There were Nazis marching in Nashville this past weekend. They were downtown, near the Capitol building, waving their swastika flags and dressed in black and red, their faces completely covered in ski masks. Not as many as the Charlottesville event that killed Heather Heyer the weekend we moved out of our Virginia mountain home in August of 2017. “Blood Tribe” was the name of this group of men with mommie issues. It’s assumed they didn’t have a permit, since there were no police lines, barricades or counter-protestors.
Just a small bunch of fools that mistakenly made their way towards the honky tonks… where one guy confronted them.
“Video showed a counterdemonstrator following the men along downtown streets, not far from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, challenging participants to show their faces. His video captured the march and his reaction.
“Cowards,” the man chanted, adding some expletives.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/neo-nazis-march-nashville-leave-challenged-rcna139415
He was actually yelling “F_ING COWARDS” to drown out their hateful speech. The Nazis retreated to a U-Haul and left the county. Sometimes it only takes one brave person, like the black and white photograph of a man in a German shipyard in 1936, surrounded by his co-workers who are all givng the Nazi salute. August Landmesser stands alone, with his arms folded across his chest. “Landmesser was opposed to the Nazis and their racial worldview. His partner, Irma Eckler, was Jewish.”
It seems fitting that the day before the Nazi rally, our family went to see the movie “Origin.” Director Ava DuVernay brought a highly researched, academic book, “Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent,” to the big screen in a compelling narrative.
“Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy.”
DuVernay filmed in Germany, beginning with the love story of August and Irma. Then she moved to the United States with its brutal history of slavery, where we learn that Nazi lawyers actually followed the Jim Crow template in devising anti-semitic rules and regulations. And finally we are shocked to discover the despicable caste system in India; how the lowest caste of untouchables, the Dalits, must live on the margins of society. We are shown, in exquisite detail, the way these three caste systems are similar; not so much rooted in race, but in keeping one segment of society down. Dehumanization is not limited to war, or one particular country.
I thought about how Confederate secessionist symbols are still on seven of our state flags. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/09/10/confederate-state-flags/ How it took a massacre in Charleston, SC to get Nikki Haley to remove the confederate part of her state’s flag. Germany does not allow any Nazi statuary or symbols to be displayed under penalty of prison. Those Blood Tribe miscreants would have been carted away to jail if they were in Munich.
I thought about how when I was a child, I was told by my foster parents that I couldn’t play with a school mate, because she was Puerto Rican. I heard that one girl couldn’t play with me because I was a Catholic. Bob’s best friend in middle school wasn’t allowed to come to his Bar Mitzvah because, you know, something might happen if he went in there. I didn’t understand it then, and I still don’t. But this weekend has been illuminating.
A portrait in brown, white and red.
MountainMornings 