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Click here: http://click.topica.com/aaaa9Ebz8SnrbAjwjxa/IPrint ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________________________________________________ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 12 January 2001 Vol. 5, Number 1 (#501) __________________________________________________________________________ Action Alerts: Benefit Gig for Arrested Anti-Fascists: London, 13 Jan No Platform Anti-Fascist Network Rightwing Crime In the News: AP, "Alleged skinhead recruiter sentenced in defacing of black church," 9 Jan 01 Web Site of Interest: International Union of Fascists Obituaries: AP, "Flo Kennedy, flamboyant black activist and lawyer, dies at 84," 23 Dec 00 Book/Movie Reviews: "Inside Hitler's Germany: Life Under the Third Reich" by Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann (Brasseys Inc., 224 pages, $34.95) Real Political Correctness: PlanetOut News, "Jr. High Students Fight Book Ban: The librarians are outraged, but it's the students who are taking the school district to court to get back the gay and lesbian biographies that were 'disappeared' from the shelves," 23 Dec 00 What's Worth Checking: 10 stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACTION ALERTS: Benefit Gig for Arrested Anti-Fascists: London, 13 Jan A benefit for NO PLATFORM anti-fascist network and anti-fascists facing charges of affray after stopping the attempted closure of meeting place by nazis Short'n'Curlies - Intensivecare - PAIN - Runnin' Riot - Blakelock Saturday 13 January at the BUTTON FAKTORY corner Hardness St & Herne Hill Rd LONDON Tube: Brikton, Train: Loughborough Junction 9.00pm until late £3.50/£2.50 concs. For more details about arrests: <www.antifa.net/noplatform> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Groeten / bye, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - - - - No Platform Anti-Fascist Network <http://www.antifa.net/noplatform/> The recent tabloid and political attacks on asylum seekers has led to an increase in organised fascist activity. Anti-fascist activists are building a new anti-fascist network. No Platform is organised on a non-sectarian basis and is open to all individuals and organisations interested in direct action against the fascists. We believe physical opposition, a policy of ‘No Platform’, is necessary and legitimate because of the inherently violent and anti-democratic nature of fascism. Fascism exists to intimidate and kill anyone that disagrees with its views or whom it finds unacceptable for any reason. However, the fascists try to deny this and are always on the search for respectability. Allowing them a platform gives them credibility. It is therefore essential that anti-fascists organise now to keep the fascists in the gutter where they belong. Ultimately, fascism will be defeated politically, but this will only be achieved if we are prepared to physically confront fascism now. If we do not challenge them while they are isolated and weak then it will be much harder to challenge them if they grow. The only objective of this network is to bring together all anti-fascists who believe that effective political action against fascism is only possible when backed up with the willingness to stop fascists organising. We will organise to deny the fascists a platform to espouse their vitriolic views and will work towards establishing an environment where other groups and individuals can put forward a political alternative to fascism, free from the threat of fascist violence. No Platform - Anti Fascist Network, BM Box 5827, London, WC1M 3XX Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- RIGHTWING CRIME IN THE NEWS Alleged skinhead recruiter sentenced in defacing of black church AP 9 Jan 01 KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A purported skinhead recruiter charged with drawing swastikas and racial epithets on the doors of a predominantly black church has been sentenced to three years and four months in federal prison. In U.S. District Court on Monday, Christopher David Kuykendall, 22, also was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $100 estitution. Kuykendall pleaded guilty in September to a charge of conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate members of the New Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church. The indictment also accused Kuykendall and a juvenile of shouting racial slurs at the church on Aug. 28, 1999. Prosecutors said Kuykendall was a recruiter for Confederate Hammerskin, a skinhead organization whose members advocate white supremacy. Defense attorney Kim Tollison had requested the minimum term of three years and one month in prison, saying Kuykendall was ready to pay for his mistake. The maximum penalty allowed was three years and 10 months. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- WEB SITE OF INTEREST: International Union of Fascists <http://www.front14.org/iuf/> "Fascism, unique lighthouse in a sea of cowardice, of compromise and of foggy, plum-colored idealism, had engaged itself in battles; it was overpowered by mere blind multitudes." -- Benito Mussolini -------------------------------------------------------------------------- OBITUARIES: Flo Kennedy, flamboyant black activist and lawyer, dies at 84 AP 23 Dec 00 NEW YORK -- Florynce Rae Kennedy, a flamboyant lawyer who fought for civil rights and feminism with trademark flair, has died. She was 84. Known simply as Flo and recognized in her cowboy hat and pink sunglasses, Kennedy fought vigorously for abortion rights, represented Black Panthers and joined feminist icon Gloria Steinem on the lecture circuit. She was born the second of five daughters on Feb. 11, 1916, in Kansas City, Mo. Her father was a Pullman porter who with a shotgun once drove members of the Ku Klux Klan off his land in a mostly white neighborhood. After high school, Kennedy helped organize a boycott against a local Coca- Cola bottler who refused to hire black truck drivers. She then moved to New York with a