A Nashville lawmaker is alarmed to find a group of what appeared to be Nazis in broad daylight, marching the streets of Nashville this President's Day weekend.R
The group of more than a dozen masked individuals marched wearing red shirts and black pants, waving flags with swastikas on them. It is not clear at this time who the group is or affiliated with, though many of the shirts said "Blood Tribe."
People have to step up and denounce this stuff publically, openly and loudly enough everywhere. And I don't mean causing violence, attacking or assaulting anyone in any way. I mean more people should step up and just state how they do not accept this and pressure their government representatives to act and do something and say something to discourage individuals like this.
If people are silent, and don't know about it then they are just the ignorant masses.
If they are silent but know that it is happening but still say nothing ... then they are complicit, because their silence is an acceptance of movements like this.
American is slowly diving into a rabbit hole that the world already visited almost a century ago.
It's easy to deal with now and it's easy to stand up and tell everyone you don't accept this.
The longer everyone stays silent and passive, the more their chances of saying anything evaporates.
When it goes on for too long and too far .... it takes far more energy and activism to stop this ugly movement.
The last time it went too far ... it took a world war and millions of dead everywhere in order to stop it ... and even then, it wasn't stopped, it was just merely controlled and brought down to a manageable level because it never really disappeared.
Fighting, war and death is a last resort when all hope and possibility is lost.
We're not there yet so it's still possible to convince others not to follow these movements and make those that do follow so uncomfortable and unwelcome that they can stay in the shadows where they belong.
It's mostly our political leaders right now. If we allow leaders that allow this behaviour or leaders that even are part of this then we people have the power to either put them in power or remove them from power through elections.
And it's not just political leaders either .... it's those with wealth and power that fund and support these movements as well as corporations that would not mind seeing fascist and anti democratic governments in place. The more we call out the instigators and supporters, the more uncomfortable they will be.
Because it also works the other way, the more people speak out, the more they see that there are many more people who share the view of anti Nazism and anti fascism. If we all just sit silently, we never know how many supporters are around us and it makes us feel like a minority.
So speak out in public and speak up with your political leaders.
Sure sure, I don't want anyone anywhere to die of violence.
But there are people out there who do, and some of them are nazis, and there is a nonzero statistical chance that me or my loved ones will be caught in some form of mass shooting or domestic terrorist act.
So it is good to prepare, and point out the danger.
And speaking to our politicians does nothing, they know the threat of white nationalism more than any of us.
The only thing that changes the tragic trajectory of civil guerilla war we are chugging towards is for the right to publicly and viciously throw off the extremists that have taken over their party.
We cannot do that, no amount of talking to our politicians will give them the 2/3rds majority needed to impeach and convict all the fucknuggets complicit in jan6.
And I have literally no words to say to any repugnicunt to try and convince them to do it.
Either they do it on their own, or at some point we will get an authoritarian that isn't as stupid as drumpfh.
Principiis obsta et respice finem — ‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’
Thank you for sending me down this path of little research
They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer (written in 1955)
As Mayer's Nazi friend noted, "I do not see, even now [how we could have stopped it]. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - 'Resist the beginnings' and 'consider the end.' But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?"
August Heckscher, the chief writer of editorials of the New York Herald Tribune, wrote that the book "suggests how easy it is for human beings in any society to fall prey to a dynamic political movement, provided their lives are sufficiently insecure, frustrated or empty."[1] He stated that the book is simultaneously a discussion on ethics, on "how political tyranny is established", and on issues in Germany and the "German mentality".
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Thanks for sharing this little tidbit ... Now I have to go a read the book for myself
I really should have mentioned that book is where I got that from, glad you were able to find it and for spreading awareness of it with your update.
Overall I enjoyed the book but it wasn't what I was expecting going in based on that large block (mostly included on that blog link) about the slow boiling of fascism. Super depressing subject to be reading about not out of historical curiosity but increasing modern relevance :(
The Brits didn’t defeat Mosley and his fascism with denouncements.
In October 1937 in Liverpool, he was knocked unconscious by two stones thrown by crowd members after he delivered a fascist salute to 8,000 people from the top of a van in Walton.
The idiots in the news story are a small group of masked thugs that don't even want to be identified. So they would be far easier to denounce with words and counter protest.
Mosley was an open political leader that plastered his name everywhere and led mass public rallies that had a sizeable following. He also had a lot of political support and funding by wealthy backers who believed in this movement. Even the royal family had deep and sympathetic connections to fascist and far right ideology. At the point in history at the height of his movement ... there was not much else to do than to throw a stone at his face to stop him from going further.
100 people denouncing 10 people is far more convincing than 1 person using violence against 10 opponents because those ten people now have the excuse to use more violence to promote their movement.
Start with education, awareness, promotion, public support and campaigning against these movements .... violence only comes when there are no more options left and there is no longer anything else to lose.