When I was a child, maybe five or six years old, I drew swastikas on my crayon box.
I had no idea what it symbolized. I had seen it on Hogan’s Heroes, which was a TV comedy, and thought nothing of it. My mother, on the other hand, blew a gasket when she saw my crayon box adorned with swastikas. My mom, a child of the Depression who came of age during World War II, would not have her child drawing swastikas. So I got spanked (it was the early ‘70s, and it was permissible then) and then lectured about how evil the Nazis were and what they did to people.
I have not drawn a swastika since that day.
And then there’s Donald Trump. Our president’s response to the horrific acts committed by the neo-Nazis who descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, has left many of us struggling to come up with the words to describe how we feel (without the words being a long string of profanity). The first thought: stop calling them the “alt-right.” They are fucking Nazis, and not the Illinois Nazis from The Blues Brothers. And there are only two sides to this: one is American, and the other is Nazi asshole. To say it is anything else is a false equivalency. If you say that the left instigated this, or that both sides are responsible, you are supporting Nazis.
One of the arguments heard from the right and even from our president is that if antifa, Black Lives Matter, the “alt-left” (which isn’t even a thing), and other left-leaning groups had not shown up to counter-protest Nazis (we repeat, to counter-protest Nazis), there would have been no violence in Charlottesville. That is the equivalent of saying, “Had the Allies not invaded France, there would have been no violence in Europe in 1944.” These were Nazis and Klan members. There is no “both sides” here. You either support Nazis, or you don’t.
The sad part of this is that things are going to get worse before they get better.
There will be more violence, there will be more bloodshed, and we have a president who is unprepared and incapable of handling a domestic crisis. Past presidents have called in the National Guard, in one case brought in the 101st Airborne Division, and in several cases have denounced white supremacy and racism. Donald Trump seems to be unable to disavow the very people who want to tear this country apart and rebuild it in their image: whites only, with white males in charge. This is a far cry from the melting pot narrative so many of us grew up with.
We have a weak, ineffectual president who does not have the intellectual curiosity, intelligence, or temperament to hold the highest office in the land, and our Congress is dysfunctional. Therefore, it is up to all of us as Americans to stand up and say, in a loud, unwavering, unified voice, “No to white supremacy!” We must not allow these backward-thinking groups to spread their hate.
They may be using a more polished communications strategy than the Klansmen of old, but they are saying the exact same things. When they say they are trying to “preserve” white heritage, you know what they are really talking about is putting non-white people in their place. We must not tolerate it, and we must not allow it to take root.
This is not about liberal and conservative, and this is not about taking down monuments to the losing side in a war. This is about right and wrong, good and evil. There is no middle ground here.
You are either an American who is against these Nazi assholes—or you are a Nazi asshole.