Monday, August 21, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
There are two historical lenses that can be applied to the
recent horrific events in Charlottesville and their aftermath.
The first would be what I’ll call the Cable Street analysis,
which considers the violent clashes between outright Nazis and their supporters
and violent counter-demonstrators as an extension or repetition of what
happened in 1936 when Oswald Mosley – leader of the British Union of Fascists
(BUF) – opted for a show of strength by marching thousands of his supporters
through the East End of London.
To counter that protest, an opposition of tens of thousands
(largely made up of Jewish and Leftist opponents of the Fascists) showed up and
met Mosley’s marchers with sticks, rocks, eggs and dung. Even with police trying to protect the
marchers and keep the peace, the inevitable violence led to riots and an
ultimate disbursal of the Nazis.
This show of force demonstrated that, unlike in Germany and
Italy, the Fascists could not count on finding a critical mass of support among
the British public. Whether because of
this failure, or because Britain was at war with Europe’s Fascists three years
later, Mosley and his Black Shirts ended up a humiliated rump vs. the nucleus
of leadership for a Fascist Britain.
The Battle of Cable Street, while large and fierce, was just
one of many violent battles between proponents of rival Right and Left-wing
ideologies fighting for supremacy on the Continent between the two World Wars,
fights that provide a different lens to think about our present situation.
For while “Reds” and “Black Shirts” in Europe claimed to be
in violent opposition to one another, one can also view their fight as
competition for the same souls: those ready to abandon Liberalism and the
Enlightenment for ideologies promising a new messianic future: whether that of
a worker’s paradise or blood-and-soil nationalist empire.
Unlike Britain, where the Liberal order protected and
asserted itself, taking advantage of Fascism’s proven weakness, but not falling
for the illusion that opposition to Nazism translated into political virtue,
the continent became divided between rival ideological empires responsible for history’s
most costly World War (which took the likes of 50 million) and most costly
social experiment (Marxism – which cost the lives of an additional 100+
million).
So are today’s clashes an attempt to halt a genuine Nazi advance
a la Cable Street, or a new front on the age-old battle between civilization and
ruthlessness?
One way to tell is by analyzing the relationship between the
actual threat and the level and nature of the response to that threat. While I’ll admit to getting a certain thrill
in seeing torch-wielding Nazis flee in panic when faced with an outraged mob
(much like the visceral pleasure of seeing Nazis gunned down in the movies), I
can’t quite convince myself that the nation or the world faces a resurgent
Fascist movement ready to try again to take over the planet.
Certainly our nation is broken into ideological camps that,
for a variety of reasons, neither talk to nor understand each other. But we have a choice between following this
trend further into extremes (where every political battle is cast as one
between Commies and Nazis), or stopping to catch our breath to determine if
this is the direction we want to travel in as a nation.
As we consider our options, the Jewish condition (which
again is being thrust upon us) can serve as a valuable means to measure
political health. Regarding the latest
Nazi slogan “You Will Not Replace Us,” the “You,” after all refers, to the
Jews. So might those tearing signs
bearing those words out of the hands of their opponents stop for a moment to
consider similar phrases (such as “The Jews are our
Dogs”) as part of the same problem?
If so, that’s a step in the right direction.
But if current opponents of today’s self-styled Nazis
instead try to lump the villains of Charlottesville, Donald Trump and Israel
into a single package that will be the target of their attacks over the coming
months and years, we may learn the truth behind a saying frequently attributed
(inaccurately) to Winston Churchill and Huey Long: that if fascism comes to
America, it will be called “Anti-Fascism.”
