Nazi Party Time

Gather less than a few dozen neo-Nazis for a rally on the steps of the Capitol in Madison and what do you get?

Three hundred police in riot gear and 800 counter-protesters.

From the Associated Press:

A neo-Nazi rally on the state Capitol's steps went off peacefully Saturday, despite hundreds of people pouring into the streets to jeer and taunt them.

Police estimated about 800 people showed up to counter the Minneapolis-based National Socialist Movement's speakers. But a driving downpour struck just as the Nazis took the podium, and even though the rain stopped within a few minutes, the crowd kept dwindling throughout the two-hour demonstration. Five people in the crowd were arrested, four for disorderly conduct and one for resisting arrest.

"We consider today's event to be a success," Capitol Police Chief David Heinle said.

...Officers closed off the streets around the Capitol and built three fences to keep the crowd dozens of yards from the Nazis, who set up just outside the Capitol's west entrance. About 300 officers, many in full riot gear, ringed that side of the Capitol as the Nazis complained about President Bush, illegal immigrants and how white people need more power. Police said 64 of them lined up on the Capitol steps.

Twenty-one-year-old Dan Coleman drove in from Roscoe, Ill., to blast the group.

"I say deport those (expletives)," he said. He held a sign that read "Immigrants don't destroy our culture racist (expletives) do!" On the back was written "Never again."

Mary Wallace, 55, of Madison, held two signs. One read "Ignorant Bigots, leave us in peace." The other said "Wrong time. Wrong place. Halloween is in October." Wallace said that sign played on the Nazis' uniforms and Madison's annual downtown Halloween riot.

"They're thugs and we have to speak against them," she said. "Very sad to see this."

Still, the counter-protest at times seemed more like an impromptu party, typical in a town with a reputation for weirdness. While some people made obscene gestures toward the Nazis and swore at them, a man on stilts clacked his way through the crowd. Another man walked the sidewalks in a pink bunny suit and a woman danced down the middle of the street.

Odd?

Not really, not for Madison.

At any given moment a Fellini film can break out there.

Meanwhile, the Nazis boomed away at the microphone. They wore the full regalia: brown shirts, swastika arm bands, combat boots and stormtrooper helmets. They stood on the Capitol ground railings, swinging swastika flags. Some had small children with shaved heads.

Five supporters stood in a nearby cage police had built for them and traded "Seig Heils" and salutes.

A host of speakers took the podium. They demanded Bush pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and place them on the Mexican border with orders to shoot to kill. They also ripped corporations for destroying the planet, punctuating their speeches with shouts of "White power!" and "Seig Heil!"

OK.

I think the protesters and rally attendees should have had a dialogue, to try to understand each other.

There was no need for the protesters to shout down the neo-Nazis.

They could have focused on the beliefs that they share, the areas of common ground -- like demanding that Bush pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to bashing Bush over the war, the neo-Nazis also attacked corporations for putting profits ahead of the health of the planet.

I didn't know that the neo-Nazis were environmentalists.

Granted, the rally attendees and the protesters part ways at the "shoot to kill" illegal immigrants and "White power!" stuff; but they are on the same page some of the time.

Col. Tim Bishop, NSM's stormtrooper director, said Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and America's children will be dying there for years.

Look at that! More common ground!

His brethren are a voice for white people, he said. He wants a civil rights movement for whites, just as blacks had in the 1960s, he said. But whenever anyone mentions an all-white college, for example, they're branded racists, he said.

"We're about poor white people," he told reporters.

And there the harmony between the neo-Nazis and the protesters goes off key, way off key.
Oh, well.

The crowd responded with chants of "Nazis suck!" and "Go home!"

Michael Schumacher, 18, of Madison, said the Nazis are evil. He came out because "it never works to ignore the Nazis. Like in '33 when they tried it, it didn't really work then."

I do find it interesting that the protesters seem to consider a few dozen nuts in Nazi garb to be more of a threat to our way of life than Islamofascists.

Schumacher's comment, "it never works to ignore the Nazis" really says it all.

Eight hundred people like him showed up to protest (and party) against this handful of harmless, albeit hateful, neo-Nazi nuts.

Why do such a small bunch of goofy Colonel Klink wannabes cause hundreds to go berserk in Madison, yet the Islamofascists that are bent on destroying us and wiping a non-Muslim nation off the map send those same people into appeasement mode?
Why don't the protesters and the neo-Nazis understand that ignoring the Islamofascists never works?

I don't get it.
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Read more about the scene in Madison, from The Capital Times:

Sixty-four members of the neo-Nazi group stood at the top of the Capitol steps at State Street, separated from counterdemonstrators by a ring of mounted police and state troopers in riot gear and a double row of fencing.

The white supremacists' mostly inaudible speeches were punctuated by calls of "Sieg Heil" and the Hitler salute, raising a chorus of "Boos" and raised middle fingers from the crowd below.

"Madison has gone on record today, these people are not welcome here," said Chris Dols, an organizer with No Nazis in Madison.

Counterdemonstrators began with chants denouncing racism, but their shouts degenerated into vulgar taunts.

"It's understandable," said Ryan Spangler, an organizer with ACORN. "Their message is ugly and people are angry."

A group of nine men dressed in pink bunny suits paraded through the demonstration, drawing a flurry of attention from cell-phone camera and camcorder wielding demonstrators. "When else can you come down to the Square in bunny suits and not be the most ridiculous people there?" asked bunny-clad Mike Quieto of Madison.

Jessica Courtier was yelling herself hoarse to drown out the Nazis. "It's to say to them, 'You are not what our community is about,'" she said.

...Flo Evans of Madison, who attended the rally in her motorized scooter, said she felt it was important to speak out against the Nazi message. "We have to be a peaceful presence against it."

Madison police detective Alix Olson, who tracks hate
crimes, said she wished more people had taken Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's counsel to stay away from the rally and find positive ways to support diversity.

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This is interesting.

From Wispolitics:

Nazi speakers at the two-hour anti-immigration rally talked about the need to keep immigrants outside America's borders but generally railed on President Bush, the "Zionist state," the Iraq War and Israel's occupation of Palestine. Most of the demonstrators were dressed in tan shirts, wore swastika armbands and donned dark trousers reminiscent of Nazi Germany's infamous uniforms. They also gave the Nazi salute numerous times, such as when a speaker said "white power."

"Israel's occupation of Palestine" -- Again, so much in common.

The protesters and the neo-Nazis are more alike than they are different.

One speaker who came to the microphone said the group came to Madison because it's liberal and its citizens "need to wake up."

"We're pleased to be in Madison to share our group's views, but hoped the crowd was more open," NSM Commander Jeff Schoep added. "We didn't come to get yelled at."

But police were yelled at, too. As some of the police went into action on Carroll Street about a half-hour into the rally, counter-protesters yelled, "Police that protect Nazis are Nazis, too!"

What?

"Police that protect Nazis are Nazis, too!"

The Leftist protesters are against free speech?

That's inconsistent with their lib beliefs, isn't it? Aren't the neo-Nazis entitled to exercise their civil rights?

The police were maintaining the peace. They weren't making a political statement. Keeping order didn't mean that the police were acting as Nazi sympathizers.

These libs get so confused sometimes. The poor things can be so clueless.