Neo-Nothing

 Let's talk Nazis. You remember them. The bad guys in half of the Indiana Jones movies. 

Bad guys. And not just in the movies. These were the folks who were members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party in the nineteen thirties and forties. They were the reason for the world to go to war a second time. With an eye toward global domination, they made a pretty solid start before being pushed back to their bunkers where they were eliminated. 

The good guys won.

So what is all this about Nazis marching through Nashville just last weekend? Sure, we call them "neo-Nazis" now and they don't seem to be as big a threat as the Third Reich. Not yet, anyway. But there were dozens of masked men in matching outfits carrying flags of various permutations, chanting their greatest hits, and calling themselves Patriot Front. This demonstration followed one back in February by a group called Blood Tribe. In Nashville. Before that it was the Proud Boys. It seems that Tennessee is a pretty popular spot for white boys filled with hate and matching khakis to strut their stuff. 

Which would be easy enough to tolerate if there wasn't so many threads that lead back to the Far Right "Christian Nationalist" movement so prevalent among the MAGA crowd. I have written here before about the hyperbole of the term Nazi. Anecdotally I can tell you that I was asked by my wife to stop referring to her as The Recycling Nazi because it turns out that not only is it not as funny as it may once have been, but Nazis don't really seem to be that concerned with our planet's sustainable future. 

Instead, they seem to be of the opinion that a white Christian nation is what our founding fathers had in mind when they drew up the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Never mind that "all men are created equal" jazz. We can just skip over that part and get right to ignoring the separation of church and state. In 1930's Germany, the Great Depression was helpful in driving people to the Nazi Party because it gave them someone to blame: Marxists and Jews. It would seem that the conditions over the past ten years here in America have been sufficient to increase enrollment among hate groups. During the first year of the Trump administration, the number of Neo-Nazi groups jumped up twenty-two percent. 

What if there was a second Trump administration? 

Let's not find out. These are the bad guys.

Right?