As If We Have Enough Problems Already: White Supremacists Are Again On The Rise

It’s been a pretty active week for white supremacists both in the United States as well as in Hitler’s homeland, Austria. And though it may not seem believable to most civilized people, white supremacy has been experiencing somewhat of a very real reemergence, both on illegal and legal fronts.

On the illegal front, we’ve seen horrendous violence take place in Las Vegas, where three people – two police officers and a bystander – were shot and killed in cold blood by a white supremacist couple – who then in some kind of twisted act of Aryan martyrdom turned the guns on themselves. Before that, to apparently clear up any confusion as to their ideals, they placed a swastika on one of their murdered victims.

As investigators now sift through the computers, possessions and communications of the deceased couple, the degree of this crime – in that whether or not it is part of a wider, working, conspiracy, is yet to be determined. But I do believe that I am not being inaccurate at all when I state that there are probably many more well-armed, furious white supremacists out there, all playing out some stage of their fantasy of racial purity, white rebellion and Aryan destruction.

Meanwhile, white supremacists/Neo-Nazis are growing bolder in Europe, where

Strauche, Leader of Austria's Right Wing "Freedom Party." 

they’ve experienced a great deal of mainstream political success by winning elections to local, regional, national and even international bodies. This is especially true in Austria – which was completely part of the Nazi war machine in the 1940’s. There, the so-called “Freedom Party” has captured nearly 20 percent of the votes of the last national election (and larger percentages in others). And it’s only grown bolder in its proclamations and positions. For example, its party leader, Heinz-Christian Strauche has now declared that he’ll run for the mayoralty of Vienna. And just this past Sunday he had this to say on the prospect of an upcoming visit from Turkey’s president:

"We don't need Erdoğan in Vienna. I'll tell him right now: 'Erdoğan, stay at home'."

Strauche later accused Erdoğan of seeking to establish a "parallel society" in Austria. Interesting words, because they could have come directly from the mouth of the late anti-Semitic Vienna mayor, Karl Lueger.

These culprits, though on different sides of the globe, are literally on the wrong side of history. In fact, they worship a history that never happened, at least from the prospective that they understand it. Such individuals are convinced that in former days, when a more “pure” and homogeneous population existed, society was stronger and more vital. But what they fail to understand that the foundations of Revolutionary America – and the greatness that was turn-of-the-century Vienna, were founded in diversity. Allow me to explain further.

The two Las Vegas white supremacists also used a “Don’t Tread On Me” Flag to make their point, apparently harkening back to the rebellious spirit of the American Revolutionaries. But those Revolutionaries were a mixed bag of people - and in fact – all of colonial America was. It wasn’t just English – there were Dutch, Jews, Africans, Swedes, Germans, Native Americans and others. And those English – they hardly regarded themselves as so; rather they were carved up into numerous, rival religious and political sects that as late as the early 1800’s were furiously persecuting and competing with each other. If you’re in search of some kind of racial or ideological purity, Colonial and Early America is no place you’ll find it.

And what about those Austrians who are trying to convince their own people that Austria’s greatest days and glories were the product of some pure Germanic population? If you think that, you’d be wrong again. Any historian will tell you that Vienna’s vitality of the late 19^th and early 20^th century was a result of a massive cultural intersection of Germans, Jews and Slavs. Austria was once part of a heterogeneous empire of dozens of nationalities. It was at the city’s open and diverse coffeehouses and salons (many sponsored by Jewish women) that the greatness of the age was forged. It was where Jews like Freud, Herzl, Trotsky and Mahler produced and defended great ideas and made great art. It was in Vienna of the early 20^th century that gave birth to so many forms of modern expression, which were, by in large, produced by all the ethnicities and religious groups in the city.

These white supremacist are ignorant hypocrites. Like their failed Austrian master before them, they’re preaching not just hate, but lies – their history is a complete falsehood – a factually indefensible distortion. If they’re so bent on selling their views, they should be reminded of how things ended when they were last in charge. I believe it was with the sound of a single, suicidal gunshot in a bunker in ruined Berlin, capital of an obliterated nation.   

The Plot Against Newark: The Great Depression-Era Scheme to Deport A Brick City Minority

New Jersey’s history is more interesting, tragic, triumphant and fascinating than most people know. As a history teacher my students know little about the state’s past, apart from where Washington slept and a few Revolutionary War battles. The more I study the pages of old newspapers, journals and letters the more I realize that the Garden State’s epic and sometimes disturbing past is

Newark charity soup kitchen, 1930's

worth writing about.

