__________________________________________________________________________
The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 22 January 2002
Vol. 6, Number 8 (#643)
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Web Site of Interest:
01) The Nuremberg Project
Book/Movie/TV Reviews:
02) Massimiliano Di Giorgio (Reuters), "Right-Wing Politicians Seek the
Hobbit Vote," 21 Jan 02
03) Jessica Winter (Village Voice), "How to Play the Race Card," 22 Jan
02
Fascism In the News
04) Progressive Labor, "Anti-Nazis Beat Racist Frame Up," 11 Jan 02
05) AP, "Cross Burned at Black Mayor's Home," 17 Jan 02
06) Jim Balloch (Reuters), "Rain, Police Defuse Tension at Klan Rally in
Tenn.," 19 Jan 02
07) AP, "Univ. Gets Former Neo-Nazi Land," 21 Jan 02
08) Meir Moulson (AP), "German Drive to Ban Far-Right Stalls," 22 Jan 0
Contra-Pierce
09) William Pierce: The Fascist Lie
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WEB SITE OF INTEREST:
01) The Nuremberg Project
<http://camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/nuremberg.htm>
"Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion will post documents from the [OSS-head
William] Donovan collection to its web site approximately every six months.
Scholarly commentary on these postings will be published on a rolling
basis, so please check back frequently. These documents will appear in PDF
format. Please be patient due to the large file size."
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BOOK/MOVIE/TV REVIEWS:
02) Right-Wing Politicians Seek the Hobbit Vote
Massimiliano Di Giorgio (Reuters)
21 Jan 02
ROME -- The rest of the world may see box office smash "The Lord of the
Rings" as a mythical tale of hobbits and goblins but some young members of
Italy's far right hope to use the film to promote their political ideals.
"We want to use the event as an incredible volcano to help people
understand our view of the world," said Basilio Catanoso, youth wing leader
of the far-right National Alliance party.
Right-wing thinkers and publishers, who introduced the Italian public to
the fantasy classic in the 1970s, see the 1,000-page tome by Britain's
J.R.R. Tolkien as a celebration of their own values of physical strength,
leadership and integrity.
The National Alliance youth wing is looking back to the 1970s when Italian
rightists spun its own interpretation of Tolkien's mythical world to
bolster their image, already imbued with Celtic legends, knights and a cult
of personal strength.
"There is a deep significance to this work. 'The Lord of the Rings' is the
battle between community and individuality," Catanoso said.
But the tale can be seen supporting either end of the political spectrum.
"The destruction of the ring of power, the multiracial aspect -- hobbits,
elves, men and dwarfs united against evil are all leftist ideals," said
Francesco Alo', editor of Italian film Web site www.caltanet.it.
Tolkien always denied any political intent in the book.
The story follows the struggle of a young hobbit named Frodo Baggins,
played by Elijah Wood in the film, to destroy a ring of power which holds
the key to the future of civilization.
The cult book evokes a fantasy world peopled by goblins, hobbits and elves.
"Only in Italy is "The Lord of the Rings" seen as right wing, no other
country in the world has a similar reading of Tolkien," said Valerio
Evangelisti, an Italian fantasy writer.
In the 1970s, neo-fascist summer training centers nicknamed "Hobbit Camps"
were set up by the National Alliance's predecessor, the neo-Fascist Italian
Social Movement (MSI).
The National Alliance split from the MSI in the mid-1990s. Its current
leader, Gianfranco Fini, who is also deputy prime minister, has tried to
give the party a new image.
The National Alliance has five ministers in the center-right government of
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
But tradition still echoes in the party's ranks.
National Alliance's youth wing plans a campaign to boost membership,
inviting students to "enter the fellowship," an allusion to "The Fellowship
of the Ring," the first book of the Tolkien trilogy.
The film opened on Friday in 700 cinemas in Italy. So far it has grossed
more than $500 million worldwide.
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03) How to Play the Race Card
Jessica Winter (Village Voice)
22 Jan 02
Seven words Mark Green's mayoral campaign couldn't say on television: "Can
we afford to take a chance?" Aired in the last days of the ferocious
primary-runoff battle for the Democratic nomination, the tag line was meant
to plant seeds of doubt about Green's opponent, Fernando Ferrer, and though
the people swiftly provided an answer—by taking a chance on a billionaire
novice—more questions abounded. Was this advertisement (which also borrowed
a phrase from a New York Times editorial calling Ferrer "borderline
irresponsible") simply another negative ad? Or was it a coded appeal to
white voters' misgivings about the prospect of a Latino mayor—who would
have been the first in New York's history? Was the Green spot just the
subtlest component of a wild streak of covert eleventh-hour leafleting and
cold-calling in white enclaves of Brooklyn—efforts that sought to portray
Ferrer as Al Sharpton's handmaiden? Was Green playing the proverbial race
card, or was Ferrer playing it by saying so? Where is the line between
race-baiting and "interest-group mobilizing"? And just who is this royal
"we," anyway?
