How to Succeed in Street Warfare #2: Gaining Territory by Moving Barricades

Created and Published on June 12th, 2020

How to Succeed in Street Warfare #1: Surrounding Aggressors

See these images in an Instagram post at the following link:

http://www.instagram.com/p/CBOtyEisS8N/

Created and published on June 9th, 2020
Instagram Link Added on June 11th, 2020

Speech to the Libertarian Party of Chicago on March 3rd, 2020

     The following text was written for a meeting of the Libertarian Party of Chicago, Illinois. It explains my platform and priorities for my fourth and current campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, and also contains some comments on how World War II, and socialism and fascism, should be taught in schools. This speech was not delivered in full; instead, its first three sections were condensed into a two-minute speech.

     Thanks for having me. My name is Joe Kopsick, I'm running a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, up in the 10^th District, which includes Waukegan, where I live, most of Lake County, and parts of northern Cook County.

     I'd like to say a few things about unemployment and my campaign, and then I'd like to talk about a problem that's the primary concern of lovers of liberty: authoritarianism. Finally, I will address the issue of whether I am a communist and a Stalinist.

     We're being told that we've never had it so good; that the unemployment rate has never been lower. We're told that it's the lowest it's been since slavery! Well I guess we better bring back slavery, if our goal is full employment, right?

     It is not true that unemployment is at an all-time low. It was lower in the last quarter of 2019, and it was also lower in the late 1960s and early 1950s. Unemployment may be at its lowest in 50 years, but remember that there are six different ways of measuring unemployment (U1 through U6). Donald Trump loves to tout the unemployment rate as proof that he has helped the economy, but what he's neglected to mention is that he's stopped focusing on U6, which is the most comprehensive way of the six to measure general difficulty maintaining stable employment.

     But let's suppose that more people are working. So what? Most of the companies they're working for are companies that get handouts from government, like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Boeing, etc.. Do we really want more people employed by corporate arms of the corrupt government?

     Moreover, the decrease in unemployment started before Trump took office, statistics show his influence could lead to an upswing in unemployment, and his claims that black and Hispanic unemployment rates were at all-time lows, have been debunked as half-truths.

     But it's the same on the so-called “left”; we saw at a recent debate, that the mainstream media are letting candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have their own facts, rejecting objectivity in favor of neutrality. Over the past three years, not only have the Republicans and Democrats proven themselves completely untrustworthy, delusional, and cultish; each of them have sought illicit business and political dealings with both Russia and Ukraine.

     The time has come to stop believing our politicians.

     In the 10^th District, Congressman Brad Schneider is running for re-election. He has taken tens of thousands from the military-industrial complex, hundreds of thousands from companies that pollute our air and water, hundreds of thousands from big banks (including bailout recipients), and hundreds of thousands from the pro-Israel lobby.

     My platform stands in stark contrast to my opponent's. Unlike him, I promise to reduce the size and budget of the military, root-out corporate largesse and cronyism in government, fight the big banks by demanding an end to the Federal Reserve that gives them credit, and fight for the health of people in the 10^th District (without supporting the disastrous Obamacare or the unconstitutional E.P.A.).

     I want to usher-in a new era of race-relations through reviving the counter-culture. My top three issues are “POUND EMPATHIC SKA”. Which sounds like I want to just blare two-tone ska music until people of every race, color, and creed are jamming together and getting along. And I do. But “POUND EMPATHIC SKA” stands for my top three issues:

     1. (POUND): Pay Off the U.S. National Debt by 2047. We will drastically reduce spending, drastically increase taxes but only while making sure they're more efficient, or both; in order to run a trillion-dollar surplus budget for 25 years in a row until the national debt is fully paid off.
     2. (EMPATHIC): Eliminating Medical Patents to Achieve Human Technology for Immortality Cheaply. I want to shorten the “lifespan” of medical patents, in order to increase the lifespan of human beings. Stop protecting medical patents for so long, so that they become generics sooner; and tax the profits but not the sales of medical devices, so that they're less expensive and more accessible. As pharmaceuticals and medical devices become more abundant, their price will go down. As more machines do the work, and fewer people do the work, necessary to make them, their costs will go down.
     Research is being done on how to lengthen the human lifespan through genetic research on how the tips of our chromosomes (telomeres) work; bits of them fray each time our cells are reproduced; this is what leads to organ failure and eventually death. If we urge people to put more private funding into the research of telomeres, and implement the medical cost-reducing proposals I've outlined, then we can achieve human immortality through low medical prices. That is how we achieve free medicine without socialism: through mass production and automation; and through price competition (the freedom to offer lower prices).

     3. (SKA): The Safe Kids Act. We will keep kids safe, while preparing them for the future, by abolishing the Department of Education, or, failing that, threatening to withhold federal funds from all public schools that refuse to start teaching courses on the skilled trades. At the same time, high schools should be split in half, so that upperclassmen are the only ones exposed to the risk of harm from dangerous machines in such classes, and individual students may sign waivers to be around machines (thereby eliminating fear over potential lawsuits against schools). Splitting all high schools in half carries the added benefit of ending the practice of 14-year-olds and 18-year-olds going to school together. I also hope to propose needed reforms to end child marriage, and I believe that a constitutional amendment establishing a nationwide age of consent, will both help reduce child trafficking, and set up age - not just some vague definition of "maturity" - as a requirement necessary to consent to contract.

     But therein lies the problem; we cannot trust this current federal government to police child trafficking, because it does so much child trafficking. We are faced with the same problem Lenin faced; we want good government, but reforming the one we have now is impossible. Fixing child sex trafficking laws would be hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.

     In my recent research, I have identified more than twenty ways in which child trafficking is legal or government-supported. One of the first ones is obvious; the kidnapping of children by I.C.E. agents at the southern border. Others include both parties' complicity in the Jeffrey Epstein teen sex slavery ring case, and forms of government custody of children which could reasonably be called kidnapping or child trafficking. We must criminalize all of these legal forms of trafficking, in addition to prosecuting illegal child trafficking.

     There are “black sites”, or “concentration camps” at the border; it's true. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez called them concentration camps, and got criticized for it, but before she called them that, she called them black sites. When A.O.C. called I.C.E. detention facilities “black sites”, I thought, “The only person I've ever heard use the term 'black sites' is Alex Jones.” In a way, the “far left” and the “far right” have more in common than they might think; for example, opposition to authoritarianism, monopolies, corporate power, big banks, harm to the environment, and incursions into civil liberties. The “far left” and “far right” aren't “extreme”; they're just the libertarian wings of their respective parties, who are fighting the establishments in each party. That applies a lot less to Alex Jones than to A.O.C., but let's talk about that.

     Until Trump showed up, the nationalist, conservative, main street, and libertarian wings of the Republican Party, were the elements that were fighting the mainstream of the party. But Trump united most of those elements and triumphed, preventing another Bush presidency under Jeb. So for the last five years, Alex Jones has been claiming, and frantically trying to prove, that he and Trump are libertarians. Even after Trump betrayed Alex on Syria and Alex admitted it, even after Trump showed his distaste for the 2^nd Amendment by banning bump stocks, even after James Mattis convinced Trump not to torture but Gina Haspel let him do it anyway. Alex Jones betrayed us.

     He deserves some thanks for exposing the deep state, and government's complicity in child trafficking, and many other things. But he has also used his show as a way to disseminate hate-filled tirades against liberals and leftists, going so far as to use textbook Nazi dehumanization rhetoric to compare them to helpless worms and maggots, etc.. Don't get me wrong; Marx, Lenin, and Mao all stooped to using this sort of logic; but nobody should talk this way about another human being. Our children should not grow up thinking it is OK to call people of different races “dirty”, nor “viruses”, nor call people of different religions or ideologies “cancers”, nor suspect all foreigners of carrying diseases. If we let ourselves talk like that, it's not long before we're treating each other like animals and diseases, even exterminating each other.

     We can no longer say that extermination is no longer possible in America, since we know about these I.C.E. “detention centers”, where people are being told to drink toilet water. Where people are having their religious jewelry taken away, like what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. Where mothers are being told they'll get their children back after a quick bath, which is not dissimilar to the method employed to trick Jews into entering gas chambers thinking they were showers. As a matter of fact, America was using Zyklon-B on Mexicans, twenty years before the Nazis were using it to kill Jews. Have you ever heard of the Bath Riots? Immigrants entering America in El Paso were sprayed with harsher and harsher chemicals, to “disinfect them” from disease, until a teenage girl started a riot because pregnant women were being doused with toxic chemicals. This occurred years after the Mexican typhus scare ended.

     The Nazi-sympathetic German-American Bund, headed by Fritz Kuhn, held a rally thousands of people strong in Madison Square Garden in 1940. The German-American Bund was allowed to march in Grafton, Wisconsin around the same time. Nazis were allowed to march in Chicago, Illinois in 1980 after unsuccessful attempts to march in Skokie. F.D.R. advisor Henry Stimson, probably the most anti-Semitic public official America has ever had, not only advised F.D.R. to refuse to let the M.S. St. Louis (a ship full of 900 Holocaust refugees) allow people to disembark in America, he advised F.D.R. against approving a plan to bomb the train tracks leading to the Auschwitz death camp.