sister and, ignoring pleas to become a teacher, took pre-law courses at Columbia University. Her application at the law school was refused. The rejection was not based on race, administrators said, but on gender. She threatened to sue and graduated in 1951. Kennedy practiced law after graduation, but she soon grew dissatisfied with the profession, and turned to political activism, setting up an organization called the Media Workshop in 1966 to fight racism in journalism and advertising. The same year, she represented civil rights leader H. Rap Brown. Two years later, she fought the Roman Catholic church for what she viewed as interfering with abortion. In 1969, she organized feminist lawyers to challenge New York State's abortion law, an action credited with helping influence the Legislature to liberalize abortion the next year. Through the 1970s, she joined Steinem on the lecture circuit, sharing her radical views on feminism and civil rights for around $3,500 a session. Kennedy was called "the biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics join in mostly common cause" by People magazine in 1974. She is survived by three sisters. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOK/MOVIE REVIEWS: 'Inside Hitler's Germany' entertains more than informs "Inside Hitler's Germany: Life Under the Third Reich" by Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann (Brasseys Inc., 224 pages, $34.95). Rod Stackelberg (Spokane Spokesman-Review) 24 Dec 00 Since its ignominious collapse in 1945, Nazi Germany has entered the realms of both history and mythology. It is hard to say to which realm "Inside Hitler's Germany: Life Under the Third Reich" makes a greater contribution. Written by two British military historians, Matthew Hughes and Chris Mann, this glossy-paged book belongs to a genre whose purpose is more to entertain than to inform. It does this by providing plenty of short, first-person accounts, most of them anonymous, of what it was like to live in the Third Reich. While most are told from the point of view of ethnic German soldiers and civilians, the authors never say when the statements were made nor under what circumstances. Furthermore, they make no attempt to assess either the validity or the credibility of the quotes, much less identify their source. We are told, for instance, that Hitler "described his ideal woman as a `cute, cuddly, naive little thing -- tender, sweet, and stupid."' Yet just when he made this statement, or to whom, is never revealed. The authors also claim that, after the British and French declarations of war on Sept. 3, 1939, Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, shouted at Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop over the phone: "You've got your damn war! It's all your doing!" Again, no attribution. "Inside Hitler's Germany" does provide a great deal of interesting trivia. Did you know, for example, that the Hitler Youth divisions sent into action toward the end of the war were given rations of chocolate instead of the usual cigarettes? Yet the authors offer little analysis beyond such vacuous phrases as, "The community was all, the individual was nothing." Perhaps it isn't fair to judge what primarily is a picture book by its text. "Inside Hitler's Germany" contains 280 photographs, some quite striking, taken from the holdings of the Robert Hunt Library in London. Some are well known, such as Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meeting at Yalta, or the powerful picture of the terrified 10-year-old boy, arms raised, being herded from the Warsaw ghetto under the eyes of heavily armed SS soldiers. Others are less familiar, such as the photo of German civilians carving meat out of a dead horse by a desolate roadside in the spring of 1945. According to the book jacket, the photographs "re-create the atmosphere of Hitler's Third Reich in a way that words cannot." Yet the text never refers to the pictures, and even the captions are sometimes misleading, inaccurate or incomplete. What's worse, the authors assiduously perpetuate a number of myths that have grown around the Third Reich. They are simply wrong, for instance, about Nazi attempts to break up the family unit by undermining parental authority. If ever there was a movement that represented what is euphemistically called "family values," it was the Nazis (always with the proviso that the families in question were "Aryan," i.e., non-Jewish). They persecuted homosexuals, made divorce difficult (except for childless couples), encouraged large families and believed that a woman's place indeed was in the home. The authors are also wrong about the massive numbers of the Gestapo (secret police) that were required to keep the population under strict surveillance. The idea of a popular pro-Nazi consensus runs counter to the conventional image of an innocent people either seduced by Hitler's demonic powers or terrorized into submission by Nazi thugs. Yet recent research has shown that widespread surveillance was possible only because of the willingness of so many ordinary Germans to inform on one another. Perhaps most telling, the authors -- like many others -- misquote resistance leader Pastor Martin Niemller's famous saying: "First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object. Then they went after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic, so I did not object. Then they went after the trade-unionists, but I was not a trade-unionist, so I did not object. