[lbo-talk] As the urban battlefield grows...

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Tue Feb 28 09:17:12 PST 2006


Michael Hoover quoted:
>Seventeen people were arrested, all of them from the crowd separated from
>the neo-Nazis by lines of police in riot gear.
>
>Police and civic leaders expressed pride that the event ended without the
>violence some had feared.
>
>"I've lived here since 1944, and I've never been more proud of Orlando,
>Orange County and Central Florida," said former legislator Alzo J. Reddick,
>one of the organizers of the Be Cool campaign that urged residents to ignore
>the march and the rally.

Yeah, the old 'don't give 'em your energy' line. When the Florida National Socialist Party rallied in Gainesville in 1990 for Hitler's birthday, the police chief told everyone to stay away. Happily, people ignored this advice (threat?) and outnumbered the lil' hitlers 30:1. A couple years later there was a Klan-Nazi doubleheader in Brooksville (north of Tampa, west of Orlando). When we arrived there was a gratifyingly large crowd of white folks heckling the Nazis and we were glad we came down from Gainesville to join them, and impressed that whites in this somewhat racist area had turned out to oppose the rally.

(They had also apparently ignored pleas to avoid the whole thing and go to a 'unity' picnic across town.) When the second part of the show, the Klan, got up on stage, we soon discovered that much of the crowd, while opposed to the foreign-influenced Nazis, were supporters of the homegrown fascisti. Turned out there were about 12 of us and 200 of them. Errr... we made a strategic retreat to a far corner where a friendlier crowd of locals had started to gather to oppose the whole mess. This real local opposition was all black except one enormous white woman holding a tiny American flag. As you can imagine, it was the most beautiful crowd we'd ever seen.

In both cases, the cops acted to protect fascist freedom of speech. To achieve this end, they'd rather that energetic opposition not show up and hold counter-rallies or denounce Nazis and Klan to their face, hence the support of these 'diversion programs,' unity picnics, 'be cool' campaigns, and the like.

Jenny Brown



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