     America is deeply ultra-nationalist. If being a nationalist means loving your country or being proud of it, then there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're an ultra-nationalist who believes “My country above all others”, or, worse, “My country, right or wrong”, then you value patriotism more than you value knowing the difference between right and wrong, and acting as such. Too many Americans believe that, since America contributed to defeating the fascists in World War II, it should never have to worry about being accused of being fascist ever again.

     Well right now there are people in the Trump Administration who used to work for George W. Bush, and he and his father were fed on Nazi war profits, because Prescott Bush, while working for Brown Brothers Harriman, managed the American accounts of Fritz Thyssen, a German industrialist who financed hard labor camps and gave millions to Adolf Hitler. As George Carlin said, “Hitler lost World War II. Fascism won it.” America didn't defeat fascism; it helped defeat the Nazis, but then adopted fascism for itself, to make a new brand of uniquely American fascism.

     We are in complete denial about the grip the C.I.A. has on our information. Communists are just people – mostly industrial workers and farmers - who want to get compensated adequately for the work that they do. The fact that they sometimes commit violence, doesn't mean they're “fascist”, nor terrorists; it means that they've been cheated out of the fruits of their hard work, and they're willing to fight the people who cheated them, because their and their families' lives are on the line.

     Wage theft is real. There is no difference between a politician, a boss, a landlord, and a banker; each makes his living only by oppressing another. We must fight all relationships of domination if we are to ever get rid of the rule of one man over another.

     So... am I a communist? Hell yes, I am a communist. But a libertarian communist; a pure communist, who rejects the state, borders, classes, and money. You might say, “Sure, abolish the state, but why the others?” The state creates the money, creates the borders, and incentivizes the class system by creating a well-paid permanent political class that's subject to corporate capture! Isn't the professional licensing system, just another form of classism, to perpetuate the rule of the employed over the non-employed? So establish that stateless, classless, borderless, moneyless society.

     You might say “How can you be a libertarian communist if you support Stalin?” I believe that Stalin wasn't an authoritarian communist, because I don't buy the propaganda that the U.S.S.R. helped the Nazis; Stalin tricked the Nazis. But I will explain that fully in a moment.

     High schoolers are becoming increasingly attracted to “extremist” ideologies like ultra-nationalism and communism. We can either view that as a problem, or lean into it and see what good we can take from it. We could use memes to teach history; history meme pages exist by the hundreds on Instagram and other sites. We could take this opportunity to adequately teach the history of World War II.

     All today's high schoolers know about World War II is that Hitler and Stalin were bad, they killed a lot of people, and don't be a fascist or a communist. We ought to teach them things like whether they ever fought each other, who killed more people and what the debate is on that topic, which one attacked Poland first and which attacked the other first (because it does matter who threw the first punch; remember, we oppose aggression and initiatory violence, not self-defense), and whether and when each were allied with America.

     Holocaust denial is terrible, and it is becoming more prevalent. The easiest way to nip this problem in the bud is to teach kids that Hitler hasn't only been accused of killing six million Jewish people; he has also been accused of killing some 13 million other Germans and 27 million Russians. People will stop asking “Did Hitler kill six million, or zero?”, and they will start asking “Did Hitler kill 40 million, or 50 million?” That is how you stamp-out Holocaust denial promptly, before racist kids become adults, and come out in the world where we have to deal with them without their parents around to protect them.

     Stalin did bad things; for example, the gulag system of work camps. People were worked to the bone, yes, but these camps were spaced far apart, and thus suffered none of the overcrowding, and much less of the communicable disease and male-on-male rape, for which American prisons are known. Furthermore, Stalin saved the world from Hitler. Many Americans will brag that their country helped win World War II, but America simply came in at the last moment and made the war end more quickly than it would have. Additionally, few Americans know the grave cost the Soviet Union paid for “helping” to defeat Hitler; 27 million lives. That's 50 Soviet soldiers for every American soldier killed in World War II. Take a moment to reflect on that fact.

     This is stolen valor. The C.I.A.'s America is treating communists like fascists, when the communists have historically been more staunch and fierce enemies of fascists than liberals and libertarians have. What was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty(commonly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact) but a treaty of non-aggression and mutually-beneficial trade? Any libertarian regime would have fallen for that.

     Stalin at least had the idea to use the materials that the Nazis traded to him – in this last opportunity to trade, when they knew war would come only in a matter of time - to feed the Soviet war machine, to eventually fend off the Nazi invasion. Stalin tricked Hitler by using against him, the extra resources he was willing to trade away. Stalin used Hitler's capitalism against him. Not to say that Hitler was fully capitalist; fascism has its own distinct economic ideology, which is called dirigism (referring to the direction of the economy by the government).

     We should not teach high schoolers that Hitler and Stalin were evil, unless we also teach them about the violence committed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in the name of imperialism, capitalism, and “making the world safe for democracy” (such as interning 110,000 innocent Japanese-Americans).

     Alex Jones has discredited himself as a liberty lover, by using his show to urge his listeners to show up to protests with weapons, when they believe that Antifa members are likely to show up. I am making it a plank of my platform to oppose declaring Antifa a terrorist group, for the following two reasons.

     1) Have you ever noticed that Antifa usually have shields, instead of weapons? It's a stupid decision, true. But if they showed up with weapons – like the guns that nationalist protesters have been known to bring to protests – then the right would call Antifa “armed terrorists”. Nationalists bring weapons to protests to incite violence; Antifa bring shields because they expect that they will have to defend themselves from such people.

     2) Antifa was not founded two weeks ago by some loser in his mom's basement; it was founded in Germany in 1932, the year before Hitler took power.

     If you're anti-fascist, then you're Antifa. If you support declaring Antifa a terrorist group because you're anti-fascist and you think they're fascists, then logically you would have to support declaring yourself a terrorist (because you're anti-fascist, and therefore Antifa, which is an unincorporated movement that has no leaders and is directed by nobody).

     George Soros is not a Nazi, he was forced to join Nazi Youth as a teenager. Communists are not Nazis; Communists fought Nazis to the death and invaded the German capital. Communists with the Ukrainian brigades helped stop trains headed for death camps, and helped fully liberate Auschwitz after the Jewish prisoners partially liberated themselves in January 1945. Communists are not Nazis; Hitler banned Marxism in 1933, purged the Nazi Party of socialists, and faked being a socialist in order to avoid real socialism in addition to communism. The Nazis had quotas to confiscate Jewish wealth; not wealth in general. Nazism was not real socialism because it did not consider Jews part of that society, and the Nazis were not trying to do socialism.

     If you support taking people's money on their way out of the country - or requiring people to have permits and licenses in order to work, travel, or carry a weapon – then you're a fascist. Plain and simple. If not, then you might want to vote for me. Because there are real concentration camps in America, just like the ones funded by associates of the Bushes 80 years ago. And any day your driver's license could stop being accepted outside your state lines, and any day your school could “lose track” of your kid.

     Any day you could get swindled into thinking there are lots of jobs in the East, as the Jews were made to believe. And there were jobs; in hard-labor camps that eventually became death camps (as more and more people died from being overworked, and disease, and the Nazis resorted to extreme measures to prevent the spread of disease, which they knew would only make their prisoners sicker). After all, people from Honduras and El Salvador have been tricked into thinking there are jobs in America that you can easily leave, only to get stuck in I.C.E. facilities (when undocumented), or trapped in America at the end of harvest season (when documented).

     We are trapping Hispanics at the border and we are trapping black people in the jails. We are hunting human beings. America has made war and policing – killing and hunting human beings – into its national pastime and one of its most popular jobs. We have legalized treating people like animals, in our words and in our actions.

     It should be no surprise, then, that our teenagers are so prone to violence, with these murderers as their heroes. We blame violence on video games, but I blame school shootings, in part, on high taxes. Think about it: When our income is taxed, what we fairly earned through working for wages is taken away, and confiscated, and for the most part wasted. When our housing value is taxed, we lose all impetus to improve our property, because when our property value increases, our property taxes go up as well. There is no way to get ahead through producing something; the only way to make money is to destroy and invest in weapons, and the only way to save money and save on taxes is to produce less and own less. Kids are being taught that wasting and destroying things, gets you more money than producing and improving things. And it does! But this teaches them that they'll never be rich, because of high taxes (and barriers to employment, like lack of skilled trades classes), and so if they can't be rich, they can still be famous without being rich, by killing large numbers of people.

     If they do learn violence from violent video games, then yes, school shootings happen because kids are obsessed with who has the most kills. But if they're obsessed with who has the most kills, then there's a simple way to let those thoughts, and their politically extremist feelings, out: by debating Hitler vs. Stalin death tolls in high school. Hitler's fifty million dead will not only distract students from how many people they want to kill; it will also reassure them that they'll never be able to kill more people than the Nazis did. So why should they even try?

     It may sound ridiculous, but is that really more dangerous than what we're currently doing? Rationalizing the idea that the C.I.A. adopted from Winston Churchill; that the West should have aligned with Hitler from the beginning, because the Soviet Union and communism were the real enemies the whole time? Well, guess what: America did try to align with Hitler before World War II. It resulted in the deportation of Holocaust refugees and American assistance in the construction of forced-labor camps.

