February 22, 2006

Roundtable moderated by ROSETTE ROYALE
Staff Reporter

Last Sunday, a neo-Nazi rally was scheduled to take place in downtown Seattle. Orchestrated by a group known as the National Socialist Movement, neo-Nazis intent on participating in a “pro-white” demonstration were called to convene under the Space Needle. Only one individual — a young man, blond, clad in black trench coat, sweater, pants, and black boots accented with red laces — showed up to demonstrate. He was greeted by a phalanx of young anarchists, many dressed in black themselves, who were there to express disgust at his allegiance to fascism. For more than an hour, two groups, holding opposing viewpoints, acted out a minor drama under our city’s most visible landmark.

But what about the existence, visible or otherwise, of neo-Nazis in Seattle? Is this something citizens should be concerned with, or was the rally merely a minor blip on the city’s liberal radar screen? Real Change convened a number of local activists to pose these questions and more.

Gathered in our office were Michael Maidan, a high school student at Puget Sound Community School and member of the International Socialist Organization; Tim Harris, Real Change executive director; Jerry Saltzman, a psychologist and professor at Antioch University currently with Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation; K.L. Shannon, Real Change Advisory Board member and community organizer working on public safety and police accountability through the King County Bar Association’s Racial Disparity Project; Ilana Kennedy, education director at Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center; and Steve Adler, survivor of the Hitler regime and a member of the Resource Center’s speakers bureau.

As an entry point into the discussion, a recording of the National Socialist Movement’s outgoing phone message was played. Claiming that the group speaks out on such issues as guarding “against the full-scale Mexican invasion that is happening right now this second across our entire southern border,” it reminds callers at its end that, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Real Change: Is there a problem with the fact that a neo-Nazi rally was planned downtown?

Michael Maidan: I think it’s a huge issue. To think this group, with its absurd concepts, won’t become a presence is quite foolish. And as long as they’re not opposed, they’ll become greater, and then it’s Nazi Germany all over again.

Tim Harris: Who here knows what the scale of the problem is now? My sense is that instead of this being a growing movement, it is a declining movement and that the neo-fascists are not doing particularly well these days.

Jerry Saltzman: The [Southern] Poverty Law Center follows them and puts out a quarterly magazine about all their activities. It’s not so small.

Ilana Kennedy: It’s actually on the rise. What they’re finding is it’s a little more underground and a little more subdued than it has been in the past. It’s definitely there, it’s just under the surface.

K.L. Shannon: One way that they’re really getting to young people is through music. I recently saw something on “PrimeTime”—

Kennedy: I saw that too.

Shannon: —and it was two little girls—two little white girls—about 10- or 11-years old. And they were up-and-coming racist singers. It was scary. So we should be very concerned. And as far as the neo-Nazis’ right to assemble, I don’t support them having freedom of speech. I just have to put that out there.

Steve Adler: I’m a survivor of the Nazi regime, and I do everything I can to make clear to the students that I talk to what the issues are today. So I agree with you as far as that goes. What I’m saying is, any group has the right to assemble and speak and if we disagree with them — and I’m sure we do — we have the right to be there and have a counterprotest.

Shannon: Well, we can agree to disagree.

Saltzman: I want to go back to the original question: “Is this a problem?” I like to look at things in systemic ways, and so you have to ask yourself: Why do they exist? Why is it our society has 11-year-olds becoming up-and-coming racist singers? How have we failed? I think that’s really the issue. And the second problem is, for me: Why are we not together in terms of preventing this stuff, rather than reacting to it?

RC: So those are great questions. Let’s take the first one: How have we failed?

Shannon: When I was watching that show, it was interesting, because it’s generational. They were twins. Their mother was brought up that way. [The grandfather] had a swastika sticker on his truck and on his belt buckle.

Kennedy: And he branded his cattle with swastikas. It’s outrageous.

Shannon: It was scary just to know that this mentality is going on in this country.

Saltzman: I think that our country has a history of having an elite class system survive by the mechanism of dividing people from each other. When you get people deprived of things that everyone should have, they’re going to want to take it out on somebody. And if you have it set up that there are certain groups to be targeted, they’re going to go there, rather than the people who are oppressing them. That, I think, is the problem.

RC: Is there a different manner in which one can deal with an individual who may have racist ideas, versus an institution that may perpetuate racist ideas?

Saltzman: One of the questions I spend a lot of time thinking about is: “How do you reach people through their conditioning, through their defenses?” I actually believe inside the most rabid racist is a human being who got badly hurt. But how do you reach them through that hurt? The people who run the society are not going to do it. If they could have, they would have done it years and years ago, centuries ago. So how do we rely on ourselves? What do we need to do to be able to talk to people?

Adler: I have a core belief that the future of our society rests in our children. What I do is try to use the Holocaust experience as a teaching device. I want the student to understand that when they see a fellow classmate being treated incorrectly, unjustly, that they need to feel empowered to take action.

Shannon: As a community organizer, I think it’s important that my white allies practice anti-racism, that they’re doing anti-racism work, that they’re challenging their white friends on their issues.

Harris: The conversation about race in America is huge and defining, but at the same time, not really on people’s minds. People aren’t really recognizing how huge race is in driving the national agenda. And I’ll say something really controversial: I think that the difference between the politics of the National Socialist Movement and the politics of the Republican party is largely one of degree.

Shannon: I don’t agree with you about racism not being on their minds, because it is. I think that’s why they do the things that they do to people of color.

RC: Who is “they?”

Shannon: I’m talking about the government, the police who have been allowed to kill so many men of color in this country.

Harris: My point is that the good progressives of Seattle don’t realize the extent to which racism is driving this agenda. I agree that the Republican Party does; it’s their strategy.

