Summary
A group of masked men with Nazi flags protested outside a performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Howell, Michigan, shouting antisemitic slurs.
Audience members were reportedly frightened and needed escorts to their cars. The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which staged the play, described the protesters’ presence as a disturbing reminder of the fear faced by Holocaust victims.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned the display. The incident follows other recent displays of racism in the area.
shame on CNN for calling them demonstrators. Human scum is more like it.
Terrorists or fascists seems more appropriate.
They were demonstrating how they are human scum
Very fine people, according to the incoming president
Aren’t they owned by the right now too?
CNN is diet fox. An agent of the evil propaganda network.
I misread it initially as dementors
They had a flag! Why call them anything other than Nazis protesting outside Anne Frank theater performance? Corpo-fascist apologists.
I made a comment on another thread that seems to have been deleted for being a duplicate:
If you’re wondering why CNN is calling them “demonstrators” and not “actual fucking nazis”…
The billionaires weren’t shy about why they bought CNN:
“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” he said. Then he suggested a model: “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”
And they don’t care if what they’re saying is true anymore, they care if people believe it’s true already:
Zaslav said this past week there was a new [YouGov] poll showing overall trust in the U.S. for CNN up 11 points. “That’s what we are going for. Our view is there’s advocacy networks on either side, that we have the best journalists in the world, we need to show both sides of every issue.”
https://deadline.com/2023/05/cnn-republicans-warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-1235371510/
When one side is literal nazis, showing both sides means treating Nazis like normal demonstrators.
None of these billionaires are buying up media to inform people, or even just to make more money.
They buy them to control the narrative. So that regardless of what party someone votes for, the wealthy always win
Man,you’re talking like it’s 2016. Or even 2023.
Buckle up for the next 4+ years. Holy shit.
The only way the reds give up power this time is by force.
So be it
Only people against the genocide of Palestinians and against Zionism get to be called Nazis and anti-semites.
People waving actual Nazi flags are “free speech advocates” or “demonstrators”, and certainly not Nazis.
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90% of people thst see the headline will never read the article. Znd the ones that do won’t read kore and 2-3 paragraphs. They know thst.
Hm, let me count the ways:
- It might hurt their feelings.
- Tone Police - let’s lower the temperature, everyone!
- bOtHsIdEs!
- The media has to be “objective” on such things.
We should start beating these people who seem to think Nazis are cool. Make it painful to be a bigot.
My thoughts exactly. Make Nazis Afraid Again.
Ooh, there’s a song about that acronym!
MNAA MNAA, do do do do do
How about MANA?
Make
All
Nazis
Afraid
Letting them live is too kind. People like this cannot be rehabilitated.
As a Jew I fully understand your sentiment, but it is a really dangerous thing to normalize. Everyone can change if they’re given the right kind of attention and put in a ton of work being deprogrammed. There are amazing examples of Nazis and white supremacists finally understanding the impact of their hatred. I’m not saying it’s always going to work, probably not even most of the time. But absolutes like this are not a constructive solution. Threatening death, violence, and/or refusing to even try to rehabilitate racists, bigots, and Nazis only gives them more power.
Sorry dude, we’ve already tried the kid gloves. Look where that got us.
They get violent, everyone crosses their arms disapprovingly, and they come back with friends.
It got us the moral high ground of not condoning political violence, which is huge. If we respond to their violence with more violence, it won’t end in peace and harmony, it will only exacerbate the problem.
Look, not killing them is a debatable point. Not meeting their violence with overwhelming violence leads to this kind of shit
What you’re advocating is vigilantism. In a working society, if they are committing acts of violence (aka crime), you shouldn’t need to advocate “overwhelming violence” in response, you should be advocating a working police force who can arrest them, and hold them safely until they can be judged by a jury of their peers.
I feel like vigilantism is the left making an equivalent argument to the right’s “more guns = more safety”. Unless you live in a lawless warzone, you shouldn’t want either.
Yeah well apparently we don’t have a working society any more
You expect cops to arrest their friends? You have a very charitable view of the kind of people that become cops.
If you have examples of Nazi’s being beaten without political/other violence, I’d love to hear them.
The only examples I have of fighting Nazi’s are my grandfather travelling across the world from 39-45 killing them, and my grandmother hiding/getting Jewish people out of Holland while occasionally killing a Nazi in an alley. She went to a camp, but survived.
So again, would love these examples.
There are lots of examples of reformed white supremacists/nazis/racists. Like I said, it’s hard work, not saying it’s easy. My grandparents also escaped Europe, dropping family members off in any country that would take them before ending up in the US. The trauma is in my blood, so I get the impulse to want violent revenge. But I firmly believe that in order to learn anything from the horrors of WWII, we firstly have to avoid violence at any cost. Otherwise we’re just making the same mistake they did, while trying to fix their mistakes. It won’t work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left-white-nationalism.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/books/review/eli-saslow-rising-out-of-hatred.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54526345
Those might not be the best examples, they’re not particularly easy to find, because it’s hard work and relatively rare. But it’s possible, and I’d argue the hard work is worth it to avoid violence.
I’m not saying people can’t be reformed, clearly they can, no argument there.