     I would much rather “teach the controversy” about World War II in high schools, than let troubled kids who understand extremism well, go without being challenged in front of their peers, and risk ending up isolated loners who kill their classmates. Socialists, nationalists, libertarians, anarchists, and others, all need to be respected alongside Democrats and Republicans in our public schools, and given equal time, or else the federal support of public schools should end forever.

     There is hardly any reason left to keep funding public schools anyway. The proponents of gun control argue “Even if it will save only one child's life, it will be worth it to ban guns.” And they make a good point; one child is shot or killed every school day in America. But you never hear anybody say “Even if it will save only twenty-four children from being molested a day, we should ban the public schools where this molestation takes place, with the help of our taxpayer money to defend the teacher.” I will be the first candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to ever say that.

     I will also aim to lower the likelihood of school shootings through three methods: 1) Allowing students to take gun safety training courses; 2) Depend on private security guards to protect schools instead of the police, and 3) Pursue lawsuits or legislation which will result in the overturning of the 1980s Supreme Court case Warren v. District of Columbia, which holds that the police have no duty to protect and serve, unless there is a private contract.

     In my mind, the outcome of Warren is that we do not have a police force in America; we have a for-profit mafia-style protection racket. And the last thing it wants is for vulnerable people and minorities to be armed, defend themselves, and make the cops look bad.

     As your candidate, I vow to fight this mafia protection racket until the day I die. If I am elected to the U.S. House, I will do whatever I can to curtail the power of sovereign immunity, and charge police officers with an actual duty to protect and serve the general public (and, in doing so, restore civic order). I suspect that Warren has something to do with why these cops stand around at protests, and refuse to do anything when Antifa members come up to them saying Nazi sympathizers punched them and they're getting away and you can stop them.

     I will stop letting Nazis get away with all of this. I will do whatever I can to end the taxation of your children into joblessness, homelessness, debt slavery, depression, and despair. I will do whatever I can to restore the American dream of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law.

     Please join me tomorrow at the public library in Lake Bluff, the town where I grew up, for the first meet and greet of my campaign. I will be giving an hour-long presentation about my platform, followed by an hour of question-and-answer from the audience. Feel free to take some of my campaign literature with you. Thank you.

Written and Published on March 3rd, 2020

Introduction Added on March 5th, 2020

Should Nazis Be Allowed to March on Public Property?: Reaction to the Film "Skokie"

Table of Contents

1. First Introduction: The Skokie Affair

2. Second Introduction: The Legal Setup

3. Insurance, Permits, and the “Heckler's Veto”

4. Public Property, Private Property, and Privacy
5. Displaying the “Swastika”

6. In Favor of Allowing the March While Requiring Swastika Display

7. The Paradox of Intolerance, and the Communication of Hate Speech

8. The "Quarantine Strategy" and Whether to Avoid "Provoking" Nazis
9. Concentration Camps vs. I.C.E. Detention Facilities

10. Conclusion
11. Post-Script: Resources

Content

1. First Introduction: The Skokie Affair

     I recently watched the 1981 made-for-television movie Skokie. The film depicts the so-called “Skokie Affair” of 1977.

     In the Skokie Affair, the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group founded by Frank Joseph Collin, engaged in a legal battle with the village of Skokie, Illinois, over its right to march in the streets of that town.

     [Note: The names of those lawsuits are National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, Skokie vs. NSPA, Collin v. Smith, and Smith v. Collin.]

     The Skokie Affair began on October 4^th, 1976, when Collin wrote a letter to the Skokie Park District, formally requesting to use Birch Park “to conduct a meeting of speakers from this organization” (that is, the N.S.P.A.) on November 6^th of that year.

     The plot of Skokie centers on fictional character Marty Feldman, portrayed by Danny Kaye. The character is a resident of Skokie, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, and the president and founder of Skokie-based Precision Fabricating Incorporated. Feldman is shown attending meetings concerning the right of the National Socialist Party of America to march in Skokie, explaining his decision to attend those meetings to his family, and explaining to his daughter how his mother died.

     The town of Skokie was, at that time, about 40% Jewish-American, with a significant number of Holocaust survivors. These events occurred just thirty-two years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the end of World War II.

     Skokie also depicts a character named Herb Lewisohn, played by John Rubenstein and based on attorney David A. Goldberger. Goldberger was a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. (American Civil Liberties Union), and represented Frank Collin and the N.S.P.A. in court. Like Goldberger is in real life, Herb Lewisohn is Jewish, yet he finds himself defending the right of a group to protest, which admittedly supports reviving the National Socialist (Nazi) movement which killed millions of Jewish people (among others) in the 1930s and 1940s.

     Throughout the film, various legal arguments are made, both in opposition and defense of the right of neo-Nazis (and anyone in general) to march in the streets with proper permission. But just as much attention is paid to legal arguments, as it is to the horror expressed by the community in the fact that people could be allowed to march who favor “exterminating” them.

     [Note: I place the word “exterminating” in quotes because to use the term unironically is to give in to the Nazi idea that Jews are like a disease, or rats, or a plague of insects. The Nazis used dehumanizing rhetoric like this to excuse the murder of Jewish people and other so-called “inferior races” and untermenschen (sub-humans).]

     In this essay, I will examine and analyze various legal arguments, as well as moral arguments, both in opposition to and defense of, neo-Nazis' right to march in public. I will especially focus on the issues of insurance, permission, and the issue of displaying the Nazi swastika in public.

2. Second Introduction: The Legal Setup

     The N.S.P.A.'s plan was to demonstrate on public property in Skokie for twenty minutes, while limiting the number of protesters to 25. They stated that they had no plans to speak, nor distribute leaflets, and no intention to break the laws.

     When Frank Collin and the National Socialist Party of America initially applied for permission from the Skokie park district to allow him to hold a “meeting” (meaning a demonstration), they were denied. The group was informed that if they did not post a $350,000 insurance bond, that “meeting” could not take place. The purpose of the insurance bond was to cover possible damage to park property which could potentially occur during, or as a result of, that demonstration.

     A.C.L.U. lawyer David A. Goldberger argued that the right of the N.S.P.A. to march – in full uniform, including “swastikas” - is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as part of the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. On June 14^th, 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, ruling in favor of the plaintiff (Frank Collin's neo-Nazi group) in the case of National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie.

     If the film Skokie accurately portrayed events, the village of Skokie “failed to show that it has any cause to believe that any illegal activity would result” from the N.S.P.A.'s protest, and failed to show that the N.S.P.A. had a “plan to engage in any illegal activity”. Since it could not be shown that the N.S.P.A. had any intent to commit a crime, or harm anyone, it could not be proven that they had any malice of forethought, and were not engaged in acts in furtherance of committing a crime.

     Some attention is given in the film to the legal arguments in favor of the village of Skokie prohibiting neo-Nazis from marching; not enough, however. While I deeply value the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly, but I also understand the feelings of the people of Skokie. In the film, a judge ruling against the N.S.P.A. stated, “the Constitution certainly doesn't give a person like Collin the right to come into a peaceful community and cause violence.”

     [Note: That judge character subsequently enjoined the N.S.P.A. from “marching, walking, or parading in uniform, displaying the swastika, displaying any materials which incite or promote hatred against persons of Jewish faith or ancestry”.]

     There is certainly a legal case, in addition to a moral case, to be made in favor of that judge's, and the community of Skokie's, sentiment. The film makes a fair point that the freedoms to speak and assemble in public would be harmed, if the government could tell any group that it can't express itself - speak, assemble, march, “meet” (demonstrate), display their chosen symbols and flags, even denounce government – then it could tell any other group that it could not do the same.

     The concern of Goldberger and the attorneys who defended the N.S.P.A., was that if the government had the power to deny a permit to a group on the grounds of its having neo-Nazi sympathies, it constituted a prior restraint of expression of ideas on public property, which is certainly an illegal and unconstitutional overreach of government power, no matter against whom it is used. Numerous times, the film gave civil rights groups, or group of African-American activists, as examples of groups whose freedoms might be denied as a result of the village of Skokie being allowed to deny the N.S.P.A. a permit to demonstrate.

     Throughout the remainder of this essay, I will explain why I believe that various methods could and should be used to dissuade or prevent neo-Nazis from marching on public property, giving consideration to methods which are legal and illegal, violent and non-violent, and legalistic or apolitical alike. I also hope to suggest possible solutions to this conflict, which would protect both the rights of a community to civil order and public peace, and our freedoms to speak and express ourselves and gather in public.

3. Insurance, Permits, and the “Heckler's Veto”

     According to the N.S.P.A. and its lawyers, the village of Skokie “failed to show that it has any cause to believe that any illegal activity would result from” the N.S.P.A.'s demonstration”. To say such a thing may well be pragmatic and legally accurate, but that does not mean that is morally correct or advisable. It does the people of Skokie no service, that its representatives in local government are willing to take the National Socialist Party of America at its word that it doesn't intend to do anything illegal, or cause violence (or incite a mob to riot, etc.). To take the neo-Nazi group at its word, risks endangering the people.

     And so, the city resigned itself to allowing the neo-Nazi group to march, on the condition that it post a $350,000 insurance bond in order to do so; in order to cover potential damages to public property, public infrastructure, public safety, etc..

