Talking with America's Nazis and their Defenders
SAUVAGE, LEO
A MATTER OF RIGHTS? Talking with American Nazis and their Defenders by Leo Sauvage Chicago So there I was, inside the small, decrepit building far south of the Loop, near Marquette Park, that...
...I don't mean sexual activities...
...Said by a man who had just told me that in 1942, at the age of 16, in Poland, he had to dig his own grave, together with 542 other people, all of them shot...
...I would not do so happily, but I would do it...
...A photograph inside showed Amerikanische NSPA Kame-raden in Chicago marching for the liberation of Rudolf Hess...
...Including with KKK hoods in Harlem and Nazi swastikas in Skokie...
...But one could remain impressed only if the ACLU allowed no exception...
...bottles, eggs, pieces of metal, and beer cans began to fly...
...In England, someone was prosecuted for blasphemy recently because he wrote a homosexual poem about the crucifixion...
...a television crew from West Germany...
...The neighborhood was quiet and peaceful...
...That can be said about any view you don't like...
...Nationalities have to be preserved, but the consideration of preserving the white race should be foremost...
...Of course I would...
...It still deals with issues of sex, which the courts and the Constitution have traditionally considered under separate categories, as related to obscenity...
...I think they have been upheld...
...Well, to give you an idea"-he pointed to one of the storm troopersthis man is Slovenian...
...French and Irish," the last fellow interjected, looking disappointed when I did not respond...
...Exhibiting buttocks on Fifth Avenue is not...
...There are indecency statutes and ordinances which...
...Survivors...
...Would you defend the right of the Ku Klux Klan to march in New York's Harlem...
...I don't know whether he was concerned that I would not know where Slovenia is, or whether he agreed with Tito about the unity of all Southern Slavs, be they Serbs, Croats or Slovenians...
...The party was being given by the Janush Korchak Lodge of B'nai Brith -founded by survivors and particularly active in mobilizing the population against Collin...
...But we are ready to go there anytime in the future if our rights need to be defended again...
...So their position comes down to this: Parading flaming crosses before the families of blacks who had survived lynching, or glowing swastikas before the families of Jews who had survived the gas chambers, is protected...
...There are...
...You know, if you run around in the nude you can be arrested...
...I am most relieved for the people of Skokie," Goldberger said during our talk...
...Public sensibilities cannot be allowed to interfere with freedom of expression...
...Constitution, Congress, our Legislative branch, or the state legislatures, cannot supersede the Constitution...
...And if the Ku Klux Klan marched through Harlem, whom would it by trying to convince...
...The RSL, one red helmet explained to me, is fighting the "capitalist-supported Nazis...
...Indeed, they tried to break through the police lines, thus initiating the counter-attack that saved our heads, though not the frame of my eyeglasses...
...her mother was killed in Auschwitz...
...The party, in addition, was to honor a delegation from California, including two Byzantine Catholic priests and a Mexican-American who was with the first U.S...
...I should have added: "Without even a swastika for a G-string...
...And this one is Polish...
...Besides, he continued, "truly un-provocative speech needs no protection...
...Even from where I stood, a short distance away, they gave the impression that the edifice was resting on piles of stacked pillows...
...Then he pointed to another trooper: "This man here, yes, is German, but Volga-German, from Russia...
...I had come to talk to the occupants, and for someone who had spent the War years in the Resistance in France, it was a strange experience: Never before had I faced uniformed Nazis for what I intended to be a very polite, objective and professional interview...
...Even some blacks, very fine people...
...I did not pursue the implication that preaching genocide or racial hatred is just "a political point of view," like any other...
...We want a white empire...
...The barrage missed both the police and the Nazis, landing instead on those of us locked in by wooden barriers marked "Working Press...
...Withdrawing from the battle scene, I couldn't help thinking of my conversation the previous morning with David Goldberger...
...Friday evening, on my way to a party, I wandered through the residential sections of Skokie...
...There was no mention of the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was defending the NSPA in the United States on the grounds that it had a constitutional right to exist and demonstrate wherever it pleased...
...While the majority of the protesters were Jews, others also participated-Some "Disabled Army Veterans" from Phoenix, Arizona...
...I switched to a different kind of reasoning: "To sum up, the Constitution in your judgment protects the right of anyone to march anywhere in any kind of dress...
...On the train back to the Loop that Thursday night, I read the NS Kampf-ruf...
...We want more than an alliance with our European brothers...
...Talking with American Nazis and their Defenders by Leo Sauvage Chicago So there I was, inside the small, decrepit building far south of the Loop, near Marquette Park, that is the headquarters of the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA...
...The French, right now, look pretty decadent, but I think they have healthy instincts...
...But here it deals with sexual activities, which have always been dealt with under separate...
...Martin Luther King's march into Selma could be called, and was called at the time by most of the white people there, a provocation...
...Everybody could see on television, not so long ago, a group of Nazis shouting, 'Six million more...
...The next morning, Friday, I went to 5 Wabash Avenue...
...I'm just saying I would predict they would lose...
...As long as it is done in a fashion that is neutral as to political content, it will not offend me as much as does suppressing a political point of view...
