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People Unite To Hit Nazis & KKK

By VVAW

The Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and other assorted scum have been getting a lot of news coverage lately. Television, radio and the newspapers have covered their every move. They have interviewed these would-be fuhrers, allowed them to advertise their rallies and spread their lies of hate. On the weekend of July 4th, reactionaries of all stripes decided to hold marches and rallies. In Plains, Georgia, the KKK planned a "good old-fashioned cross-burning." In Columbus, Ohio, the Klan planned to show their sheet-covered faces as part of a northern organizing drive. In Chicago, the Nazis announced that they planned to march through a predominantly Jewish suburb, a town which is home to 7,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps.

The Klan emerged after the Civil War as an organization to try to keep Black people down, trying to drive them back into slavery. For a hundred years and more the Klan has done the bidding of the rich, shooting and lunching Black people, busting up unions and burning people out of their homes. Politically they blame all of the problems in society--which are real problems--on the Blacks, the Jews of the Catholics who become their targets while the rich like F. Clement Stone get off free.

The Nazis, like the Klan, are out to divide people along national and ethnic lines. Taking their cue from Hitler, these scum put forward that our salvation lies in gassing "six million more" Jews. They say the problems in society are caused by the Jews who control everything and the Blacks who are their puppets. The Nazis want to build a society where the rich bosses and the workers get along fine because they are of the same race; its right, they say, to have the Fords or DuPonts live like kings while working people live like slaves.

So why do these scum get so much media coverage? They certainly don't have millions of members, they don't represent the huge majority of the American people in their hopes or dreams; it certainly isn't because they have a good press agent. But then they come crawling out of their holes, and the Supreme Court says they can march, then TV gives them nationwide interviews and the ACLU rushed to their defense. The KK and the Nazis do serve a purpose for the rich.

The economy--in fact the whole damn system--is in crisis: unemployment is up, wages are down, and cities are falling apart. Scum like the Nazis and Klan offer a reason why. It's all the Blacks' fault; they are controlled by the Jews who own everything; the Latins, the Catholics, the communists, the trade unions are all contributing to the crisis, and all of them have to be dealt with. The rich get off the hook, and that's why the rich, through their agencies like TC, push them. The problem, according to these dogs, isn't that the system is based on profits and human needs be damned.

To launch organizing campaigns, Nazis and the Klan planned to hold attention-getting rallies and marches. But they were in for a surprise. People were not about to let them goose-step unopposed.

In Plains, Georgia, a 30-year-old Marine Vietnam vet and a machinist could not take the racist ravings of the Klan and decided on direct action: he drove his car through the stage of the Imperial Wizard bloodying up their white sheets and leaving them to burn their fiery cross over the wreckage of their rally.

In Chicago, the Organizing Committee for a National Workers Organization called for a coalition to "Run the Nazis Out." VVAW along with other organizations took up the call. People from across the city came together--Black, white, Jew, non-Jew, to stop these brown shirts dead in their tracks. The campaign against them built, and the Nazis finally chickened out of marching. The coalition, on the other hand, moved its march to the Nazi Headquarters. Led by a contingent of vets wearing fatigues and carrying flags saying "People of All Nations Unite! Run The Nazis Out!" some 200 people moved out. The only thing that saved these junior Hitlerites from joining their "Fuhrer" was a contingent of Chicago cops arrayed between the demonstration and the Nazis (all facing the demonstration with their backs to the Nazis) with busloads of cops just around the corner. Clearly, the cops were sent with the task of protecting these scum from the anger of the people. In Columbia, Ohio, 300 workers, youth and veterans rallied to stop the Klan. Chanting "KU KLUX KLAN, SCUM OF THE LAND!" they marched up to the podium of these low-lifes, and after the head of the Klan started spraying the crowd with mace, they stretched him and his followers on the ground. He later announced that "I guess this means we'll have to go underground."

Underground is where these scum belong--back in the holes and under the rocks they crawled from. Some people, especially groups like the ACLU, said that no matter how disgusting these reactionaries are, they had the right to free speech. They talk like this "right" is something abstract from the real world.

The Klan and Nazis are not just some throwback to a bygone era. Not just a group of people who like to drew funny and dream about the "good old days," these groups are actively out there stirring up racial antagonisms, organizing everything from lynchings to beatings. They've announced they plan more in the future. We are not going to sit by and watch as they go on their terrorist way. We intend to stomp their ugly heads every time they peek out of their holes looking for trouble, driving them back into the slime where they belong. We stand with people everywhere who are fighting them, whether the Pendleton 14 or the vet from Georgia.