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to object." Niemller actually listed Nazi victims as communists, Social Democrats, trade-unionists and Jews; he did not mention Catholics, because the Nazis never persecuted Catholics as Catholics. It would have been monumentally counterproductive to have done so in a country in which a third of the population was, and still is, Catholic. Why the widespread distortion of Niemller's motto? It's no doubt a result of the Cold War. After Germany's fall, it was hard to find a German citizen who did not claim to have opposed Nazism. Anti-Nazism, in fact, became a kind of badge of honor. But that honor was not extended to communists nor to the left, the most determined and consistent opponents of Nazism from the start. To be fair, Hughes and Mann do devote several paragraphs to the communist resistance and its brutal suppression by the Nazis. But while they dwell on the mistreatment of German civilians and prisoners of war by the Soviets in 1945, they never mention that at least 20 million Soviet civilians were killed in the war or that more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were deliberately starved to death in German camps. Not surprisingly, the authors seem more knowledgeable about the war years than on the Third Reich before 1939. But even when they are in their element -- military history -- their account is often unreliable. That is in part because they quote heavily from the memoirs of German generals, most of which have long been exposed as self-serving apologias. In summary, Hughes and Mann have given us an uncritical history that offers only superficial analysis, repeats many common misconceptions and makes few intellectual demands. None of this, however, should reduce the voyeuristic appeal of the book to those who revel in "Hitleriana," the carnage of war or the sordid details of the Nazi regime. Indeed, these qualities will probably enhance the book's commercial success, which seems to have been the whole point of the exercise in the first place. * * * * * Rod Stackelberg is Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Professor of the Humanities at Gonzaga University. His book "Hitler's Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies" was published by Routledge in 1999. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- REAL POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: It's from the rightwing authoritarians and always has been Jr. High Students Fight Book Ban: The librarians are outraged, but it's the students who are taking the school district to court to get back the gay and lesbian biographies that were "disappeared" from the shelves PlanetOut News 23 Dec 00 It's been just over a year since two high school students in Orange County, California filed a federal lawsuit for the right to have a Gay Straight Alliance club on campus, and now two junior high school students there have filed a federal lawsuit for the right to have biographies of gays and lesbians in their school library. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, the unnamed students filed suit on December 21 against the Anaheim Union High School District demanding that the district office return ten books in the series Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians to their Orangeview Junior High School library. Some of the same books had been in! t! he library of another junior high in the district, but according to the Orange County Register they are now "missing." District officials have so far declined public comment. Orangeview librarian Christine Enterline had ordered the books in advance of the school year as part of beefing up the biography section. They arrived in early September along with other books from similar series put out by Chelsea House for ages 14 and up, such as Heroes of Faith, Black Americans of Achievement, North American Indians of Achievement, Hispanics of Achievement, American Women of Achievement, and Female Firsts in Their Fields. While Enterline and library technician Tom Kovac were shelving the new acquisitions, as Kovac told the Los Angeles Times, "A teacher just came in and made some flippant comment and the books were gone." Orangeview Principal Barbara Smith took the books from the gay and lesbian series home to review them and then sent them to the district office. Enterline sought the books' return but was denied. She was told both that the books were beyond the reading capabilities of the school's students and that students might be harassed by others if they were seen carrying the books, so they posed a safety hazard. Enterline has worked in the Orangeview library for five years without ever receiving a complaint regarding other books relating to gays and lesbians or having the district remove a book. As Kovac told the Orange County Register, "The books are not about sex. They are just about people who have led interesting, productive lives and also happen to be gay." The ten books at issue depict the lives of U.S. novelists James Baldwin and Willa Cather, German entertainer Marlene Dietrich, British economist John Maynard Keynes, Canadian singer-songwriter k.d. lang, British soldier "Lawrence of Arabia" T.E. Lawrence, U.S. pianist Liberace, Czech-born tennis great Martina Navratilova, Greek poet Sappho, and British author Oscar Wilde. The Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians series is edited by distinguished gay historian Martin Duberman, a professor at City University of New York. Enterline, Kovac and some Orangeview parents contacted the ACLU in November. This is the first censorship case the ACLU of Southern California has taken up, but staff attorney Martha Matthews (whose position is specifically funded by Internet mogul David Bohnett to advance gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights) is ready for it. She said, "We all know why these books have been banned. The books were banned because the words 'gay' and 'lesbian' appear on the front cover. The books were banned because they had a positive statement to make to kids about gay and lesbian people, because gay or lesbian people, in the eyes of some, cannot possibly be role models or heroes. The books were banned, in short, because of deep-seated prejudice. This is a very clear case of viewpoint- based censorship, which is unconstitutional. At its core, this kind of suppression is anti-democratic and antithetical to the mission of a school and, particularly, of a school library,! w! hich is to encourage inquiry and broaden minds. This kind of censorship is offensive, cowardly, and