...I think the United States should stretch from Alaska through Canada, with the exception of French Quebec...
...I know, but...
...What's the word...
...The point I was trying to make was that governors or mayors or police chiefs would have no such power if Congress were to adopt a limited and sharply defined test, prohibiting the existence of specific organizations like the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan...
...The First Amendment of the U.S...
...We ask Congress to make it illegal for people to walk the streets promoting racial hatred and genocide...
...It is dominated by a gigantic red metal Calder crab or stabile, which-a booklet says-Is 53 feet high, weighs 50 tons, and "displays the wit and grace of the dean of American sculptors...
...I had asked...
...Yugoslav," repeated Frank Collin...
...Goldberger was right...
...A friendly, smiling woman who insisted on choosing for me a selection of apple strudel and nutcake...
...Perhaps flattered to be visited by a French journalist, he launched into a speech about France: "I'd like to see a great France again...
...The Mayor, Al Smith, who defended us, is a Roman Catholic...
...To this David Goldberger replied, again, only that "what makes America great is that we don't give our government the power to make the choices...
...There should be a law against it...
...But suddenly, 90 minutes late, 24 of them emerged from the building with the pillows, behind massed units of riot-equipped police...
...Any kind of what...
...Besides, Collin did not intend to march up and down the streets of Skokie...
...Frank Collin and his Nazis had less noble purposes...
...We have won that right simply by announcing our intention to march for it, and we are going Saturday to the Federal Plaza downtown to proclaim the victory of our party...
...Yes," he replied...
...Goldberger's hesitations are: "There is...
...Isn't there a little difference...
...The ACLU has always had difficulties with any kind of regulation...
...There are perhaps a few former members of the Bund in New York, but not in Chicago...
...Yet on the one hand, Goldberger and Neier were in effect saying: Those who do not want to see and hear Nazis marching in the streets should lock themselves inside their houses and stuff cotton in their ears...
...A few representatives of the press were on hand because they had expressed an interest in being present: a young girl from the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, who had accompanied the Californians...
...The people gathered there thought the NSPA's calling off the march in Skokie was their victory, and they were going to celebrate it...
...Absolutely...
...and this veteran French correspondent who thought he still had much to learn about Americans...
...Standing around "Rockwell Hall" were six or seven storm troopers whose shirts were khaki rather than brown, but who wore what appeared to be regulation-type glowing red arm bands with a black swastika set in the middle of a white circle...
...It's a case that couldn't be won, and therefore it would be viewed far differently, I think, by this organization...
...I simply ask, following your own logic, about the right of nudists to express their nudist ideas by marching in the nude on Fifth Avenue...
...Would he call his movement the successor to the wartime Bund, the American section of Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP...
...Would you defend them with the same energy and conviction you brought to the defense of the Nazis...
...troops to enter Dachau...
...Well, they may run into the thousands...
...Isn't your main justification for defending the Nazis not to allow government any kind of arbitrary power...
...I say, anytime we have an order running to the four corners of a village to keep someone out, we are no longer a democracy...
...This one Irish...
...Entirely in German, it described itself as the official publication of the Auslandsorgani-sation (Overseas Organization) of the NSDAP, and was printed in Lincoln, Nebraska...
...No...
...Hadn't Collin just told me, though, that his NSPA was an American movement, not the inheritor of the Bund...
...a few local Puerto Ricans who elected to give up a simultaneous San Juan parade...
...For I was surprised to discover that extreme civil libertarians are not absolutely pure and unshakable defenders of what they hold up as sacrosanct...
...Some 3,000-4,000 protesters watched the streets for the arrival of the Nazis...
...King did not march in Selma just to provoke the Southern whites...
...The difference, I noted, was more than subjective...
...We have a petition circulating that already has 300,000 signatures-from all walks of life and all religious denominations...
...I can't tell you what the position of the ACLU would be in that particular case...
...More eyecatching still were the multicolored rags wrapped around the square columns of one of the Federal buildings...
...I asked...
...A predominantly Jewish suburb with some 7,000 survivors from concentration camps," someone had told me in New York...
...I suppose...
...Shortly before, her husband had told me that her father and older sister were hanged by Polish Nazis...
...A dozen or so red-helmeted youngsters, who proclaimed themselves members of the "Revolutionary Socialist League" (RSL), seemed most eager to do battle...
...What about nudists marching on Fifth Avenue without clothes...
...It is what makes us different, in my judgment, from any other democracy in the world...
...After leaving the 19th-century elevator on the 15th floor, I was met at the end of the corridor by David Goldberger, legal director of the Chicago ACLU and attorney for Frank Collin...
...On Saturday afternoon, many of the people who attended the party were in the plaza formed by three Federal buildings in the Loop...
...Not that I could have, for by now Collin had switched to professing a supranational, albeit not exactly humanistic, Weltanschauung: "We are white people, not just Americans, Germans or Frenchmen...
...So much so, in fact, that as soon as I saw the articulate mouth above the shrunken body, my eyes irresistibly turned toward the feet-but no, Collin did not have a club-foot...