     I suppose it's possible that a neo-Nazi “meeting” could happen without any violence occurring as a result of it. In fact, I'm sure that neo-Nazi meetings happen all the time, without violence. But most of them happen in private, not in broad daylight in public property in a town they know to be full of Jewish-Americans who would be particularly offended, shocked, and horrified by such a thing. So the need to be concerned with the safety of the public should be considered here. Moreover, a private meeting is very different from a public march and demonstration, and the N.S.P.A. used tricks of legal language to suggest that they are the same thing.

     It certainly seems reasonable to charge a significant amount of money to cover the expenses which would be likely to result during or after a march by a neo-Nazi group. Certainly the price of paying police officers to stand guard, and potentially protect people, and cordon-off traffic, and direct drivers away from the parade. And some city workers would have to be paid to set up wooden horses.

     The taxpayers should not foot the bill for those activities. Certainly not if a majority of taxpayers don't wish to do so. Maybe even if just one or two taxpayers in the community don't wish to do so (if you're a strong supporter of individual rights). If the taxpayers are expected to pay for any and all groups to march, as long as they get the proper permits, then that means the insurance bond would cover none of the expenses which the public would incur in supporting a march on public property. It also means that public roads could potentially be turned into marching and parade routes any and all times of the year, with little notice given to the community, and no opportunity to deny that permission.

     While I'm on the topic, why are politicians making this decision? Granted; letting the courts decide is wise. But should the federal government intervene in a local community's decision; and why should the city's elected officials decide whether to allow the march, rather than the members of the community, say, voting in an emergency referendum?

     On another topic, aren't there laws that prohibit the expenditure of public funds to serve an exclusionary or discriminatory purpose?

     Is the government's “discrimination” against the neo-Nazis, really as bad as the forms of discrimination which the neo-Nazis would be promoting (albeit silently) at their march? Does government denial of a permit to march, really amount morally to the same kind of “discrimination” which the Nazis practiced during World War II (namely, to concentrate Jews, Poles, and others into camps, and then to segregate them further on the basis of gender and age)? Absolutely not; one could not argue that those things are morally equivalent, unless one is prepared to argue that the Nazis have a reasonable right to restrict Jews from leaving a death camp because they would have to “march” in order to do so.

     There is no reason why we cannot have a nuanced policy regarding which groups ought to be allowed to use public property to communicate their ideas. Groups which do not advocate for discrimination should be free to march, but groups openly promoting discrimination and segregation should never be allowed to use taxpayer money while doing so.

     It could be argued that the neo-Nazis ought to have the right to taxpayer money, on the grounds that public expenditures must benefit everybody, and equally. But I will not defend that idea. Taxpayers want to pay for patriotic American events, and other community events; not virtual Nazi war reenactments. The fact that that taxpayer money should benefit everyone when and if it is spent, does not necessarily mean that that money has to be spent. The money could just as easily benefit nobody. And that would achieve the goal of benefiting everybody equally, because none of them would benefit at all, and nobody could claim that he was discriminated against.

     While we're on the topic: Why should taxpayer money fund parades and marches in the first place? What if those events could not succeed financially without assistance from the public? This could very well be a case of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace. If so, it is economic interventionism, and it is incompatible with the ideals of a free economy.

     Returning to the issue of the price of the insurance bond:

     Take a look at the amount of damage caused by the last round of Nazi marches. I'm referring, of course, to World War II. Seriously though; in monetary terms, how much damage has the average Nazi march caused throughout history?

     The Nazis were estimated to have caused $640 billion in modern U.S. Dollars; they also caused the deaths of 47 million people. The number of soldiers who served in the army under Adolf Hitler between 1935 and 1945 was 13.6 million. From this, it seems appropriate to conclude that somewhere around 10 million Nazi soldiers served during World War II. That's 4.7 deaths per Nazi soldier, and $64,000 of damage per Nazi soldier.

     Frank Collin wanted 25 neo-Nazis to march. If the N.S.P.A. caused as much damage in Skokie - in terms of monetary damages and murder of civilians - as the German Nazis did during World War II, on a per-capita basis, that works out to $1.6 million to cover potential damages associated with allowing 25 Nazis to march. One million six hundred thousand dollars is much more than the $350,000 for which the village of Skokie asked, but if you take inflation into account, $350,000 in 1977 would be worth $1.48 million in 2019.

     This means that the only thing unreasonable about the amount the village of Skokie expected to cover potential damages, was that the village undershot the estimate, rather than overshooting it.

     Granted, levying high rates and high amounts – whether to insure marches on public property, or on fees to apply for permits therefor – is inappropriate and justifiable, both in an economic and constitutional sense.

     It is not economically, nor politically, justifiable (especially if a government is trying to pursue a policy of free trade) to impose an onerous tax, an unjustifiably high rate which ordinary people cannot afford, nor a requirement that one ask for and pay for a license or permit, in order to exercise one of their freedoms. If we have to pay or ask for permission to engage in some activity, then it is not a freedom, but a privilege.

     However, given what we know about history, the amount the village of Skokie was asking for, is completely reasonable. Furthermore, to demand large amounts of money in exchange for holding a controversial march which is likely to result in a public disturbance and a disruption of the public peace, is a non-violent way for government to achieve its goal.

     In demanding that the N.S.P.A. purchase an expensive insurance bond, the village is offering the group an incentive; to either 1) keep the march peaceful, or else 2) cancel the march. That is a peaceful, non-punishment-oriented, carrot-over-stick approach to the public getting what it wants. And what the public wants, is to either stop or prevent the neo-Nazis from marching, or else (failing that) keep public order and peace while allowing the march to occur.

     If non-violent solutions to dissuade and prevent neo-Nazis from marching have a chance at working, then they should be tried; however, not when there are lives at stake, not when neo-Nazis are present, and thus stand to pose a clear and present danger of harm to others.

     In Skokie, the judge who enjoined the N.S.P.A. from marching, commented, “...based on the evidence I've seen – the leaflets, the absolutely repulsive material within them, which the defendant [Frank Collin] avows completely – I believe he intends to make trouble; to incite to riot and cause bodily harm.” There is no question that the public peace and civil order would be disturbed were this group allowed to “meet” (a/k/a “march through the streets in full Nazi regalia”).

     Whether it is currently technically legal for neo-Nazis to march in the street is one issue; they undoubtedly have that right (as far as the courts are concerned). However, it is absolutely naive and absurd to assume that neo-Nazis do not intend to cause a public panic, and/or incite a mob to riot, through holding a march to petition their government in order to protest its denial of a permit to hold a meeting. After all, it only seems natural that the public should exercise authority over what takes place on its public property, while if the Nazis stay free to march, it should be on their own property, right?

     While the film Skokie pays adequate attention to the village of Skokie's attorneys' use of the “Heckler's Veto” argument, the film does not pay any attention to the fact that Jewish-American Skokie residents wanting to harm neo-Nazis is not the only cause for concern.

     The Heckler's Veto is the theory that “a hostile reaction of listeners to a speaker can be the grounds for silencing the speaker in advance”, and the theory that the government can restrain speech before it occurs, out of the concern for what the person hearing the speech might do, rather than concerns about what the person making the speech intends to accomplish. In this case, we aren't talking about a speech, only marching and displaying full Nazi regalia including swastikas; but again, that's taking the Nazis at their word, assuming they are telling the truth that they have no intention to speak or shout anything during the march.

     And that is hopelessly naive, even if it turns out to be true, because if the Nazis march once peacefully, they can march again later and call for killing Jews. Furthermore – in Germany, Ukraine, and Great Britain alike (under Adolf Hitler in Germany, under the not anti-Semitic Nestor Makhno in Ukraine, and in sympathy with British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley in the U.K., officers and fascist sympathizers have engaged in random acts of pogroms against Jews and sabotage of Jewish businesses; without even being ordered to do so, and without it being a matter of public policy. In fact, Oswald Mosley (although admittedly he was an M.P.) did not command anyone; his supporters committed acts of violence against Jewish people, despite the fact that Mosley was a racial separatist who never directly advocated the murder or domination of Jewish people.

     So – if we are to learn anything from history - even if the N.S.P.A. does not speak, the mere fact that it is marching poses a credible, immediate risk to the public. And the fact that the march was to take place in one of the highest Jewish population suburbs of Chicago, should demonstrate more than anything, that the march was intended as a provocation. That is why there existed a real chance of violence – against both the neo-Nazis and the village residents alike – and that is why expensive insurance bonds are justifiable.

     Aside from the concern that Jewish-American Skokie residents upset by the march could attack the neo-Nazis, there should also be concern for the chance that Skokie residents could be harmed by N.S.A.P. members. Granted, these N.S.P.A. members formally and legally insisted they had no plans to commit acts of violence. But we also need to be concerned with the possibility that Skokie residents could find themselves in a deadly stampede or other accident, if something goes wrong during the protest.

     These risks are what the village rightfully expected the N.S.P.A. to pay to insure against. To disagree is to ignore history; if anything, if the $350,000 price on the insurance bond to allow 25 Nazis to march, remains the policy of the village of Skokie, then it should immediately raise the rates of insuring public marches, increasing it by at least 8.1%, or maybe even more so as to cover the potential loss of lives in addition to monetary damage which could result from the march.

4. Public Property, Private Property, and Privacy

     The public has the right to deny permission to use public property. Just as private owners have the right to deny permission to use their private property. If you want an open, “public” place, where people are free to do whatever they want and nobody can deny them permission to do so, then what you're looking for is not public property, but a commons or a public commons.

