“Well, you recall I told you about this rally at the old Madison Square Garden, the German American Bund mounting a mass rally, those documenting it taking a page from Leni Riefenstahl, the cinematically talented Mitläufer,” said the skeleton of my father.   “I was fourteen at the time, and it felt horrific enough to me to read about, but, you also have to consider the rest of my life at the time.  It was just another sharp lash of the whip, among an ongoing flurry of lashes.”  The skeleton looked out to the line of trees in the distance.   

“You know, if we could have talked for another 60 or 70 hours or so that last night of my life, I would have answered all your questions about this pro-Nazi rally in New York City right before the war, about the first attempt and rescheduled Paul Robeson/Pete Seeger anti-fascist concert in Peekskill after the war, violently attacked by the Ku Klux Klan and their merry fucking ilk, rocks through car windows on this road behind me, the one that runs past this boneyard,” the skeleton sighed, pointing over his shoulder.  “We just ran out of time, Elie.”   

I remember you mentioning this Bund rally at the Garden, but it’s one of those flickering black and white moments in long ago history…

“Well, not so long ago, it happened within the living memory of your father.  You discovered many things trying to reimagine my life, things that shocked you.  No child labor laws in the United States when I was a child, how about that one?   If the economy had been better, I could have spent my early years as a fucking chimney sweep, or whatever the equivalent in 1930 Peekskill would have been.  I’m glad you carried on my interest in history, Elie.  It’s some fascinating shit, even if the bullshit way the story is often told removes a lot of the mystery and excitement from it, makes it a tool of the status quo instead of an instrument to readjust it.”

Those Confederate monuments, for example, were mostly erected decades after the Civil War, in the early twentieth century, when the genteel society of the South was recasting history in a more forgiving, glorious light that blamed the damned freedmen for their savage inability to act like humans, depicted Reconstruction as an atrocity,  and recast the violent defenders of the philosophy of the Peculiar Institution as glorious idealists.   The Dunning School of history justified segregation, on racial grounds, while vilifying the federal government’s attempt to reconstruct the former Confederacy.   

“That cocksucker William Archibald Dunning cast a long shadow, having the imprimatur of my prestigious alma mater, a few of his disciples were still in the history department at Columbia when I was there, making their nuanced, intellectual arguments that blacks, being like children, were fit only for the protection of the states that knew them best.   One of them wrote that Yankees at the time of the Civil War and afterwards could never truly understand the Negro, uh, ‘nigger’ actually, having been given a false impression of their capacities by ‘Fred Douglass’.”   

Motherfuckers.   People don’t know anything about the devilish details of history writing, who its ideology serves, behind that smug impression of seeming objectivity, who it fucks. 

“True dat,” said the skeleton.

But let’s stick to other Nazis for the moment, dad.  A friend sent me a link today to a short, chilling movie someone put together from found footage of the February 1939 German Bund Rally.  It was posted the other day by The Intercept.

“Do tell,” said the skeleton, turning to fix me with a hollow eyed look. 

The Intercept published a thoughtful article featuring a short film of the Bund rally.   The piece is called ‘A Night at the Garden’ is the Most Terrifying Movie You Can Watch This Halloween.   The article is excellent and the six minute movie, in which the footage is allowed to speak for itself, is indeed fucking terrifying. 

“I see, fascinating shit,” said the skeleton, watching the clip and then speed reading, as was his practice when he was alive.   “It’s worth mentioning, since you’re so terrified, that there were five times more protesters than American Nazis out that night.   There were 100,000 on the streets around the Garden, protesting their rally, and that the police were on the side of the protesters, and that this was also the high water mark of the German American Bund’s pro-Hitler rally business.”

“On the other hand, I notice Jon Schwarz points out how this rush to organized hatred can happen to masses of desperate humans in a society that ‘rolls snake eyes ten times in a row.’   He generously estimates that we’ve, or rather, you’ve, only rolled snake eyes now four times in a row, gives you good odds for avoiding the worst.   I don’t see much reason for optimism.   This lying, cringingly insecure snake-oil salesman you have there now, while he’s just a clownish figure-head prone to talking and tweeting directly out of his ass, is doing the bidding of the same larger, implacable forces that brought you every mass tragedy in history.”   

Couldn’t have said it better myself, dad. 

“Ha ha,” said the skeleton, “I’m glad you’re feeling game enough to still joke about this, Bozo.   On the other hand, comedic detachment may be the only escape valve you poor fuckers have at the moment.”    The skeleton removed his left hand and playfully whacked himself in the face with it, deadpan all the while. 

Jesus, dad, that’s disgusting. 

“Aw, don’t be such a sourpuss!” said the skeleton.  “Look, Mueller is starting to close in on some of these motherfuckers.  Look on the bright side, Elie.  Maybe President Orange will not get the chance to pack the Supreme Court with any more extreme right wing zealots.  Of course, they have to get the Koch Brothers’ boy Mike “make the homos normal” Pence out of there too, and hold a new election, and nullify fifty year-old Neal Gorsuch’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice for life and all the rest, on the grounds that the president who nominated him was, truly, illegitimate, particularly if he has to pardon himself for conspiracy to commit treason, but it’s a start.”   

I just looked at him. 

“Yeah, I know,” said the skeleton, using the detached left hand now to smack himself up side the head.