When it comes to great writers, Philip Roth is one of Jersey’s treasures. In 2004 Roth published an astounding masterpiece, a novel titled The Plot Against America. Set in a familiar alternate universe of the 1930’s and 40’s, Roth imagines Newark and the U.S. under the presidency of the isolationist Charles Lindbergh, and traces, in suspenseful and masterful style how conditions for Essex County’s Jews deteriorate as Lindbergh’s fortunes rise. Scary stuff, to be sure, but just fiction, right? No one ever, of course, in real life proposed sending a large portion of a state minority off to camps or distant locales?

Tragically enough, various forms of ethnic deportation and cleansing were widely and publicly proposed, from some of the highest levels of Newark’s city government, in the summer of 1932. It was, in short, Newark’s own plot against America. Had it actually worked, sights similar to the coming Holocaust in Germany would have surely panned out on the streets of New Jersey’s largest city, with African-Americans as the target.

We need to paint the scene here, to understand the context of a horrifying proposal that almost came to be. In 1932 the Depression was already in its grinding third year, and Newark, as one of the East Coast’s industrial hubs, was hit particularly hard. The New Deal was still over a year away and no end to the troubles were in sight. Factories closed. The number of the unemployed ballooned and urban aid programs were scant. There was no unemployment insurance, Social Security or Medicaid to speak of. In Newark, most aid to the poor was in the form of free distribution of flour.

Within the Brick City’s economic cauldron, racial hatred festered. New Jersey’s African-American population had grown dramatically in the 1920’s as hundreds of thousands of blacks had fled violence and Jim Crowism in the South for opportunities in the North. In the booming economy of the 20’s many men did find jobs and a better life, but with the Depression, the ebbing tide stranded all ships. Black and White in Newark faced a new, seemingly permanent world of joblessness and desperation.

It was in this atmosphere that Owen A. Malady, Newark’s official “Overseer of the Poor,” along with several allies, proposed a terrifying plan. The city of Newark would act to “deport” or “resettle” most of its African-American residents “back” to the South. More specifically, the plot was that all black residents living in Newark for less than five years would be removed from the city and forced “back to Dixie.”

The scheme was publicly discussed and debated behind the doors of Newark’s stately city hall building on Broad Street. Some of the city’s commissioners wanted prompt action taken by the police, who would apparently engage in mass arrests, processing and forceful relocations. How the city would determine who was to be deported/arrested was never fleshed out. It probably would not have mattered anyway; I’m sure every African-American living in Newark would have been a target.

Though he rejected ‘force’, Malady was intensely determined to make his deportation plan work. He told one paper that he had written public officials, including governors, in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. He even called on local Essex County churches to assist him in his efforts.

Opponents quickly made themselves vocal in newspapers North and South. Writing in the Atlanta Daily World, one Jesse Thomas scorned the plan as regressive, unwise and blatantly unconstitutional. First, Thomas openly wondered why the City of Newark had discriminated in its deportation plans against African Americans? Hadn’t many white people settled in the city over the past half-decade? Additionally, from a logistical point of view, so-called “Southern Resettlement” wouldn’t help anyone, as:

“Practically every city in the South is already taxed to its limit in an effort to take care of those who are now unemployed and living on charity.”

And most importantly, Thomas wrote, why would it matter what region anyone came from who settled in Newark? Doesn’t every part of the nation belong to every inhabitant equally? Of course, Thomas was legally correct. The United States Constitution, in its "privileges and immunities clause," blatantly forbids this kind of regionally-based discrimination. 

Newark, to my knowledge, never did adopt this appalling mass deportation plan. And while the later New Deal programs of the Roosevelt administration certainly eased poverty in Essex County, none of the programs (such as the Civilian Conservation Corps) were ever specifically targeted to help African Americans. Many New Deal agencies actually engaged in racial discrimination themselves. It would take World War II to bring full employment and opportunity back to Newark, but in 1932 that was still almost a decade away (and nobody knew it was coming at the time either).

The Great Depression is over, but the Great Recession is not. Though such schemes for mass deportations of minorities are fortunately non-existent in the United States, they’re currently enjoying resurgence in Europe. There, in nations like Greece and Hungary, Fascists are again on the march and ruthlessly targeting immigrants and Jews. And these Fascists are gaining political power by winning local and national elections. We need to remember, such conspiracies did once visit our shores. We can never let such ideas gain a serious audience again. We’re all in this economic mess, yes, but we’re in it together.