     It is unreasonable to expect public institutions of government to have “shall-issue” policies regarding permits to march. While blocking traffic, modern left-wing activists say “We're not blocking traffic; we are traffic.” And they are correct; they're pedestrian traffic. But keeping in mind that a march or procession of people is traffic, it should have to abide by certain regulations if the government is expected to support and protect them. Especially so, if the organizers of the march want their participants to be the only traffic going through that street at that time.

     The local government should not be obligated to support any and all groups of people who wish to siphon-off public resources (labor, money, police attention, etc.) for the purposes of promoting their political ideology. At that, by forming a physical barrier with their bodies that stops people from passing through them. Forming such a physical barrier is the inevitable outcome of marching through the streets in a line or a formation. Do you really think a citizen will be free to walk towards a group of 25 marching neo-Nazis, and walk through the formation, without getting hurt? I doubt it.

     The act of marching in a line or formation, through a public street, means that nobody else can do the same, nor walk through that line and expect protection. It is an obstruction of traffic – especially the more militarized and disciplined and organized the group is – and it would be both logistically impossible and fiscally untenable for the government to attempt to protect all people present from one another (even if it actually intended to do so).

     Additionally, if the government is required or expected to issue permits to all who apply for them, then there is no point of having a public permit process to begin with. People would simply be free to march wherever and whenever they please without applying or paying for permission. I know I argue in favor of doing things without asking government permission a lot, but that only applies to personal possessions, not public property.

     The unrestricted use of public property renders it a commons, not true public property. If public property, private property, and the commons are to exist, then they should be treated differently from one another, they should be to some degree separate from one another, and each community should allow for balanced amounts of all of them to exist.

     While one could make the argument that this all boils down to the issue of whether demonstrators have the right to expect privacy in public. But that is only a tangential issue.

     If a Jewish lawyer will defend the right of neo-Nazis to march on public property, then there are probably few people who would say it should be illegal for Nazis to hold meetings on their own private property. This is arguably an issue of the N.S.P.A. bringing their private hate into the public sphere. And it would not be reasonable for the group to expect to retain their privacy while demonstrating in public. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they forfeit their right to be free from harm and threats, in the act of holding Nazi beliefs in public.

     Now, you could say that the neo-Nazi marchers should be arrested immediately if and when they do anything harmful or illegal; perhaps even if they violate the instructions in the city's permit in the process the slightest bit (for example, if one of the protesters spoke a single word). But all this achieves is to allow the march to occur. The fact that one or two of the 25 Nazis would be arrested – and at that, for petty violations – only turns the government into a nit-picker, and it would reinforce the image that the administration of government involves nothing but utter absurdity.

     If such a policy were to be adopted, then even if its purpose were to decrease the chance of violence occurring at the march, the police coming in to arrest N.S.P.A. members would be bound to result in a public disturbance. It could result in a stampede, and people could be trampled to death; regardless of whether they're running away from the N.S.P.A. and/or the police, or whether they're running towards them with the intention of harming them. It would be better, for the sake of public safety, that the march never happen in the first place.

     It is one thing to ask the public to sit at home and ignore the N.S.P.A. while it petitioned for the right to march. And that is what happened, according to the film Skokie. But what the film failed to show, was the fact that Skokie cops, and Skokie city workers, were expected to do the work necessary to allow that march to happen. Skokie residents had to pay taxes to pay those people.

     This is just one more reason why the N.S.P.A.'s plan to march in Skokie was intended as a provocation. The group's plan to hold a march didn't only offend and horrify Skokie residents; its activities stood to cost the public money. The group took it for granted that they would be allowed to march, and they were fully prepared to be complicit in the government legally obligating Jewish-Americans to pay taxes to support a march on public property held by neo-Nazis who admit they want Jews dead.

     Public institutions of American government should not be expected, nor required, to foster a welcoming nor freeing environment for groups that wish to revive a military entity (the Nazi army) that declared war on the United States less than 80 years ago. Private owners and entities can salute each other, display Nazi flags, etc., on their own property; but for a public institution of American government to do so, should always be considered an act of rebellion and treason.

     To allow neo-Nazis to march on public property is to, quite literally, turn our public infrastructure over to the enemy. If we do this, then we might as well allow them to occupy capitol buildings and their legislative chambers while we're at it. To do that would be to cease excluding anyone from public property, rendering it a public commons. I am not advocating that we do such a thing; I am only cautioning that it will destroy the public sector to cease allowing the public to regulate its own public property.

5. Displaying the “Swastika”

     To speak directly to the issue of expecting privacy while in public: There is a way to get privacy in public; it's to mask or disguise oneself.

     In recent years, conservatives have characterized Antifa (short for Antifaschistische Aktion, an anti-fascist group) as cowardly for wearing face masks in public. Some conservatives have also suggested that Muslim women be prohibited from wearing veils, either in public all the time, or else solely in official government photographs.

     While it may sound reasonable to use the “don't expect privacy in public” argument against Muslim women wearing veils, and Antifa members wearing face masks, it should never excuse ripping the item of clothing off of someone. This should be considered the equivalent of sexual assault, whenever there is not reasonable cause to suspect that the person has harmed, or intends to harm, someone.

     Likewise, there should be no justification for ripping the swastika symbol, or the Nazi armband, off of a neo-Nazi. Yet that is more or less what the village of Skokie and its lawyers considered, as a way to offer a compromise which would allow the march to occur peacefully.

     As I explained above, what the village of Skokie considered, was to allow the march to take place, but only on the conditions that the N.S.P.A. agree to refrain from speaking, distributing literature, and displaying the swastika.

     The film Skokie, as well as a Twitter user I recently saw comment on modern American protests, point out that nationalists, racists, neo-Nazis, etc. use the law, and formality, to their advantage. That is exemplified by the fact that Frank Collin and the N.S.P.A. took so much care to ensure that they did not do anything illegal during the process to apply for permission to march. [Note: We should also consider here, whether the fact that Collin applied for permission, suggests that he knows he does not have the right to march on public property without the public's permission.]

     The fact that the neo-Nazis have come to be known for their attention to detail, and concern for formality and legality in their activities, should teach us that they will find ways to get around whatever obstacles – legal or otherwise – that stand between them and what they want. Being aware of this, it should not come as any surprise to us if a neo-Nazi group takes advantage of the specific wording in a city's permit.

     Although the Nazi symbol is usually called the “swastika”, the German term for that particular swastika – which is an inverted version of the Indian good luck swastika that inspired it – is hakenkreutz, which means “crooked cross”. Any neo-Nazi whose group is prevented from displaying “the swastika” could easily argue that he technically does not wish to display “the swastika”, only the Nazi hakenkreutz. And he would be technically in the right, and the court would be foolish if it didn't rule in his favor.

     We should not underestimate the risks of taking neo-Nazi groups at their word that they do not intend to commit violence, or damage public property, or incite a mob to riot. We should not underestimate the abilities of racists and Nazi sympathizers to use the legal system, and legality and formality and the law, to their advantage.

     They will also not hesitate to use the public police as cover. Just several weeks ago, a police officer told a citizen “I didn't see it” after the citizen told the officer that he'd just been assaulted by a protester from the right-wing side. The police have no intention to protect anti-fascists from right-wing protesters, they have no obligation to protect and serve the public (if you're familiar with Warren v. D.C.), and the police should be expected to cooperate with and protect racist and nationalist protesters over the people they are threatening and harming.

     The purpose of the police is to protect private property, and to “maintain public order” (but only insofar as it protects public employees). Also, to use force to apply the laws of the nation, and promote the wholeness and integrity of the nation by doing so. The police have nothing to gain by either defending anti-fascists more than racists, nor by trying to defend everybody against everybody else. The police are probably not even insured to do so, even though it seems like the kind of thing which ought to be their job. If the police cannot even be counted on to be neutral in such a manner, then they certainly cannot be trusted to choose the right side in a protest if it comes down to it.

     The thought that allowing the N.S.P.A. to march, on the condition that they be prohibited from displaying the swastika, could or should placate or satisfy any resident of Skokie, is stupefyingly appalling to me. It reeks of busybody government, incremental change, and hyper-focus on the details of the law. Prohibiting the swastika does not erase, excuse, nor make up for the moral evil of allowing Nazis to march.

     For one thing, it would be especially foolish to criticize people who wish to retain privacy in public, while also arguing in favor of allowing the N.S.P.A. to march but prohibiting swastikas. That's because prohibiting the display of swastikas provides free, mandatory, legal cover for march participants who might want to conceal the fact that they are Nazis.

     Now, I know that Nazi sympathizers go out in public every day, and continue to believe in Nazism and eradicating the Jews, and don't wear the swastika proudly because they are effectively dissuaded from doing so because of all the people who might react with horror or violence at such a thing. But that is a prevention of open display of Nazi insignia, which does not require resorting to violence, nor to law enforcement for solutions.

     I say this in order to defend the idea that, if and when a government decides to allow a Nazi or neo-Nazi group to march, then it should not issue any orders regarding swastikas, except to make display of swastikas optional. That's because prohibiting swastikas risks prohibiting the wrong swastika and provides free legal cover for neo-Nazis who might wish to conceal their Nazism; while requiring the participants to display the swastika could risk turning them into targets.