damaging to students." The lawsuit charges that students' free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution and protection from discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation under California law are being violated. Kovac noted that the process by which the books were removed also violates the district's own policy. One of the student plaintiffs, known in court papers as "Daniel Doe," said in a statement that, "I have an older brother in high school who is gay. I think that having books in the library about famous people who are gay or lesbian would help me and other students learn that gay people can be successful in life, and learn not to be prejudiced." Enterline said in a statement, "Unfortunately, I have heard Orangeview students using epithets such as 'faggot' as insults and using the expression 'that's so gay' to imply that an idea or action is foolish or ridiculous. Books such as the series Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians can play an important role in helping to create a school environment in which homophobia, like racism and other biases, is addressed and challenged." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S WORTH CHECKING stories via <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/story7/> Communist Party, USA (press release), "A very American coup," 14 Dec 00, "It didn't come at the point of a gun. It didn't come with jack-booted soldiers. It came in lawyer's suits and justices' robes. The will of the people may never be known, as the hero of the court, Justice Stevens wrote, but the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. The American people lost. Democracy was subverted. It was subverted, as always, by a small grouping of right-wing extremists who knew they couldn't win the old-fashioned way - by the majority votes of the American people." <2001.txt> AFP, "Displaced Serbs From Kosovo Face Humanitarian Crisis," 13 Dec 00, "There has been no heating at the Radinac collective center for two weeks and hepatitis has broken out, but it is the only home some 800 Kosovo Serbs, among them 70 babies, will have this winter. ... The Serbs have lived here since fleeing Kosovo in 1999. They are among more than 200,000 who left their homes fearing violence by the ethnic Albanian majority after Belgrade forces withdrew from the province and NATO-led peacekeepers from KFOR were deployed." <2002.txt> Jim Suhr (AP), "Michigan Admissions Policy Upheld," 14 Dec 00, "A federal judge has upheld the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy of weighing the race of applicants in a closely watched case that may be headed for the Supreme Court." <2003.txt> Tony Perry (Los Angeles Times), "Oceanside's Mayor Stirs Pot With Police Bias Charges," 13 Dec 00, "This racially diverse city's first black mayor has set off a political storm only weeks after taking office by complaining of 'deep-rooted racism and sexism' in the police department." <2004.txt> Anjetta McQueen (AP), "Black Education Workers Get $4M," 12 Dec 00, "Black employees denied promotions in the Education Department won $4 million from the government to settle a 9-year-old federal discrimination case, the workers' lawyers said Monday. Some 1,100 black upper-level employees filed the class-action suit in 1991, saying vague job postings and arbitrary decisions shut them out of top-level promotions in the 3,600-person department headquarters." <2005.txt> AP, "Wallenberg still alive, attorney says," 30 Dec 00, "An attorney for the family of Raoul Wallenberg, who helped thousands of Jews escape Nazi death camps, thinks the Swedish diplomat is still alive." <2006.txt> Reuters, "U. S. again seeks Austrian museum's surrender of Nazi-stolen art," 29 Dec 00, "A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the U.S. government can renew its efforts to force an Austrian museum to forfeit an Egon Schiele painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II." <2007.txt> Peter Barabas (AP), "Jewish history museum vandalized: Pair demand to see `Auschwitz soap'; beat up guard, 63," 29 Dec 00, "Two men who said they were looking for 'soap made of human fat,' smashed windows and beat a guard at a Jewish History museum in Romania on Thursday." <2008.txt> Stefanie Olsen (CNET), "Anti-racism site target of cyberattack," 27 Dec 00, "The Anti-Defamation League Web site was the target of an anti-Israel attack this week, the latest in a string of cyber break-ins related to the violence in the Middle East. The ADL Web site was taken over for about 20 minutes Tuesday by hackers who identified themselves as the "World's Fantabulous Defacers." In lieu of the ADL home page, the attackers posted threats to Israelis as well as pro-Palestinian sentiment. The hackers did not gain access to any sensitive information." <2009.txt> Clark Morphew (Pioneer Planet), "For Christian conservative leaders, George W. was `Mr. Right'," 30 Dec 00, "You may have noticed that we finally have a new president of the United States -- a Texas fellow who promises stuff, such as enormous tax cuts. The truth about George W. Bush and his campaign is that conservative religious people helped get him elected. These supporters of George W. are Christian religious people with a good deal of money. Some of them are Roman Catholic bishops who can twist a vote simply by writing letters for their obedient priests to read in church on Sunday morning. And some are fundamentalist, right-wing Christians, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who claim to control the votes of millions of true believers." <2010.txt> * * * * * 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) - - - - - back issues archived via: <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/tinaf/> /=-=-=-=-Click Here & Support Our Sponsor-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\ FREE DEBT REDUCTION HELP? Did you know you can get COMPLETELY FREE HELP lowering your interest charges and debt payments? 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