Saltzman: Again, divide and conquer. And the question is: How do we push through that to individual people who happen to be racist?

RC: And that leads me to the rally. There was a young individual there who got a flier about this rally and decided to show up. When I was there, he was being peppered with questions by a lot of young anarchists. I imagine he must have been in his early 20s.

Maidan: Twenty-three.

RC: Did you have any dialogue with him?

Maidan: Yeah. On Saturday, I saw him on Broadway, and I handed him an anti-Nazi rally flier; he Heil, Hitler-ed away. Then I saw him show up, and he was sitting on a bench and a lot of the more liberal activists were really kind of questioning him. So, he was a neo-Nazi, he had a lot of racism….[pause] But it was strange, because I kept thinking to myself, “I don’t feel like this whole group questioning him and talking to him is gonna be helpful.” I felt like I could’ve done a lot more if I could’ve just taken him off with me and actually talked to him, because he was very vulnerable.

I never thought I’d think, “Oh, this poor Nazi,” because my grandparents were in the Holocaust. But it’s just incredible the kind of compassion I was feeling for someone who hated me because of my religion.

Kennedy: Everybody wants a place to belong, you know, to feel like they’re needed and they’re understood. For people who are feeling disenfranchised or misunderstood, [neo-Nazi rallies] are some great places for them, uniting around something you hate. I know there are a lot of fliers in the schools for neo-Nazi groups and students are biting. They’re looking for something alternative, something that’s daring, that’s different, reactive in our society. And I think our media eats it up. I don’t know. I almost think it’s best if the media doesn’t show up at all and doesn’t cover it.

RC: We’re going to get to that media issue in just a moment.

Saltzman: We need to work together to act for what we are for, rather than against. [Maidan’s] example of what you’d want to do with this young man is exactly a case in point. You want to be for his humanness. How do we have activists, people who care, try to bring them to a place where we can actually thrive together?

Kennedy: It would be wonderful if it could be that way, and I think there are individuals who are working toward such a thing. But we rallied around 9/11 with, “Let’s go bomb the first place we can bomb.” It was: “You’re with us or against us.” Over and over and over again it’s “Let’s all rally around this hatred.” It’s disgusting.

Adler: I think any group of individuals functions more effectively if they feel a common threat. That threat can be anything: a foreign government, a different group, whatever. The other way for a group to come together is to share a common value. But maybe this is another ideal….

Shannon: Communities of color do that every day, every time one of us is murdered, or one of us is followed in a store, or when one of us is tazed while being eight months pregnant.

RC: Can a community of color come together with other communities, so that we’re all coming together at the same time? Or is that another ideal?

Adler: It’s both: it is an ideal, and it is entirely possible. But it requires a lot of energy and a lot of commitment.

Shannon: I’m in there with you about the harmony and still believe in all that, but the problem is that you have this evil system continuing to push this racist platform.

Harris: And that’s why this racist platform doesn’t masquerade as a racist platform. We’re talking about race all the time in our political system, but it’s not recognized as a conversation about race: it’s about “national security.”

Saltzman: I have participated in a number of dialogues last year, a huge conference of Black people and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, women and men, when people of “opposing groups” — and I put that in quotes because they’re set up to be opposites — can actually listen to each other about what the circumstances of their lives are. When they listen to each other and can see each other’s humanness, people change.

RC: Earlier on there was a comment made that perhaps the media shouldn’t even be covering such events. Do you think, even if there’s a potential for a neo-Nazi rally in Seattle, is it something worthy of attention by the media?

Saltzman: If it’s handled right, it can be handled as a learning moment.

Maidan: It would be a wonderful possibility if the media could cover subjects in a non-racist fashion, but the fact is that the media is trying to make money and the best way to do that is to build off of people’s insecurities and divide the people.

Kennedy: I feel kind of torn on whether or not the media should cover it. There’s a part of me that says, “Yes, we should know that this is happening and we should be aware and we should allow people to come out and counter-demonstrate.” At the same time, sometimes the media gets a little frenzied and picks the two or three people who are the craziest. And then I wonder if they even deserve so much attention.

When I mentioned there was going to be this neo-Nazi rally, people were really surprised: “Really? Here in Seattle?” I thought, “Of course. Are you kidding?” I mean, I work at the Holocaust Center. Last Thursday, we came out of the door and there were swastikas all over our door. Not that that’s an everyday occurrence, but it’s certainly happening. To think that it doesn’t exist just because we’re in Seattle is a big mistake.

Maidan: I think that people are really afraid, and the only way to really come together and unify is not based off of these fears. We need to unify with love, and by love I mean kind of a divine connection. Perhaps this is foolish, perhaps this is idealistic, but I think it’s possible.

Kennedy: We talked about ideals, and I don’t think they’re impossible to achieve. Just look at what we’re doing here today. That’s a great step to something that’s better.

Harris: The reason I don’t go to anti-Klan rallies is because, in my experience, they are nutzoid magnets. You see the same kind of hate coming from the left that you do from the right.

Saltzman: Somebody I respect very highly once said, “Fear is not the rational basis for organizing.” A more rational basis for organizing is that we are in this together, we want to help each other, and we have ideals to guide our actions. We need to teach our kids about being “pro” rather than “anti.”

Shannon: I organize because I hate injustice. I have a six-year-old nephew and a one-year-old nephew. I want a better world for them.

Adler: I want to get to a point that’s easier for all of us to come to, and that is respect. You don’t have to love me, and I don’t have to love you, but I think if we can both agree that we should respect one another, our opinions won’t matter. We can go a long way down the road. And later on, let people come to love as well. n