     Despite the need to avoid unnecessarily provoking neo-Nazis, inciting them to violence, and needlessly exposing them to the risk of harm – and leaving aside my previous statement that government should let display of the swastika remain optional, as it otherwise would stay in a free society without government and its intervention - I believe that if the government must choose between requiring or prohibiting the swastika, then it should require demonstrators to display the swastika.

     The purpose of this would be to allow the neo-Nazis to gather, to allow them to march – in full regalia, with the hakenkreutz – and to refrain from infringing on their First Amendment rights. But I only say this sarcastically.

     These First Amendment rights supposedly include the right to disrupt the public peace and the civil order, and the right to expose innocent civilians to the emotional and mental stress of reliving a traumatic experience that claimed the lives of their relatives. All of this, as a reminder, would potentially all be funded by public taxpayer money, and by an 8%-too-low insurance bond paid by the N.S.P.A..

     It is foolishly naive to assume that any level of insurance, or legislation, could possibly protect the community against the risk which could be posed – against people and property alike – by neo-Nazis marching proudly in the street, as the German Nazis did on Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and other nations just seventy to eighty years ago. The purpose of having elected officials should not be to profit off of enemies of the United States who wish to pay for permission to turn their public spaces into war-zones-waiting-to-happen.

     While these neo-Nazis are marching, somebody could take that opportunity to burn down the local synagogue. They could take advantage of the fact that security would be heightened around the vicinity of the march, while resources might be taken off of local synagogues, Jewish centers, and places where Jewish-Americans (and other groups deemed “sub-human” by the Nazis) tend to congregate.

     I would recommend only allowing Nazis to march on the condition that security be increased on surrounding buildings housing Jewish organizations. But that would be to pretend that there are not any anti-Semites among our police officers. Which is - just like thinking insurance and laws will protect us from fascism – foolishly naive.

     Just as the Soviets had no right to expect Poland to roll over and allow itself to be turned into the front line of a war without any resistance, we should never expect our local government to agree to allow the city's public spaces to be turned into a war zone. But if it is better, for the sake of the safety and survival of the community, that the city be turned into a war zone, then so be it; it is better that the conflict happen sooner rather than later, so that we don't stick our children and later generations with the problem.

     If we can't expect the government to legalize shooting Nazis in the street, then we should logically expect our police to cooperate with the fascists. That only leaves us one option: fight both the fascist protesters, and the police that favor them when it comes to protection, the instant that one of the protesters calls for violence or begins an attack against someone.

     Nazis and Nazi sympathizers deserve to be shot, whether they are actively posing a threat of harm to those around them or not. As I explained, people take non-verbal signals from neo-Nazi groups, as license to go burn down Jewish places of worship. We are idiotic slaves if we expect government to legalize shooting Nazis who display symbols signifying support of mass murder. We are idiotic slaves if we expect government to legalize shooting fascist police officers, even when they are legally in the wrong and are trying to murder us without even having a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

6. In Favor of Allowing the March While Requiring Swastika Display

     Do I support allowing the Nazis to march in the street, while displaying the hakenkreutz openly? Hell yes, I do! I support their right to out themselves by being so stupid as to voluntarily display the swastika in public. To prohibit the swastika only gives the neo-Nazi protester the legal protection to deny us, the public, the privilege of knowing who he is and what he stands for. Hell, requiring neo-Nazis to wear swastikas just might be the only way we have to distinguish the cops from the Nazis.

     While we're on the subject, why not allow the Nazis to march, but require all police officers with Nazi sympathies to display the swastika on their police uniform? After all, there is no shortage of ridiculous “solutions” when it comes to government. The village of Skokie offered some (regrettably) ultimately untenable legal defenses in the 1977 case, and so, I have decided to offer some serious solutions when the village did not. I have also offered additional absurd solutions where none are needed; in order to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the idea that a quick-fix from the government could ever solve anything, but also to show how absurd it is that the right quick-fix policy might actually succeed, if only we pick the right one.

     And requiring swastika display, keeping swastika display optional, protecting both sides of a protest, protecting anti-fascists over fascists, and requiring the purchase of expensive insurance bonds, could all potentially serve as that quick-fix. It just takes a deeper, more thorough examination of the legal and moral issues and facts at hand – a more nuanced exploration of all the angles on all the sub-issues related to this case – to come up with all the potential solutions to the problems articulated by the adjudicants; and, at that, to come up with the correct policy.

     I support the right of the village of Skokie to exercise its authority to allow or deny the use of public property, as it pleases. But I support the right of neo-Nazis to march, while displaying the swastika. I support their right to march... to their deaths.

     I support their right to march into the throngs of Jewish-Americans who would, and should, stand up against them – with bats and batons, with guns, with whatever means necessary – and physically beat the bodies of the neo-Nazis and fascist police who protect them, in order to send the signal that they are never welcome in that town again.

     Nazis and neo-Nazis, and fascists, mind you; not communists, not anarchists, not black civil rights activists, not Native American or Hispanic pride groups. Why should we go on pretending that it would be impossible for the government to pass a law – bypassing the permit system altogether – which would prohibit gangs and Nazis from marching, but allow all other groups which oppose discrimination?

     Of course, logically, they would have to support discrimination against Nazis, but as I have explained, the discrimination policies employed by the Nazis, means that the benefits of discriminating against Nazis in this manner, outweigh the potential costs of refraining from discriminating against them (that is, the costs of allowing them to protest).

7. The Paradox of Intolerance, and the Communication of Hate Speech

     It would seem appropriate to conclude from all this, that sociologist Karl Popper was correct, when he articulated the “Paradox of Intolerance”, and argued that the intolerant should not be tolerated. The Paradox of Intolerance holds that the most intolerant people in society must not be tolerated, but refusing to tolerate the intolerant is itself an intolerant act. To refuse to tolerate the intolerant is a paradox that destroys the purpose of tolerance.

     Noam Chomsky, taking the opposite position, has explained that the essence of the freedom of speech and political expression, is that if we only protect the right to speak when it is exercised by people who agree with us, then what is the point of protecting the freedom of speech, and who is that protection for? If that protection is not for the people with the most controversial issues, then whom is it for?

     As Ron Paul has said, “We don't have the First Amendment so we can talk about the weather; we have the First Amendment so we can say very controversial things.” Paul has also said that “Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.”

     Maybe Professor Chomsky and Dr. Paul are correct. Maybe the real danger here is that we can't know whether we disagree with speech until we hear it and think about it. The lesson of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is that it should be of little concern that people are burning books, if they are not even reading them in the first place. If you burn a book without reading it first, then how do you know that you actually oppose what's in it?

     A similar argument could be applied to the speech of Nazis and neo-Nazis, and the open display of the hakenkreutz and the Nazi flag (which are forms of non-verbal communication). Because those are forms of non-verbal communication – and because they would have been allowed at the N.S.P.A.'s march - to allow Nazis to speak, or even display the swastika or a Nazi flag, could potentially incite a mob to riot; stampede, smash the windows of Jewish businesses, kidnap and torture Jewish people, etc..

     However, to deny the Nazis any and all opportunity to communicate their ideas, carries with it the risk of people having no idea what they are protesting against. Which is already enough of a problem today; we don't need more clueless protesters demanding God-knows-what. Refraining from criminalizing the trade and purchase of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, for example, allows Nazis to communicate their ideas in a non-violent way.

     While allowing the book to circulate freely could teach people to hate the Jews, it could just as well function as a historical document that allows readers to understand why Hitler did what he did, so they can come to their own conclusions about whether his reasons and attempted solutions were right or wrong. Truly unbiased educators will be able to find and develop a way to “teach the controversy” without either excusing or promoting Nazi ideals, or else ordering their students to come to a certain conclusion about what they had read.

     To allow the book to circulate freely, if promoted as a matter of public policy, would be neutral, voluntary, and non-interventionist, and it would require no violence to enforce. However, taxpayer money should never be disbursed to support the publication of such information; not even for the purposes of historical education. No government should be trusted to educate people on the dangers of government becoming too powerful.

     I will add that it would not be unreasonable to tax people for buying and selling, or producing, Mein Kampf, if they are receiving public funds; nor would it be inappropriate to tax such activities as much as the public deems necessary. But that should not excuse the public depending on those revenues to fund government, to the point where the public tolerates the widespread proliferation of the publication, paid for with the taxpayer dime. That would be an insult to injury, on par with requiring Jewish-American citizens to pay to help Nazis hold a march in their town.

     I have just explained several ways to “moderate”, or “soften the blow” of, fascism, through taxing and regulating it. I do not necessarily endorse all of them; I only mention these possible solutions, because if we do not know which of these policies could work, then they must all be discussed, and weighed against one another.

     It is foolish to think that – through changing the law, or insurance, or taxes, or removing symbols – government can (or should) try to soften the blow of Nazism. To do so risks diminishing the seriousness and gravity of World War II and the Holocaust. And in Israel and most European countries, diminishing the Holocaust – or any other crime against humanity - is a serious crime meriting prison time. And one could certainly make the case that it should be deemed a crime in America as well.

     Just as the Union thought it could make slavery more palatable and acceptable by taxing it – by imposing high internal domestic tariffs (taxes) upon port cities in the South – the government thinks it can make fascism OK, and politically acceptable, by charging fascists a lot of money for permission to terrorize the public.

