Nazis in Greensboro- Our Response August 28, 2009

Tomorrow the National Socialist Movement will hold a closed-door business attire meeting at a downtown hotel. Somewhere between 50 and 150 people will be coming. The purpose of this National Socialist Movement meeting, as I understand it, is to increase their activities and their recruitment efforts in some twelve states in this part of the country.

I went on the National Socialist Movement website and there I found 25 core beliefs. Some of them are:

“We demand the union of all Whites into a greater America on the basis of the right of national self-determination.”

“Only members of the nation may be citizens of the state. Only those of pure White blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Non-citizens may live in America only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens. Accordingly, no Jew or homosexual may be a member of the nation.”

“The right to vote on the State government and legislation shall be enjoyed by citizens of the state alone.”

In short, the National Socialist Movement is nothing more than a reconstituted Nazi Party here in America, and it is this movement that is meeting tomorrow here in Greensboro.

On Monday, I was asked to attend a meeting of 35 community leaders from Greensboro. At that meeting, we decided on a course of action. The main thing that we decided upon was that there would be no direct confrontation of the Nazis. We were concerned that people would get hurt in the course of a direct confrontation. We were concerned, as well, that direct confrontation would lead to greater publicity for the Nazis – which then could lead to increased interest by recruits to the Nazi effort. In other words, our thoughts were that we did not want to do anything which would provide them with even more publicity than they were already getting.

So what did we decide?

We decided to get the word out and make a petition for the community. The statement is entitled “No Hate In Our Town,” and is available by visiting the Temple Emanuel website at www.tegreensboro.org and clicking the link to sign the petition. The statement reads "In response to the National Socialist Movement (neo-Nazi) conference in our city, we reaffirm our absolute commitment to continuing our community's efforts to build a Greensboro free of bias, bigotry and racism. We encourage all people to signify their commitment to building bridges of understanding by wearing a multicolored unity ribbon beginning this weekend.

Together, we will build a community that is safe, just, inclusive and respectful of all." If you wish to sign the statement, I urge you to do so this weekend.

We decided, also, to encourage people to wear a multi-color ribbon to express our approval and appreciation of diversity in Greensboro and of America. We are doing our best to encourage churches, particularly, to hand out ribbons at their services on Sunday and have their clergy make statements about condemning the meeting of the Nazis here. To any of you who are not members of our congregation and who regularly attend church services on Sunday, I encourage you to contact your ministers first thing tomorrow morning and encourage them to participate with ribbons. As you can see, it is very simply done, the ribbons are about 5 inches long and all you need is a straight pin and some ushers to hand them out.

Some people have asked, is this enough?

Quite frankly, I have had people call and email me saying that even this is too much, that the more that we do, the more we will help the Nazis spread publicity. On the other hand, I’ve had people tell me that this is not enough. Therefore, because I am being criticized on both sides, I feel that we might be doing the right thing!

I do not know how the students at our local universities will react? I know that tomorrow there is a demonstration at 3:00pm on South Elm Street, and I imagine that many of our young college students will attend that demonstration. I will not be attending because it is Shabbat, and because, despite my reservations, I feel that making a statement, giving interviews, and handing out these ribbons is where I should be at this time.

Why are they coming to Greensboro?

Some people think that it might have to do with the sit-in movement. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the four young men from North Carolina A&T University who sat-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter. This sit-in led to more than fifty other sit-ins which occurred in the following weeks throughout America. I am delighted to tell you that the International Civil Rights Museum will open the 1st of this coming February. I am hopeful that people from all over the United States, especially young people, will visit the museum and see the four stools where these four young men sat. By the way, one of those four, Dr. Franklin McCain, will be our featured speaker at our Martin Luther King service in January this year. Dr. McCain and his three friends sat down in order that others could stand-up for freedom and justice in our country.

Still other people say that the reason for this event in Greensboro has to do with the Klan-Nazi shootings of 1979. In those shootings, five demonstrators, three African Americans and two Jewish doctors were savagely murdered by the Nazis. Those who perpetrated this murder were never brought to justice. This is a controversial, and extraordinarily sad, part of Greensboro’s history.

The leaders of the National Socialist Movement say, however, that the reason why this is being held in Greensboro is because of the city’s central location.

More important to me is why the National Socialist Movement, the Nazi Party, is making such an effort to organize recruitment. In my opinion, this has to do with several disturbing things that are happening right now in the United States.

I believe that as a white supremacist group, the National Socialist Movement is tapping into a segment of racist America that is very ugly in its tenor and tone. I do believe that there are people in the United States who cannot accept, and will not accept, that our country has elected an African American President. Such people feel that control of the country is slipping out of the hands of white people.

The second thing that I think is important is the debate over healthcare. The outpouring of millions of dollars by insurance companies to lobby against any sort of healthcare reform in Congress has led to the creation of an atmosphere of worry and fear in our country. Earlier this month I spoke and wrote about the usage of Nazi imagery among the anti-healthcare demonstrators. I would like to remind you that when Rabbi Koren and I attended a healthcare briefing in Raleigh at which President Obama spoke, we saw a man at the outside of the center holding a sign which read, “Obamacare = National Socialism.” It is incredibly disturbing that some of our politicians have actually sought to demagogue this issue and to increase the amount of fear and worry in our country. The idea that any sort of healthcare reform would include death panels that would put our grandmothers in danger is absolutely absurd.

It is not the role of Temple Emanuel or this Rabbi to take a specific position on healthcare legislation. I would like point out that there are many different versions of healthcare resolutions in Congress, one in the House and at least three in the Senate. What I think is important to understand is that, from a Jewish perspective, it is absolutely immoral in society for some people to be denied proper healthcare due to lack of financial resources. From our perspective, the current situation of health care in our country is untenable financially and questionable morally.

Therefore, without being specific, we in the Jewish community support all efforts towards health care and insurance reform in the United States. The details need to be worked out, but again the status quo is untenable.

It is disturbing to me there is usage of Nazi propaganda and that the Nazis in the guise of the National Socialist Movement are using the frustration some people feel to increase their recruitment efforts. Theirs is an America that is ugly. Theirs is an America that is only for white people. Homosexuals, Hispanics, Jews and Asians and others are not welcome in their America. The America of the neo-Nazi party is an America which is filled with bias, bigotry and racism. It is an America that is filled with hate.

As Jews we have been the victims of such Nazi hatred in the past. Six million of our brothers and sisters, including one and a half million children, perished because of the Nazi Party. More important than this, the lesson for all of us is that we will not only fight against the Nazis and what they represent, but that we will take a firm stand for what is important to us as Jews.

Tonight, we are not only saying that hatred, bigotry, and racism have no place in our community, but we are also saying that we stand for justice.
As Jews, we believe, as did the biblical prophets, that a society that is not based upon justice is a society that is not secure for anyone – particularly minorities.

We, as Jews, are taking a stand tonight to say that society must be built on compassion, that economic inequity and inequality should have no bearing on whether or not a person receives proper medical attention.

We, as Jews, tonight are taking a stand for tolerance and for diversity. We are wearing these ribbons to say that our vision of America is one where within each ethnic and racial group, each person is a divine manifestation of the image of God and they bring forth that which is best, that which is most godly within their very being. That’s why we’re wearing these ribbons tonight.

We are making a stand for brotherhood, sisterhood and above all peace.

We believe in an America built upon justice, compassion, tolerance and peace where people work together for the common good. We believe that when we work together and create coalitions for goodness we not only bring more peace to our world, we bring more of the presence of God.