February 22, 2006

By R.V. MURPHY
Contributing Writer

The National Socialist Movement march Sunday morning at the Seattle Center was missing just one thing: the National Socialists themselves. A group calling itself the Oregon National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, had announced on a website that it was planning a rally in Seattle on Jan. 22.

The NSM didn’t announce a time or place for the rally on the website, but groups like the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) called the number on the site to get more information. Trying to sound like potential recruits, callers learned about a noon rally scheduled at the foot of the Space Needle.

However at 12:30 the only marchers at the site belonged to left groups such as FSP, ISO, Radical Women, CURE (Coalition Undoing Racism Everywhere), ANSWER (Act Now To End War and End Racism), one gentleman selling a Revolutionary Communist Newspaper, some Teamsters, and about a dozen anarchists. And one man in his 20s who called himself an “independent skinhead.”

The NSM is one of two major Nazi parties in the United States (along with the American Nazi Party). Group members admire Adolf Hitler; the term Socialism in the group’s name is derived from an English translation of the German Nazi and not to be confused with the left-wing economic theory of the same name.

The skinhead, who wouldn’t give his name but said he was from Los Angeles, was dressed in black and had Nazi symbols tattooed on his knuckles. The anti-Nazi protesters, particularly the younger ones, questioned him, but his answers were brief, inarticulate, sometimes contradictory, and peppered with the f- and n-words. He said the protesters themselves were racist against the Nazis.

Lori McInness one of the protesters who tried to talk to him, said the skinhead reminded her of the character in the movie American History X who was overly influenced by an older brother. “He said he didn’t read and gets all of his ideas from the street,” she said.

The Nazis who never arrived in Seattle may have been the nine men who went to Olympia later that afternoon complete with swastikas, brown shirts and stormtrooper regalia. They were greeted by a crowd of about 100 protesters that quickly grew, according to an eyewitness who posted Monday on portland.indymedia.org. The Nazis tried to march from The Olympian newspaper to the state house, but garbage cans were placed in their path. Eventually police had to escort them away.

When asked why protesters didn’t just allow Nazis to speak, Stephen Leigh of the ISO replies, “when (Nazis) exercise their free speech the short-term effect of their rallies is that attacks go up. They want to test the waters in the big cities, but when they tried to rally in Toledo and Boston, activists counter-demonstrated and they had to leave under police protection.”

“ I’m not in favor of laws against Nazi’s speaking,” FSP organizer Chris Smith says, predicting that they would also be used against the left. “I’m in favor of demonstrations against them. There’s a difference between laws and pressure.”

Smith said the Space Needle turnout was “a victory.”

“ We kept the Nazis out of Seattle and we’re forcing them to organize underground. They can’t put their rallies on their web site.”