A detailed map for negotiating Gotham's latest color wars can be found in
Tali Mendelberg's recent book, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit
Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton). A professor of politics at
the school, Mendelberg identifies a contradictory double incentive for
white politicians: They must both adhere to the standard of racial equality
and win the support of white voters who may hold racial stereotypes. By the
same token, those voters, despite their resentments and prejudices,
outwardly affirm the norm of equality; as Mendelberg writes, "Most people
want to avoid not only the public perception that they are racist, but also
thinking of themselves as racist." The solution? Campaign strategists use
what Mendelberg calls an "implicit racial appeal," in which "the racial
message appears to be so coincidental and peripheral that many of its
recipients are not aware that it is there. . . . The tension between the
existence of racial conflict and the inability to express it produces
indirect forms of communication."
A surreptitious appeal to white racial anxiety, therefore, doesn't operate
via a winking pact between sender and recipient. Rather, its power is
subliminal. The message loses force, paradoxically, once the viewer
recognizes a message is there at all; exposed to light, it cracks and fades
out. The ne plus ultra of suggestive racial appeals remains the infamous
Willie Horton ads of the 1988 presidential season, featuring a photograph
of a black convict who had raped a white woman while on furlough from
prison in Michael Dukakis's home state of Massachusetts. The ads lost their
potency once Jesse Jackson and Lloyd Bentsen accused George Bush's
strategists of racial intent—making the implicit explicit. (Coincidentally
or not, Bush's ratings took a dive after the outcry.)
If Green did indeed engage in underground race-baiting in the runoff
imbroglio, then Ferrer, and later Michael Bloomberg, were able to dissolve
his message by spelling it out. "Can we afford to take a chance?" becomes a
Rorschach test. Depending on where you stand, the phrase appears as either
standard-issue rhetorical flourish or the most noxious noblesse oblige. And
strangely enough, it might shape-shift into the latter regardless of the
strategist's intent—its message can appear either "by design or by
circumstance," as Mendelberg writes.
"In a primary contest against a fellow Democrat, Green had the same type of
incentive faced by many a Republican candidate running against a Democrat
in a general election," Mendelberg told the Voice. "The case of New York is
somewhat different from the standard scenario in which implicit appeals
occur, because there are more racial liberals than usual. This in turn
means that candidates who use implicit racial appeals, whether knowingly or
not, run a higher risk of challenge. You might say that this is what
happened to Green—his message was challenged and he lost support. Bloomberg
could simply sit back and watch the fallout from the internal division
among Democrats."
The profound weirdness of this mayoral election is aptly illustrated by the
plausible analogy Mendelberg can draw between your given GOP hopeful and
Public Advocate Green—the former Nader's Raider; the candidate endorsed by
David Dinkins, the only African American mayor in the city's history; the
Giuliani nemesis who sued for access to brutality complaints against the
NYPD. A daunting 40 percent of Ferrer supporters crossed party lines for
Bloomberg—the anointed successor of a man who recently said, "I don't see
minorities; everyone is a minority." Meanwhile, the racial deck-stacking
and opportunism routinely practiced by Ferrer's top adviser, Bronx
Democratic boss Roberto Ramirez, can hardly be underestimated (see, for
starters, Wayne Barrett's "Miller Time" in last week's Voice).
But as Mendelberg points out, Ferrer's appeals to specific ethnic
groups—arguably contained in his frequent invocations of "the other New
York"—cannot be held to the same standard as Green's, not least because
white voters' priorities tend to dominate the political discussion at the
expense of minority interests. "Clearly there are incentives for someone
like Ferrer to appeal to the specific concerns of Latino and black voters,"
Mendelberg says, "but those appeals are not 'racial' in the sense I use for
appeals to white voters. They don't draw on stereotypical anti-white
thoughts or on derogations of whites, but rather on notions of what Latinos
or blacks need as a group and on a worldview of American society as
racist."
