How to deal with fascists lessons from history
The so-called “alt right” is feeling its oats. With Donald Trump about to assume the presidency, white nationalists, supremacists and Neo-Nazis are newly empowered.
Take Whitefish, Montana, the resort town near Flathead Lake that is the part-time home of Richard Spencer, the originator of the term “alt right.” Spencer recently gained national attention when he gave a speech in Washington, D.C., using Nazi phrasings and during which his supporters made the Hitler salute while shouting “Hail Trump.”
Responding to what they claim is harassment of Spencer’s mother, who also lives in Whitefish, the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer called down a “Troll Storm” on some members of the town’s Jewish community. They also announced plans to hold an armed march through Whitefish on Martin Luther King Day. They have applied for a special event permit for what they call a “James Earl Ray Day Extravaganza,” named for King’s assassin.
The proposed march has been widely condemned by Montana’s officials, Democrats and Republicans. The local group Love Lives Here responded with a Love Not Hate gathering “to celebrate diversity and take a stand against racism and other forms of oppression.” And it’s unclear whether the march will actually happen, or is just designed to generate publicity — to make an impression for the Neo-Nazi brand.
Nonetheless, the Whitefish conflagration raises the question of how best to respond to fascism. Does media coverage of such events give hate groups legitimacy by publicizing their extreme views? Would ignoring them only allow them to grow stronger?
While things were different in many ways, looking back to the 1930s for examples of how people pushed back against domestic fascist groups, especially on the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest, gives some perspective. Here are examples of anti-Nazi tactics used in that era.
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http://crosscut.com/2017/01/how-to-deal-with-fascists-lessons-from-history/
