"They shall not pass" - Special Report in Guardian

[twenty4blackbirds]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1884440,00.html
"on Sunday October 4 1936"

The Jewish Board of Deputies advised Jews to stay away. The Jewish Chronicle warned: "Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march and from their meetings.

"Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping anti-Semitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew baiters, keep away."

The Jews did not keep away. Professor Bill Fishman, now 89, who was 15 on the day, was at Gardner's Corner in Aldgate, the entrance to the East End. "There was masses of marching people. Young people, old people, all shouting 'No Pasaran' and 'One two three four five - we want Mosley, dead or alive'," he said. "It was like a massive army gathering, coming from all the side streets. Mosley was supposed to arrive at lunchtime but the hours were passing and he hadn't come. Between 3pm and 3.30 we could see a big army of Blackshirts marching towards the confluence of Commercial Road and Whitechapel Road.

We can learn from history.

[CarbonDate]

1. How inspiring.

Thanks for that.

[Kutjara]

2. Bill Fishman.

He was one of my history professors at London University when I was there in the early 80s. A truly remarkable man, his knowledge of the history of London's East End was encyclopedic. He could occasionally be persuaded to conduct sightseeing tours for small groups of interested students, and I was lucky enough to go on one. In a three hour walk around Mile End, Stepney Green and Whitechapel, I learned more about political and social history than a dozen books could teach me. From the alley where Marat incited the poor to revolt in support of the French Revolution, to the schoolyard where Shaw and Wilde regularly made speeches, to the backstreets where Jack the Ripper plied his trade, to the butcher's shop where the Elephant Man was kept, to the meeting room where Lenin exhorted working men to rise up in support of the Russian Revolution'; Fishman brought it all to vivid life.

He was not just a teacher of history, he was a torchbearer, with the rare ability to make the past live in the present.

Professor Fishman retired about a decade ago, but it seems his passion still runs just as deep.

[Peace Patriot]

3. And so, the answer is to slaughter innocent people in Beirut and

destroy their country, and smash Palestinian heads and pen them in, and slaughter tens of thousands of innocents in Iraq, and torture people all over the globe, and ally Israel with the detestable Nazi-regime-in-the-making in Washington DC today--the most despised American government in history?

I don't see that we've learned anything at all from history.

And when the Bush Cartel abandons Israel, which they will, and the NeoCon thugs and their 'christian' inquisitionists come for the Jews here, and the gays, and the brown immigrants, and the uppity women and Negroes, and the leftists, and the teachers, artists and intellectuals, how will Mr. Fishman's courageous documentation of the Blackshirt march of 1938 be of use to us?

Enlighten me. Really. I don't understand your point.

[Peace Patriot]

4. twenty4blackbirds, let me explain myself a little more. I didn't mean to

write an inflammatory post. It's just that I don't see how the cooperation of the poor--Catholic women, and Irish dockworkers, and poor Jews (who had been targeted by the Mosley Blackshirt march)--applies to a situation in which our government are the Nazis, and are stirring up hatred against minority groups and against dissenters--and are clearly planning draconian measures to control the people--and in which Jews are torn, some thinking that Bush's blood-drenched regime is, somehow, protecting Israel, and others are descrying the loss of democracy in our land, the loss of truthfulness and intellectual integrity, and morality, and see Israel's position as small version of Bush Junta militarism in the Middle East as untenable.

The story of the Mosely march is, indeed, inspiring. But do you think that any of those good souls who rallied to the cause of justice, and against racism and fascism, would want to live under THIS regime, and would approve of what this regime is doing here and in the Middle East? --or would approve of Israel's alliance with these fascists? I think they would all be appalled at both the Bush Junta invasion of Iraq, and Israel's bombing of Beirut, and at the torture and all the rest, and would think they had woken up in a strange parallel universe, where the US and UK governments had become the opposite of what they were in 1938. And if they could have imagined Israel, I think they would be appalled at what it has become, an icon of injustice throughout the world. Personally, I think Israel's militarism is more understandable than that of the Bushites. I think it's a tragic error, but Israel IS vulnerable, fearful and exhausted from decades of war surrounded by hostile neighbors. I feel some compassion for Israel. I feel only loathing for the Bushites whose sole motive is cold, ugly, greed. But neither country would be approved of, by those poor Irish and Jews, I think. We now represent everything they were opposed to. They were anti-fascists and leftists.

Their situation and our situation are very different. And I see only a general relationship, that would be true of any populist expression of solidarity and courage against oppression. In our situation, we--speaking generally here (the US, the UK and Israel)--are the oppressors. So how do we express our solidarity with the people who are being tortured and slaughtered? All we can do, it seems to me, is to try to STOP our governments from acting like Blackshirts and Mosleyites, and stirring up hatred and militarism. We are more like the dissenters in Germany, than we are like the poor Irish and poor Jews of London, back then. We ARE different from those Germans, in that we have more of a chance to prevent all-out Nazism here. We are a more difficult country to Nazify. Do we see Nazi youth marchng in our streets? No. Big "Blackshirt" demonstrations parading into minority areas and inflicting pogroms? No. Do we see masses of people seig heiling Bush at rallies? No. The country has by no means been convinced by Bush fascism--far from it--although the illusions of faked elections, and illegitimate government, and rightwing supremacy, are working to make the majority feel disempowered and helpless. I think we have what may be a a brief window of opportunity to turn this around--in the fall elections, mainly by voting by Absentee Ballot, in big numbers, to protest the rigged, Bushite corporate-controlled electronic voting machines, and also by electing good people, wherever we can (by big turnout, to overwhelm the rigged machines). And even if we fail to demolish the rigged voting system, this time, I think we have one more chance, in '08. What we are dealing with here--apart from the torture and other fascist policy that the Diebold Congress is rubber stamping--is a subtler form of oppression, at least for now. Illusion-spinning. Tactics to keep people silent and inactive--not to convince them on policy, but to convince them that they can do nothing about it. That is rather different than Germany 1933-38, where the Nazis beat voters up and stuffed ballot boxes, and ultimately carted people off to slave labor camps or to be slaughtered. Here, they try to hide the electronic vote rigging, and try to mesmerize people with relatively benign "bread and circuses."

If we can regain control of our government, then we can force it to revise Middle East policy, which can greatly improve the situation for Israel and for all Middle Eastern people. Right now, the mad rightwing governments in the US and Israel are feeding each other.

The resistance to the Blackshirts might give us some notion of solidarity--of the sheer power of people pulling together--but confrontations with the weaponry at the Bush Junta's disposal would not be advisable. How often did such uprisings occur successfully in Germany, after Hitler was in power? Never, as far as I know. In that sense, too, we are like Germany. The Bushites would welcome such confrontation, and there would be no polite, humanitarian London police force to call it off. The Bushites would meet it with lethal force. Our way must be the peaceful way--of necessity, and because we have learned, over the course of the last century, that peaceful resistance is stronger.