Echoes of an Earlier Era in the Fight for Marriage Equality in New Jersey

The issue of marriage equality is an important one, and one that is still primarily debated and regulated on the state level. Unless the day arrives when the U.S. Supreme Court declares, all out, that gays have equal marriage rights to straights, the battleground for equality and dignity will remain in the statehouses of the nation.

First, I do not intend to mislead my readers. My position on gay marriage is clear. I believe that if two adult human beings want to abide together, pledge mutual lifelong love and loyalty and create a family, then the state ought to support them in doing so. It’s a tough, mean world out there, and no one ought to go it alone. People need to join together, and the family is the first and foremost institution for such a practice. We are social beings and need family. I do not mean this as a slight to single people, but on the whole, two are better than one, whether it is in the quest to make a living, buy a house, or find a pair of lost keys in the house. 

New Jersey has a long and, frankly, appalling history in the fight for equality and justice. While New Jerseyans tend to think of themselves as Northerners, as Progressives, the political history of the state is a rather conservative – almost a Southern – one. New Jersey had a slave population well up to the Civil War. New Jersey never voted for Lincoln. New Jersey wasn’t happy with the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, which established “equal protection of the laws” as national policy. New Jersey did not allow women to vote in most elections before the U.S. Constitution was changed in 1920. New Jersey had a prominent Ku Klux Klan movement in the 20’s, and a menacing Nazi Party in the 1930’s. Does all of this surprise you? It should.

Well, the Garden State continues to carry on its regressive tradition of embracing the wrong side of history. Though the year is not two months old, conservative legislators in Trenton have already proposed a state Constitutional amendment (ACR 11) barring legal gay marriage. It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful, but it is not unprecedented.

We last saw a similar debate, filled with prejudice and detestable declarations, in 1913. This was a tough year for New Jersey. Scenarios that any present-day resident would find eerily familiar plagued the state. Our cities were spiraling out of control due to growing poverty and crime. Urban schools were breaking down under the pressure of increased enrollment and deteriorating conditions. Teachers, particularly in Newark, were restive and would eventually strike for higher wages and job security. Corruption ruled the day in Trenton and the municipalities, defying Woodrow Wilson, the state’s progressive governor. Wilson would soon move on to a higher office, of course, but the graft would remain.

It was in this recognizable economic and political climate that the Legislature took up the debate on marriage equality. But this earlier struggle was not over homosexuality, it concerned race. In February of 1913 the New Jersey State legislature took up a bill that would ban interracial marriage.

To be fair, this was not just a state issue. Between 1910 and 1914 several states, including Iowa and Wyoming, considered such legislation. Congress openly debated amending the U.S. Constitution to ban interracial matrimony, as well as making such contracts a felony in Washington, D.C. In statehouses and even on the floor of Congress itself, politicians railed against the idea of whites and blacks joining together in matrimony. One prominent Georgia Congressman, Seaborn Roddenberry, even compared interracial marriage to a form of white slavery:

“Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation a conflict as fatal as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania...Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy…”

Back in New Jersey, the proposed bill caused an uproar amongst the state’s religious and black leaders. One by one, key leaders spoke up, along with their congregations, on the issue. Heading the effort to defeat the bill was Presbyterian Rev. E.F. Eggleston. Speaking at one Newark protest meeting in February of 1913, he stated:

“It’s a snake bill. All the good people of this state are with us. If this proposed bill were against the Chinese, I would be opposed to it.” 

Echoing him was Reverend Frederick H. Butler of Montclair, one of Essex County’s most prominent African-American leaders:

“There are bad classes among the white people, just as much as among us. The Negro woman does her part. She is our mother, and she must be protected. If we could live better, we would not have this special class legislation thrust at us.”

Unlike in the South, African-Americans had some voting power in New Jersey, though they too experienced discrimination daily and at the polls. But New Jersey’s small black minority (larger numbers would not settle in the state until the Great Migration of the 1920's), joined with its religious allies, and eventually succeeded and defeated efforts in the Legislature to bar interracial marriage.

Other states would continue to ban, and even punish, interracial marriage until the U.S. Supreme Court labeled the practice unconstitutional in the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia.

New Jersey’s residents need to recognize the authentic parallels between the two discriminatory movements. We need to learn from our history and reject hatred. Decent people must, in the words of songwriter Sarah Bareilles, speak up and BE BRAVE. We must honor those who seek to create households of love, honor, responsibility and family.

Stand up for family values. Stand up for honorable people. Defeat ACR 11 this year!