The suspicion that an appeal is racially coded can often only be confirmed
retro-spectively. As Mendelberg points out in The Race Card, Bush's
motivations with the Willie Horton ads came into apparent sharp relief when
he vetoed the 1990 civil rights bill. And troublingly, Green evinced
brusque disregard for the racial wounds that opened and bled during the
runoff hustle. Though he repeatedly insisted that neither he nor his staff
knew anything of the subterranean anti-Ferrer efforts in Brooklyn, Green
refused to censure his field director when the Daily News placed him at a
meeting in which the inflammatory leaflets were discussed. When Ferrer,
Sharpton, and others asked that Green uncover who was responsible, his
astonishing reply was "I could look back and investigate that moot issue,
or try to plan a preliminary budget as the 108th mayor of New York City."
That moot issue. Green's behavior entering the general-election campaign
might have stemmed from purest arrogance, latent prejudice, or some
combination thereof; it was also unambiguously self-destructive. Kendal
Elliott, a graduate student in the department of politics at New York
University, used game theory to analyze the surprise outcome of the Green-
Bloomberg face-off. Leading Bloomberg by 16 points after the runoff, Green
was the dominant or "column player" in this conflict, and needed only to
follow a "risk-averse" series of moves (i.e., a bland, friendly campaign)
in order to win. Instead, panicked by Mayor of the World Rudy Giuliani's
late-inning (if inevitable) Bloomberg endorsement, Green launched a series
of negative ads. ("Kill it!") "Green's reaction to the endorsement was
highly irrational," Elliott says. "Negative campaigning at that stage was
not needed, and had he embraced Ferrer and other prominent liberals, the
outcome would have been different."
Racial conflict and Green's blundering alone don't explain Bloomberg's
victory; Giuliani's endorsement created palpable momentum. But the public's
wish during hard times for the smoothest possible transition cannot account
for the numbers: an unprecedented quarter of the black vote and half the
Latino vote for a Republican nominee who invested in apartheid-era South
Africa, and who in late August called charges that the NYPD engages in
racial profiling "outrageous."
"It seemed that the Ferrer campaign simply wanted some acknowledgment that
Green supporters attempted to launch a negative campaign using race, even
if Green had no knowledge of the events," Elliott continues. "Green became
so overly concerned with losing the white liberal vote that he feared any
attention paid to the minority population might cost him more votes in the
white population. What I find very irrational is that in an attempt to
secure these votes, he used no endorsements from popular Democrats, and
instead focused on negative campaigning." White supporters such as the
Clintons, Mario Cuomo, and former police commissioner William J. Bratton
slipped off the radar. An ad with members of the Uniformed Firefighters
Association and Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, beloved heroes all
after September 11, never even aired.
"If a candidate wishes to focus on a particular group, the best strategy is
to inundate different media outlets with people who look and think the same
way as the target group," Elliott says. "In the end, Green alienated both
the white vote he was trying to keep and the minority vote that already had
a dim view of him." The Democratic Party learned many tough lessons this
election season—and might well apply them to the looming contest between
gubernatorial hopefuls H. Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo. But Mark Green
should have learned long ago that the collision of politics and racial
anxiety is never a moot issue.
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FASCISM IN THE NEWS:
04) Anti-Nazis Beat Racist Frame Up
Progressive Labor
11 Jan 02
MORRISTOWN, NJ., -- The six adult defendants arrested on July 4,
2000 and indicted on felony charges for protesting a fascist Nationalist
Movement rally walked away from court today with a big victory — a $100
fine for "Obstructing a Public Highway," a minor violation similar to a
traffic ticket. In the past 18 months the bosses in Morristown, from the
District Attorney to the local cops, pressed hard to convict the
anti-racists. But the political will of the defendants, who refused to back
down from the struggle, won the day.
The heart of this victory was confidence in the working class. The
defendants, and their many supporters, held rallies in the community,
visited and spoke to many workers and became involved in the fight to stop
racist police attacks against local people. They also reached out to their
own families, co-workers and friends for support. This confidence in the
workers reached its highest point this past July 4th when many of the
defendants were among the hundreds who returned to shout down the second
Nationalist Movement rally. The cringing two fascists had to be escorted
away.
The anti-racists also built up support in the legal community. Ten
attorneys were active in the case; many others assisted. The case went from
misdemeanor to felony charges, as the bosses threw the book at the
defendants. In the face of this attack, the attorneys led a legal offensive
to match the efforts in the community. The combination was a winner.
