My interest has been aroused upon notice of this CNN article:
Trump supporters turn on man who espouses neo-Nazi views at rally
By Ashley Killough, CNN Updated 9:34 PM ET, Wed October 5, 2016 Reno, Nevada (CNN) — A man who said he was representing the "alt-right" and embraced the label of "neo-Nazi" was shouted down by Donald Trump supporters at a rally here Wednesday night. Brady Garrett, 25, was holding up signs during the rally that said "Research Holocaust Revisionism" and "1488," the latter of which is a combination of numbers emblematic of Nazism and white supremacy. He was escorted out of the event by Trump security. Talking to reporters after the rally, Garrett said the United States needs "to put European Americans first" and disparaged Zionists. Garrett confirmed that he was a neo-Nazi and disputed facts about the Holocaust. When asked if he thinks espousing such views at a Trump rally could hurt the Republican nominee, he said, "No." "We need to speak the truth," he said, adding that he doesn't "give a damn" about any of Trump's policies and only supports him because he's "anti-establishment." Meanwhile, a couple dozen Trump supporters started circling him and yelling out pro-Trump chants to try and drown him out. Others flat-out confronted him and the reporters who were interviewing him. "Why are you trying to speak for everybody? You go speak for somebody else," Robert Santos or Reno shouted at Garrett. "The guy's a nut job," Santos later told CNN. Asked if it bothers him that someone like Garrett supports Trump, Santos said, "It bothers me anywhere that they support anybody. It's their right but we don't need to interview that person." One woman got in front of the cameras. "I don't care what color people are if they love America," she said. "This guy is an idiot!" Another woman, Carleen Reich Simko, said "there were so many thousands of other people here without this white supremacy label." Garrett was wearing a shirt with the label for the State of Jefferson, a secession movement in California. A disabled veteran, Joe Turner of Milford, California, also identified as a State of Jefferson supporter but said he was "pissed off" at Garrett for wearing that shirt while advocating Nazism at the same time. "We do not support that garbage at all," Turner said, visibly upset at the incident. CNN's Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.
I could analyze this story from one of a couple of angles: That Trump’s rallies appeal to the most…deplorable elements of the fringe right, now christened the Alt-Right; That the mainstream Trump supporters showed incredible temerity in drowning out this creep’s rant. No doubt readers who plan on voting for Trump will be unyielding in their playing up the latter mentioned angle, as proof of the “decency” of his true base of support, in the hope that this decency will be projected onto the candidate, himself. See, we told you Trump’s campaign isn’t racist. We decent folk, drowned out the voice of a true racist nutjob! But there are other considerations to be made. Garrett the nutjob was wearing a State of Jefferson shirt at the rally, and clearly making a buffoonish spectacle of his self. But it should be regarded with caution that the last guy Turner, who said he was “pissed off” at Garrett for spouting “garbage”, is also a State of Jefferson supporter. Now could it be, that Turner’s real reason for being upset with Garrett is that Garrett’s antics are damaging to the image of this group that Turner supports? I don’t know much about the State of Jefferson movement, beyond the fact that it is a movement of disaffected Northern Californians who want the region to secede from the rest of the state, and that it seems to be a conflagration of elements of both right and left (though it is clearly the right that is the dominant voice). But consider for a minute if the State of Jeffersonians were, in fact, an extremist bunch, would disavowing the support of a Neo-Nazi like Garrett really make them any less extreme? Image does not define the true nature of a group or movement, only the extent of its actions can do that. Most State of Jefferson supporters might not be Neo-Nazis, but the end result of the attainment of their goals may be damaging to the welfare of the land and the people. Would it really make a difference if their image were wrapped in patriotic American symbols and slogans or in a swastika? Therefore, by extension, does it matter if Donald Trump swears for the world to hear, that he is not a racist, if his policies, upon enactment, will be supremely racist in their end result, and that they will bring untold amount of damage to the welfare of the land and the people? The Trump supporters identified in this article may disavow the racist and anti-Semitic vulgarism of the Alt-Right—"I don't care what color people are if they love America"—But from however respectable circles they may come from, however well-intentioned they may be, if Trump gets elected and ushers in a new regime of reactionary authoritarianism and state repression, these patriots would be guilty of having supported and enabled that regime. Remember legendary anarchist Emma Goldman’s timeless words: “Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.” Today, Emma’s warning would be easily drowned out in a repetitive chorus of “Make America Great Again.” In 1942, the White Rose stated this damning quote on one of its clandestinely published leaflets: “The German people are again sleeping on in obtuse, stupid sleep, giving these fascist criminals the temerity and opportunity to continue to rage -- and they are doing it…Everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!” The Urban Dictionary website defines Good German as “a citizen of Nazi Germany who participated in or overlooked atrocities while denying personal moral responsibility by appeal to his submission to supposedly legitimate authority.” Throughout the torrid history of oppression in the United States, from Slavery to Bush Administration-era Torture, blindly patriotic Americans have been the enablers. Yet, because this past oppression has yet to be crystalized in an institutionalized fascist command, the ordinary patriots have never been held accountable. Should we be hearing the phrase Good American added to the lexicon? If Trump’s vision becomes a reality, it may finally happen.