     Even if the government genuinely wants to moderate fascism (if such a thing is even possible), it still should not attempt to do so. To “take the sting out of fascism” serves no purpose other than making fascism cool and hip and popular for a new generation. The writing of Marx and Lenin contain dehumanizing references to human beings, just like Hitler's rhetoric did. Marx, Lenin, and Mao all referred to capitalists as parasites. Marx even used anti-Semitic and anti-black language.

     If government and public schools have the power to “teach” socialist philosophy – while conveniently leaving-out negative facts about the people who wrote it – then the government is indoctrinating students without overtly lying to them. Still, though, it would be lying through omission. If government schools have the power to do that, then they have the power to teach Hitler's writing, while leaving out the fact that he advocated for killing (and did kill) six million Jews. I presume that, if they did such a thing, they would leave out the fact that Hitler killed six million Jews, on the grounds that that fact might offend and upset some people.

     And we wouldn't want to offend people who have similar ideologies to Hitler, but who don't advocate killing Jews, because that would be discrimination, and it would make nationalists and conservatives feel uncomfortable. Right?

     If we rob students of the opportunity to know the full truth about Hitler's writing – and Marx's, and Lenin's, and Mao's, etc. - then we risk normalizing and sanitizing not just controversial speech (which is acceptable), but also speech endorsing violence. Whether we selectively edit Hitler, and sanitize and censor his writing (and the writing of other extremists), or we deny students the opportunity to read Hitler, both courses of action will result in the same thing: “educated” people being against Hitler, but having no idea what he believed in, supported, or did.

     Watered-down Nazi ideology is just ultra-nationalism and jingoistic American Christian conservative racism. Watered-down Nazi ideology is already mainstream in America; in fact, it is guiding the Republican Party and running the country.

     Had we, the American public, educated ourselves more on the rise of Nazism – how it happened, and how people fell for it – it could only have served to help us to prevent the Trump regime from coming into power (and from sowing so much racial discord, and urging so much cooperation with authority to help carry out unjust policies).

     Reading Mein Kampf should be part of our public education; not government-mandated, mind you, but part of the education which adults voluntarily undertake – as part of their need for civic education - in order to teach themselves about history and the risks of large centralized government.

     I hope I have shown that there are non-violent ways to dissuade and prevent Nazis from marching and from communicating their ideals, without either 1) watering-down a message which ought to stay dangerous in order to preserve the truth, or else 2) prohibiting the march or communication outright, through plans to enforce police orders and commit legally sanctioned violence. Nazis should be free to communicate their ideas, but that does not mean that they should be free to communicate those ideas wherever and whenever they please, and on public property, especially without asking permission. Again, not that permission can make a Nazi march morally permissible – it can't – but refraining from asking permission would have been especially insulting and provocative.

     The government should either take a stance of neutrality, or else it should side against neo-Nazi and nationalist protesters, who have been known to provoke violence at events counter-protesting against Antifa. Conservatives may wish to portray Antifa as the ones wishing for violence, on the grounds that they “expect violence” because they show up with shields. Well, Antifa may have shields, but shields are for defense; and the nationalists have recently proven themselves more likely to show up with weapons than Antifa are.

     The people must be prepared, at all times, to resist neo-Nazi protesters while marching, as well as rogue agents of the police who are terrorizing the public and threatening murder and egregious harm in order to enforce their orders. Surrendering our right to bear arms to the police, is not the solution; nor is applying for permission to own and carry weapons. Our rights to privately buy and own guns, and to keep them on our private property, should be protected without regard for government permission; but that by no means goes for activities taking place on public property.

     Unless you are prepared to argue that the public sector, and public property, shouldn't even exist - presumably because a public sector always means legalized violence to enforce the law, and theft from the people to fund it - then it will be extraordinarily difficult to make the case that in a free society there would be no form of property which could stop a person from doing what he pleases.

     People do not have the right to treat public property like their own private property; if the pure public sector and clubs are to exist, then they should have every right to negotiate the conditions which they expect to be fulfilled in exchange for using their property.

8. Third Conclusion: The "Quarantine Strategy" and Whether to Avoid "Provoking" Nazis

     Before exposing the viewer to the careful, thoughtful legal arguments which supported the rights of the National Socialist Party of America, the film Skokie showers the viewer with a barrage of horrified statements about the prospect of neo-Nazis marching. Those statements come from Marty Feldman, and other Jewish-American residents of Skokie, during a meeting at a local Jewish center, shown within the first half-hour of the film.

     It should be obvious from the contents of this essay that the legal arguments, and the shock of the community, were equally compelling. That is why I decided that they deserved no less than the fullest possible examination; on legal and moral grounds alike.

     Perhaps the most memorable part of the film comes during that scene, depicting a meeting between Jewish residents of Skokie, representatives of the Jewish community (including a rabbi), and the also Jewish attorney representing the Nazis. Carl Reiner plays the character of “Mr. Rosen”, who tells the crowd to avoid provoking and inciting the Nazis. On the day of the march, Mr. Rosen says, stay in your homes, draw your blinds, and basically pretend like it's not happening.

     While that may be the most effective strategy to keep yourself safe after the Nazis have already taken power, it is not a way to prevent people who hate Jews from coming into power. Cowering indoors – in attics and basements and cellars – is what Jews did, who were already hiding from the Nazis. At the risk of being labeled insensitive, the only purpose this serves is to urge cooperation with authority. And while urging cooperation with authority might occasionally serve some public good, it all too often entails urging cooperation with one's captors.

     Pretending that the Nazis are not marching downtown – just like pretending that the Ku Klux Klan is in your front yard – is not a solution to anything. The American public tried to ignore Donald Trump, hoping that he would go away. He didn't. Of course, it didn't help that C.N.N. gave him hours of free press, so he wasn't being ignored completely. But to ignore the rise of fascism is to refuse to confront a threat; it is to enable that threat, and to needlessly prolong confrontation of a threat that needs to be eliminated.

     The fictional character of Marty Feldman pointed out that exact problem in his speech: “...somewhere I heard that speech [by Mr. Rosen] before, but not here. ...Where did I hear that speech? I heard it in Germany. It came from the big city. Very fine professional men, all members of the National Jewish Organization. I was very young but I remember what they said. Nazis. Storm troopers. Hoodlums in the street. How many are there? A handful? They're just petty criminals. Don't pay attention. Go home they said. Close the doors. Pull down the window shades. Don't look. Nothing will happen. Quarantine. They talked about quarantine. Strategies. Game plans. Tactics. I don't mean to offend you. But it was then, Mr. Rosen, who said they are no danger to the safety and to the security of the Jews. So my question to Mr. Rosen is 'No. No. No.'”

     For the attorney representing the National Socialists to make the “Heckler's Veto” argument about Jewish people opposing a Nazi march, is ridiculous whether the attorney doing so is Jewish or not. That's because to suggest that the need to protect Nazis from Jews at such a march, should be more of a concern than the need to protect Jews from Nazis, is absurd and offensive.

     Even if Jewish-American residents of Skokie were openly threatening violence against Nazis, it would be understandable. I don't know if any of them did openly threaten violence, but the Marty Feldman character certainly did, advocated the use of baseball bats.

     To call it “violence” to beat Nazis up with baseball bats, though, suggests that these residents are engaging in premeditated acts with malice of forethought. To call it violence is to ignore the possibility that it is morally and legally permissible use of force for the purpose of self-defense. If a group wanted to protest in my town, and my understanding of history led me to suspect that such a group could stand to endanger people who look like me or worship alongside me, then I would certainly not be able to control myself. I would beat up anyone I thought had a high probability of launching attacks against me, my friends and family, my children if I had them, etc..

     Even if you could never see yourself committing murder, it would be insane and inhuman to insist that you cannot at least understand why a Jewish-American father would leave his family alone at home unguarded, and walk to a neo-Nazi march with the intention of killing Nazis; because if he doesn't, they might find his house and kill his family. That should be obvious to anyone who has ever had a family or loved another human being, and it should be especially obvious because history has been known to repeat itself.

     “Cooperate with your captors, and you won't get hurt” is what we tell hostages. “Don't struggle, you'll only make things worse” may sound like good advice – especially if it's necessary to prevent or minimize imminent harm – but it's not so different from “Don't resist, you'll only make it worse on yourself”. And that is what rapists tell their victims.

     Good government is not supposed to be about coercing people into assenting to “minimal” amounts of harm and violence; any amount is too much, and it is supposed to be government's job to prevent harm and violence, not to enable nor allow it.

     All over the country, today, both Democrats and Republicans are urging cooperation with authority as a solution to our problems. They both say undocumented immigrants (and people suspected of being undocumented immigrants, even without cause) must cooperate with authority and submit to arrest without resistant, at all times.

     The neo-liberals who control the establishment of the Democratic Party have criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and others for comparing I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention centers to Nazi concentration camps. This characterization has been especially controversial, given those women's previous unpopular comments criticizing U.S. policy towards Israel. But it is not inappropriate to compare I.C.E. facilities to concentration camps.

