Being Black and hearing republicans laughing it up at watermelon jokes at my expense

[malaise]

65. Wow,

At least you escaped

Down memory lane
When Nazis Took Manhattan
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan

On the evening of Feb. 20, 1939, the marquee of New York's Madison Square Garden was lit up with the evening's main event: a "Pro American Rally." The organizers had chosen the date in celebration of George Washington's birthday and had procured a 30-foot-tall banner of America's first president for the stage. More than 20,000 men and women streamed inside and took their seats. The view they had was stunning: Washington was hung between American flags — and swastikas.

The rally was sponsored by the German American Bund, an organization with headquarters in Manhattan and thousands of members across the United States. In the 1930s, the Bund was one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology and American patriotism.

At Madison Square Garden, the rally opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The mood was jubilant. Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." There were storm troopers in the aisles, their uniforms almost identical to those of Nazi Germany. "It looked like any political rally — only with a Nazi twist," said Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation.

The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against "job-taking Jewish refugees" were met with thunderous applause. "They demanded a white gentile America. They denounced Roosevelt as 'Rosenfeld,' to say that Roosevelt was in the pocket of rich Jews," said Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold, America. In equal measure to the xenophobia, the speeches were loaded with American boosterism.

One of the main speakers, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the national public relations director of the Bund, pointed to the white supremacy present at America's founding as a nation. "The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man," he preached. Kunze followed the thread of racism that runs through American history to bolster his vision for a whites-only America. He cited anti-miscegenation laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Jim Crow policies and immigration quotas. "It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation," Kunze told the audience.