 1924, and other massacres of the regime. It also contained a paragraph criticising Italy’s “post-fascist” leaders for not “repudiating their neofascist past”.

“Undoubtedly, this is what infuriated them,” Scurati told the Guardian. “And also because of what I represent and maintain in my books … [that] there is a continuity between the fascism of Mussolini and the populist nationalists in Europe.”

The Rai director Paolo Corsini denied that the monologue had been censored, telling the Italian media that an investigation “of an economic and contractual nature” was under way, while implying that the speech was cancelled because of the “higher than expected” fee sought by Scurati.

Scurati said his fee had been agreed and the contract signed before the monologue was due to be broadcast. “The fee was perfectly in line with those paid to authors … It was the same as in the past, when there were no issues.”

In solidarity, Serena Bortone, who presents Chesarà, read out the monologue on the show. It has also been published in full by several Italian newspapers and websites.

Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has neofascist origins, came to power in October 2022 with a coalition including the far-right League and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

During the election campaign, Meloni said the rightwing parties had “handed fascism over to history for decades now”. However, Scurati claimed in his monologue that when forced to address fascism at historical anniversaries, Meloni has “obstinately stuck to the ideological line of her neofascist culture of origin”, for example by blaming the Mussolini regime’s persecution of the Jews and other massacres on Nazi Germany alone.

Meloni responded by publishing the speech on her Facebook page, while attacking Scurati and accusing the left of “shouting at the regime”.

“Rai responded by simply refusing to pay €1,800 (the monthly salary of many employees) for a minute of monologue,” she said. “I don’t know what the truth is, but I will happily publish the text of the monologue (which I hope I don’t have to pay for) for two reasons: 1) Those who have always been ostracised and censored by the public service will never ask for anyone to be censored. Not even those who think their propaganda against the government should be paid for with citizens’ money. 2) Because Italians can freely judge its content.”

Since coming to power, the Meloni government has been accused of increasingly exerting its power over Rai while edging out managers or TV hosts with leftwing views. The European Commission was last week urged to investigate the government’s alleged attempts to turn the broadcaster into a “megaphone” for the ruling parties before the European elections.

Meloni’s administration has also been accused of trying to influence other areas of the press and targeting journalists with legal action who criticise the government. A Brothers of Italy politician recently proposed toughening penalties for defamation, including jail terms of two to three years.

Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left Democratic party, said: “The Scurati case is serious; Rai is the megaphone for the government.” Carlo Calenda, the leader of the centrist Azione party, said: “Silencing a writer for saying unpleasant things about the government is simply unacceptable.”

Scurati said he has received solidarity from many authors and journalists who were otherwise afraid to speak out against the government.

“This episode is the definitive demonstration, as it has finally aroused the revolt of other writers, intellectuals and journalists who until now kept quiet,” he said. “This government launches violent personal attacks against you for speaking out, in my case [that] I asked for too much money.”

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