...Couldn't the Legislative branch intervene to stop such actions by passing a law that did not leave any opening for arbitrary Executive decisions...
...And it did not seem to me that the Supreme Court would reject as unconstitutional a law making it a crime to advocate or glorify racially-or ethnically-motivated killings...
...You are raising questions of sex that are subject, uh, to different sets of regulations...
...So, nothing to be especially excited about, he seemed to imply...
...The march in Skokie has lost its purpose, since our right of free speech has been recognized...
...I recalled how earlier in the evening Collin had announced that since his group had been granted its original request to march in Marquette Park, there was no longer any reason to go to the nearby suburb of Skokie...
...Sure, in your eyes and in mine, and I hope you don't believe I put Martin Luther King and Frank Collin on the same level...
...I think both ideas are very good...
...By the time the police finally pushed the anti-Fascist artillery back toward Calder's stabile and we could lift our heads, the Nazis had disappeared...
...So long as one believed they were, one could be impressed by their-fanatical devotion to a principle that is indeed very important-even if its relevance to the issue involved had not been demonstrated...
...On the other hand, Goldberger and Neier clearly thought that there were instances when public sensibilities could be permitted to interfere with freedom of expression...
...Yugoslav," the man corrected him...
...French Quebec has two options, either complete independence or becoming a province of France...
...If only they could come up with another Napoleon, or another Petain, they would rise to great heights...
...But the Constitutional principle is the same...
...We are an American, not a German movement...
...Having heard enough on the subject, I asked Collin about the connections between NSPA and the German Nazis...
...He gestured toward one of the storm troopers, who promptly brought me a copy of a four-page tabloid with the title NS Kampfruf (National Socialist Battle Cry...
...It included an appeal for international solidarity in the NSDAP's fight to win legal recognition in West Germany, where the party was banned as Verfassungswidrig-that is, unconstitutional...
...I'd like to see a French empire again...
...Goldberger's answer was short and final, and it showed no hint of an awareness that maybe the First Amendment was open to interpretations other than his: "Under the First Amendment of the U.S...
...I think that Collin had a right to go there...
...It was to be a demonstration for free speech...
...I think France has a great future if she can find a son who will lead her to new glory...
...He explained his decision to me: "Our aim and purpose for marching in Skokie was to affirm our rights...
...Sure, we have an international organization...
...He got six months in jail...
...This one Lithuanian...
...Erna Gans, president of Janush Korchak Lodge...
...Neat green lawns, pleasant, comfortable-looking houses...
...Although they were virtually hidden, word quickly got around...
...His intention was picketing the seat of local government to protest illegal ordinances, meant to prevent him from entering the village limits...
...It's not like when you get into political speech...
...Well...
...It certainly was on my mind, but it is not on the tape...
...Six million more!' Is that an idea...
...Unpleasant views must be tolerated...
...Constitution, ratified in 1791, requires that Nazis be free to march in 1978 under the same emblem that just a few decades before presided over the murder and torture of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Resistants, workers, peasants, and intellectuals...
...Goldberger had put the figure at "several hundred," and had added that such a proportion of survivors to the entire Jewish population would apply to many other places, New York for example...
...He was only hit in the leg and managed to escape to a nearby forest...
...and several competing militant Trotskyite organizations...
...That doesn't mean that we at the ACLU felt it was desirable, but the principle of free speech does not apply only to people and ideas we approve of...
...That's correct...
...My tape recorder picked up various bits of conversation: "It's not a question of ideas, as Goldberger says...
...But not 7,000...
...If the decision depends on the reaction of the listeners, any view that is unpopular can ultimately be censored by invoking the hostile reaction of the audience...
...The Skokie Jews themselves were more conservative in their estimate: "Maybe 50-50...
...I don't want to live with hatred in me, but nobody should be permitted to parade all the reasons I have to hate...
...Their Fuhrer, Frank Collin, to whom I was speaking, had his hair combed like Adolf Hitler's in the framed portrait on the wall...
...You would not defend the nudists...
...Isn't that simply a provocation...
...everything else about him, however, startlingly evoked Joseph Goeb-bels...
...There are many different groups...
...When I put the nudist matter to retiring ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier in New York, he hesitated and then, with what struck me as an almost apologetic laugh, responded: "The government could probably say we regulate how people dress in public places for fear of offending sensibilities...
...Collin's attorney was on the defensive, though, and he sidestepped my question: "I understand there are things going on in Europe with respect to the press and freedom of speech that are unthinkable in this country...
...Here they happen, but they are aberrations rather than traditions...
...How does a Ku Klux Klan marching through Harlem, or a Nazi Party marching through Skokie, represent an expression of views...
...He needed very little prodding to add that his party completely supported Yasir Arafat against the Zionist-Imperialist Israelis...
...The issue was Nazis marching in uniform, I insisted...
...Isn't that in conflict with the First Amendment...
...I'm not saying I would not defend them...
...His main objective was to show the Southern blacks that they were not alone and powerless, that there were many people ready to support them...
...What about any kind of undress...
Vol. 61 • August 1978 • No. 17