     For one, they are both surrounded by barbed wire. Segregation by sex and age occurs at both facilities. People were tempted with promises of showers in order to deceive them (whether to kill them or kidnap their child). People had their religious jewelry taken away. People were exposed to toxic chemicals as part of cruel medical procedures. For all these reasons and more, immigrant detention facilities have a lot in common with Nazi concentration camps. When more people die in them, it will be appropriate to compare them to death camps and extermination camps as well. We should stop things before they get that bad; we should not wait until six million people die in I.C.E. facilities, before we describe it as the potential Holocaust that it is. And you may say “Well, it will be a long time until America kills six million immigrants”. America has invaded various Latin American countries fifty-six times since 1890. America has already killed millions of Hispanics and Latinos. Probably six million already.

     We should have every reason to expect that having to apply and pay for permission to travel (which is all a driver's license really is), and having to apply and pay for permission to own guns and defend ourselves (against Nazis, especially), should result in anything less than Nazi-sympathizing police and government denying us the permission to exercise the “privilege” of something we know is a right, which we shouldn't and don't need to beg for, nor pay.

     Yet that is the position in which Jewish Americans today find themselves. It does us no service that the Jews among us are expected to relinquish their right to defend themselves at the airport, on the moderating condition that non-Jewish people have their rights limited in a similar or comparable manner. It does us no service that we all must frantically write down the monetary value of everything we purchased overseas when we come back to our home countries, if the Jews are also subject to the same indignity.

     Like Marty Feldman, I too saw Nazism come back, but right here in America; I saw armed guards holding the leashes of dogs that were trained to sniff Jewish children. I didn't see this in a documentary about World War II or the Holocaust; I saw it at the Newark International Airport in New Jersey in April 2019. I suppose it should serve as some consolation to me that most of the people, and the children, whom the dogs were sniffing, were not Jewish; but for some reason, it doesn't.

     The ideology that allows government licensing of the natural rights to travel and defend ourselves, can only result in what happened to guns and travel in Germany. Under the Nazi regime, Germans were required to have their travel and gun ownership regulated, but they were also given special treatment over the Jews in regards to using those privileges.

     The Nazi government used its power – power that should have been used to establish equal justice under the law - to favor one group over another, when it should have either 1) respected both groups equally, or else 2) not restricted them at all. It did this by expanding Germans' guns privileges while restricting the Jews', and establishing different sets of rules permitting German or Jewish travel in and out of – and even within – the country.

     The residents of Skokie had every right to expect that the National Socialist Party of America's march on Skokie would turn deadly.

     Nevermind the possibility of a stampede; an old Holocaust survivor could have a heart attack or a stroke – and maybe even collapse and die, possibly at the march - due to the stress of just thinking about such a situation. Then before you know it, you've got bodies on the ground, and the paramedics have to come.

     William Zantzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll without landing a single blow on her body; he killed her just by waving his cane around, ordering her around and berating her, until she collapsed from exhaustion and fear. This should teach us that harm can result without being triggered by overt physical violence.

     Of course, the fact that someone could collapse from the shock of hearing that the Nazis wish to march, should not justify hiding the facts from any of us, just to spare us from getting upset. The truth, just like the Nazis, must be confronted as soon and as early as possible. In Skokie, Feldman is depicted attempting to hide the truth of his mother's death in the concentration camps from his daughter.

     It is far past the time we should have started teaching our children that sometimes it is acceptable to refuse to cooperate with authority, to refuse to take orders. A little healthy rebellion is good sometimes, for kids and freedom-loving citizens alike. Teachers should be unbiased and teach the controversy, students should be inquisitive and not restrained from learning the full truth, and children should be taught a healthy distrust of people's intentions.

     It might be the only way to hammer-home the message that the Nazis and fascists could come back again and regain political power. Because for all intents and purposes, they have.

9. Concentration Camps vs. I.C.E. Detention Facilities

     Many of the immigration policies currently enforced by Trump – many of which were begun under Barack Obama – should absolutely be prepared to concentration camps, without hesitation.

     I.C.E. agents are literally concentrating large numbers of people into small areas, and deprive them access to basic sanitation and hygiene items, mocking them in the process by urging them to do with gradually lower and lower standards – even drinking water from the toilet bowl when the drinking chamber stops working – the longer their detention goes on.

     The fact that none (or few) of these people are Jewish – and the fact that the Holocaust was terrible, and diminishing its severity risks letting it happen again – should not make a difference, when it comes to deciding whether to compare I.C.E. facilities to concentration camps, or even to call them that exact term. We must fight for the freedom of Jews and non-Jews alike – citizen and undocumented immigrant alike – to travel to whichever country they suspect is least likely to murder them. Without being ordered to show their papers.

     The next government that decides to expel Jews, is not going to make it easy for Jewish people to leave the country, whether with permission or without, no matter how much money they pay. That is why we should never expect undocumented immigrants to obey all the laws, and have all the proper paperwork, when they come into this country. That is a profoundly irrational expectation to make, of poor undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, who are refugees seeking asylum.

     Like the Nazis did to the Jews, the U.S. government is finding ways to trap illegal immigrants here. We mock them by depriving them of the opportunity to enter the country at a safe point of entry where they can legally declare asylum, and it exposes them to danger; just as the Nazis declared all Jews foreigners and enemies of the state, which deprived them of protection and exposed them to danger.

     The immigrant farmer should hardly be blamed if he cannot leave the U.S. at the end of harvest season; the fact that he finds himself here illegally is the fault of U.S. border authorities for closing his only way out. Ron Paul was absolutely right when he cautioned us that we shouldn't worry about using the U.S.-Mexico border to keep people out; we should instead be worried about our government using the border to keep us in. And if you're familiar with my take on driver's licenses, you'll know that driver's licenses and passports are just government fees, levied on the right to travel; reducing it from a right to a privilege, and turning the government's jurisdiction into a cage which one must pay to leave.

     That is the situation in which Jews found themselves in Germany, that is the situation in which undocumented immigrants (and citizens alike) find themselves in America, and that is the situation in which the Palestinians find themselves in Israel. This kind of fascism happens every day, in all sorts of countries, America being no exception.

10. Conclusion

     The village of Skokie, and the fictional character of Marty Feldman, had every right to react the way they did. If anything, they too declined to adequately estimate the threat.

     The N.S.P.A. lied to the government; they had every intention of inciting violence. They want people to see angry Jews on television, protesting the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly. Nothing would make the neo-Nazis happier than for some Jewish person to kill a Nazi protester - especially if it happened live on television – because it would make the Nazis look good in comparison to the person who committed violence.

     So I say: Why not give the Nazis what they want, yet again? Just as we gave them the march, and the swastika, why not give them angry Jews too? Give them wave after wave of angry Jews! And while we're at it, make sure they have guns and baseball bats!

     The Nazis want violence. The Jews want violence. The cops want to stand around and eat donuts. And the citizens want to kick the Nazis' and cops' asses for working with each other. They all want to do the same thing: kick each other's asses. So if they refuse to live in harmony and peace with one another, or do not think that such a thing would be possible, then let them all do what comes naturally to them. Let them fight it out.

     If you do, then you will promote the freedom of each and all of them, without doing a single thing, and people will think that you have done something right and you are a wise ruler, even though you have done nothing. It's all there in the Tao te Ching.

     It's a terrible thing to see, when a person displays a swastika or a Nazi flag. But the government does us no good by stepping in, to stop us from seeing the guy who's holding the flag, or seeing the guy who's wearing the swastika.
     I mean seriously, when I hear "Should the Nazis be allowed to march in public?", I just think, "What? The war's not over?"
     If they're intent on marching on public property, they'll do it. If they insist on asking for permission, then don't give them permission! Let them fly those flags on their own property, so that we know where they live. And if you decide to let them march: 1) take the opportunity to regulate the march, and do it wisely, if they hand that opportunity to you; and 2) do it to let them show who they are, right there in the open, so we can get them in our sights.

11. Post-Script: Resources

     Those who want to watch the 1981 made-for-television movie Skokie can watch it for free on YouTube at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35G28qXerFc

     Those wishing to learn more about why the “quarantine” strategy (to urge Jews to leave Nazis alone) should read about Rabbi Chaim Rumkowski, who was selected by the Nazis to communicate Nazi orders to a Jewish ghetto community in Poland. Rumkowski eventually resorted to asking a crowd of Jewish prisoners of war to hand over their elderly and their children, while secretly helping other Jews out of the country, in order to minimize the number of Jews who would be killed.

     Those wishing to learn more about the rise of fascism should read the 1972 book Crystal Night by Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann. The book recounts the story of Herschel Grzynspan, who killed an ambassador after his family was deported. The Nazis used that murder to excuse Krystallnacht, a round of anti-Semitic pogroms and acts of vandalism against Jewish-owned businesses and synagogues, which took place in November 1938.

     Those interested in studying the rice of fascism should also watch the 1981 made-for-T.V. movie The Wave, which is available at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chjQZfcvZmc.

     For those wishing to learn more about Frank Collin, it may interest you to learn that his father survived the Holocaust, but Collin himself never accepted that fact. In 1979, Collin went to prison for molesting underage boys. Collin subsequently wrote over a dozen books, several of them focusing on the legendary lost continent of Atlantis, reinventing himself as a “neo-Pagan” figure in the process. Collin's IMDB page is available here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1542331/bio

Based on notes taken on July 21^st, 22^nd, and 24^th
Written on July 25^th and 26^th, 2019
Edited and Expanded on July 27th, 2019