Today, the unity of the six defendants and their attorneys, a multi-racial
group, standing firm before the judge and surrounded by a courtroom packed
with supporters was a sight to see. One white couple approached a defendant
afterwards to thank her for what she did, and to tell her how much they
were impressed by what they had just seen in court.
This shows we can lead struggles in many different situations. We can grow
through the struggle, as we did in this case. We can convince workers that
it’s always necessary to fight back — and our class is stronger for
doing it.
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05) Cross Burned at Black Mayor's Home
AP
17 Jan 02
NEWPORT, Tenn. -- Three days before a Ku Klux Klan rally, a wooden cross
was burned in the front yard of this small town's first black mayor.
A motorist spotted the cross shortly after midnight Wednesday leaning
against the mailbox at the home of Roland Dykes, a masonry contractor
elected mayor in 1998.
The Justice Department (news - web sites) is investigating the incident as
a possible hate crime, said FBI (news - web sites) spokesman Scott Nowinski
in Knoxville.
Dykes could not be reached at his office or home Thursday, but his
assistant Janice Seay said Dykes had received several calls from
supporters.
"People are saying, 'We are very sorry. Please tell your mayor we are 100
percent behind him,"' she said Thursday.
The grand dragon of the Tennessee White Knights of Yahweh, a Morristown-
based Klan group staging the rally, denounced the cross burning.
"It was a stupid thing ... and put a black eye on our cause," Scott Fultz
said. "We do not burn crosses in people's yards."
Nowinski wouldn't say whether authorities believe the cross-burning is
connected to the rally planned Saturday in Newport, a town of 7,100 about
40 miles east of Knoxville.
The rally, coming on the birthday of Robert E. Lee and two days before the
federal observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, has sparked
promises of counter-demonstrations by some local groups.
Fultz said the mayor's being black played no part in the decision to hold
the rally in Newport.
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06) Rain, Police Defuse Tension at Klan Rally in Tenn.
Jim Balloch (Reuters)
19 Jan 02
NEWPORT, Tenn.-- A cold, steady rain and a strong police presence thwarted
a possible confrontation Saturday between Ku Klux Klan members protesting
the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and a group of counter-demonstrators in
this small town at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains.
"The weather was our ally today," said local district attorney Al Schmutzer
Jr. "It helped keep the crowd down and things cool, but I'm still
disappointed that we had as many people show up as we did."
Less than 50 Klan members participated in the rally on the courthouse lawn
in this town of 7,100 about 50 miles east of Knoxville near the North
Carolina border. Only a few wore the flowing white robes for which the
white supremacist group is known.
Klan organizers had pledged to bring up to 300 people.
"It is unfortunate that in 2002 there are still people who feel the need to
espouse hatred," Martin Luther King III, King's eldest son and president of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told Reuters in an interview
before the rally. "But I also believe in the law of the land that gives
them the right to express their beliefs," King said.
Slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 73 years
old this week.
Dozens of state troopers in riot gear, many with police dogs, kept the
crowd of about 800 or 900 people apart from the rally leaders.
Klan speakers railed against non-whites, immigrants, homosexuals and non-
Christians, sporadically shouting "white power." Supporters raised their
fists in response.
Many in the mostly white crowd were curious onlookers, but there was a
contingent of KKK supporters and several dozen protesters from the
environmental group Earth First.
"I'm here to support the white race even though I can't stand the (KKK).
They are just a bunch of redneck hillbillies," said Nick Choromanski, 21,
an unemployed Newport resident and self-described "skinhead" who was draped
in a Nazi flag.
One woman, who declined to provide her name, said she attended because she
is concerned about losing her job at a local factory.
"I don't know that it's about hate," said the woman, who attended the rally
with her 17-year-old daughter. "But if they are against illegal immigrants
coming in here and taking our jobs, then I'm for this group right here."
Jani Williams, one of the few blacks in the crowd, said she and friend
Jarvis Griffin of Knoxville came to show they were not afraid of the Klan.
"I think people join the Klan just to feel like they are a part of
something, like people join gangs," said Griffin.
Protesters succeeded in drowning out the Klan speakers with loud chants and
drums.
Police made six arrests, four for public intoxication and two on
outstanding warrants for unrelated offenses that occurred prior to the
rally.
Two years ago, Newport's white majority elected its first black mayor,
Roland Dykes, 71.
Dykes, who received a standing ovation from a crowd of several hundred
people who attended a "diversity festival" organized at the local high
school as an alternative to the KKK event, said the community "will not be
blindly led by irresponsible individuals who disregard the law for their
own selfish desires."
