AMERICA is not about to be overrun by neo-fascists. Most politicians have no difficulty condemning the far right. The Republican National Committee chairman has told white supremacists, “We don’t want your vote.” Yet this floppy fringe should not be taken lightly. “As a speaker, Hitler exercises astonishing sway over a German audience, presumably because public speaking is an unknown art in Germany,” was the British embassy in Berlin’s snarky verdict in 1937. European fascists were a bit of a joke, until they were not. Nor was America immune from swastika-waving wingnuts.
On February 20th 1939 the German American Bund, a group founded in 1936 to promote Nazism in America, held a rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan that drew 20,000 supporters. The Bund had about 25,000 members, and worked closely with the Christian Front, a militia linked to Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic priest whose radio shows drew millions...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2i8Zbr5
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