The Klan rally and diversity festival follow several weeks of mounting
tension that began when the Klan announced its plans. Concerns were
heightened Wednesday when a burning cross was placed in Dykes' yard. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation said it is treating the incident as a hate
crime.
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07) Univ. Gets Former Neo-Nazi Land
AP
21 Jan 02
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- A former Aryan Nations compound has been donated to
a college foundation to operate as a peace park, officials said Monday.
"North Idaho College has long served as a beacon for human rights in
Idaho," school president Michael Burke said. "This gift will allow us to
continue that tradition."
The 20-acre lakeside property was owned by a neo-Nazi group until
September, when the group lost the land in a lawsuit brought by two people
who said compound members assaulted them.
The Carr Foundation then bought the property, valued last year at $250,000.
Some of the buildings were destroyed by firefighters last summer as part of
training exercises.
Gregory C. Carr is former chairman of Prodigy Inc., an Internet dial-up
service and Web portal, and co-founder of Boston Technology.
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08) German Drive to Ban Far-Right Stalls
Geir Moulson (AP)
22 Jan 02
BERLIN -- A German government drive to outlaw a far-right party suffered a
setback Tuesday when the nation's highest court suspended hearings planned
for next month.
The Federal Constitutional Court said it acted because a leading National
Democratic Party member whose statements were cited in the government's
complaint had been an agent for Germany's domestic security agency.
This "raises procedural and material questions of law that cannot be
cleared up before the court date," the court said in a statement.
It was unclear what effect Tuesday's move would have on the overall case;
but lawmakers expressed concern that it could undermine the government's
actions against the party, which it compares to Hitler's Nazis.
The National Democratic Party, known by its German initials NPD, said it
hoped it would now be able to run in national elections in September.
In a much-publicized show of determination to crack down on the far right,
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, the lower and upper houses of
parliament all filed applications last year with the supreme court to ban
the NPD.
The government accuses the party of feeding the racist ideology behind a
surge in anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic attacks in 2000.
The NPD has had little success in elections, but the government insists
that a ban is needed to bar it from advertising on television and receiving
state campaign funds.
Postwar Germany has only banned two parties: a successor to the Nazis in
1952 and the Communist Party in 1956.
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CONTRA-PIERCE
09) William Pierce: The Fascist Lie
"One thing has to be prevented that anybody on our own side gets any
wrong ideas. We have to draw a clear distinction between the
propaganda we broadcast to the other side and what we really propose
to do."
-- Adolf Hitler
8 June 1943
In his essay "The Culture of Lies"* Bill Pierce, terror-fuhrer of the
National Alliance, presents his own views on the lie in politics. Given
Pierce's position in the contemporary fascist movement it is useful to look
at his views most carefully, even if they are presented with all the
clarity of an eight-ball in a bucket of black ink at midnight. Despite the
seeming nonsense of his writings on the lie, those familiar with the
techniques of fascist propaganda know how reflective Pierce's views
actually are.
An enormous amount of fascist action is based on:
accuse others of doing doing to you what you did to them;
accuse others of doing what you are about to, or;
accuse others of doing what you just did.
The history of Nazi actions clearly shows this.
The first major Nazi atrocity was on Krystallnacht, where Nazi mobs
destroyed Jewish businesses. The very name of the action came from the
sound produced when the smashed glass in the shop windows hit the pavement.
Then the Nazi propaganda department immediately accused the Jews of
defrauding German insurance companies by destroying their own companies.
The Nazi press presented this as the revelation of the truth against
"Jewish lies."
The Nazis also preceded their invasion of Poland with a propaganda
onslaught about how the Poles were attacking Germans. Ultimately, the Nazis
dressed some corpses in Polish Army uniforms, shot the dead bodies and
stacked them outside a German radio station, broadcast a fake message in
Polish announcing the Polish invasion of German, and then turned the
Panzers on Warsaw.
Given this political fascist background, it is hardly surprising that
Pierce would defend the lie in politics, announcing that it is "in accord
with Nature."
Nor is it astounding that Pierce would then go on to denounce the "liars"
in today's culture.
Remember that Pierce does not come from the unimportant and uneducated
lunatic wing of U.S. politics; he comes from the important and educated
lunatic wing.
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* Radio broadcast, 19 January 2002
* * * * *
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
__________________________________________________________________________
FASCISM:
We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
(No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)
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