My point is that Naziism itself, or basically any authoritarian/fascist-esque government, has never been stopped without violence. In fact it’s so rare that one of the only times it happened we named it the Velvet Revolution and it required the collapse of the entire Soviet Union to prompt it.
(The rest of this is about the US, but can apply elsewhere. I’m going to use American examples due to the subject of this post, but it does apply virtually everywhere now.)
This is systemic at this point; the president of the United States is a fascist. The government will now be fascist. And as much as I like the idea of reforming each individual person, how exactly do you think that is going to play out in the US as it is today? The left in the US is extremely shy and pre-defeated. They don’t demonstrate in huge numbers, they don’t come together, they don’t reach out to other groups on a national scale and defend each other. Hell, members of the DNC immediately blamed ‘woke politics’ for their loss, and are completely out of touch with reality. Women/2SLGBTQ+/minorities of any kind now have no official party that fully backs them. So the idea we’re going to get a handful of LARPing dickless Nazi fanbois to change their tune and have that be the feel good story just won’t cut it anymore.
I’m not saying people have to go commit random acts of violence. I’m saying that the government has been co-opted. There’s no legal system to rely on any more. Women are going to need fucking Green Books for going from state-to-state. People in the US have already collectively shrugged when a school or gay club are shot up, imagine what they’ll be like now with Trump and his cronies in charge with the full Project 2025 narrative.
What I am saying is, in the time it would take you to reform these people 20 times their number will be created. If you’re a woman, LGBT, a minority, you need to come together and decide how you’re going to survive this. Is it make no noise, wait it out, hope staying hidden helps? Or is it get out there in numbers and challenge authority? What do you do with people in your community who are ‘traitors’ and tell those Nazi’s where to find the black woman hiding, the boy who came out to his parents and was chased out of the house with violence?
Those men standing there, waving Nazi fucking flags weren’t stopped. They weren’t arrested, they weren’t fined, the legal system thinks that waving the flag of a belief system that says only certain kind of humans should be allowed to live is okay, because they ‘deserve’ the freedom to do so, but women don’t have the freedom to control their bodies. That’s the system the US is now.
Good luck reforming them, I wish you the best, and I’m so sad at what is about to happen down there.
If you are from the US, need to flee, and are in the PNW, please DM me. I’ll do what I can to help you.
Huge for what? Our feelings? Certainly not huge for progress since we’ve taken several steps backwards
Huge for not being proponents of political violence. Be it for the sake of history, our legitimacy as a nation, the sake of teaching our children healthy values and civics, and sure, for our feelings, take your pick. Sometimes being a good person and using alternatives to violence is much harder than defaulting to our baser instincts.
The whole idea of modern politics is for it to be how we resolve conflicts and make progress without violence. That’s the whole point. Politics is the antithesis of violence.
Our legitimacy as a nation is being further tarnished by these fucks. And I’m perfectly OK with kids learning that people calling for violence against a group of people should be shown violence.
And again, we walked the high road for decades and it led us here. If all Nazis get are a slap on the wrist, they become emboldened. If they got punched in the head, a significant portion would roll over. There’s plenty of violent people in that crowd but plenty more just along for the ride.
Politics is not the antithesis of violence. It’s literally ceding the right to violence only to the state because it’s less personally risky. When the state maintains a modicum of restraint is generally a tolerable arraignment. When the state becomes fascist is time to reclaim the right to violence away from the state.
I’m convinced a good number of these accounts are divisiveness bots, running a psyop to intentionally stoke the flames in left-leaning forums the same way they continue to do on the right. I assume at least one will respond to this calling me a nazi sympathizer. It’s happened before for much less.
I don’t know what to do about this, because I also acknowledge that there are actual anti-fascist protesters being pulled into the narrative.
I’m as anti-fascist as they come, but (in addition to your points about winning people over) I also believe in preserving free speech, and acknowledge that there is a very fine line here. It’s free speech to wave a flag with a symbol on it, it’s free speech to say you think that flag represents hate speech and shouldn’t be allowed, but it’s hate speech to openly endorse genocide, and vigilante justice subverts the point of a justice system. If our justice system falls apart…we’re screwed.
The justice system has already failed. A convict is about to be handed the most powerful position in the world…
Yeah, notice I’m not advocating for tolerance of hate speech. I’m advocating for a working society where we don’t need to resort to vigilantism. We should be demanding that our police shut down threats of violence and hate speech without tolerance.
Btw, memes are fun, but I don’t recommend distilling philosophical concepts about ethics to memes. Much less lazily sharing them in place of thoughtful discussion. You run the risk of sharing them in a moment that makes it appear you weren’t paying any attention to the discussion at hand.
We fought a whole war about it. The ones left alive got moved into high government positions with project paperclip, leading to the right wing course we’ve been on ever since. At a minimum they need to be made afraid to broadcast their bigotry.
I would prefer them to live in constant fear and pain. Let their suffering never end.
I just wish we could beat them at the fucking ballot box first. Right now it looks like the nazis are a majority in this fucked up shithole country of ours.
Don’t fall for it. The majority are apolitical. If the dems had given anything to regular people the extra non voters that came out against trump in 2020 would have come out again. The failure of democrats to bring out voters doesn’t imply the non voters are Nazis. It implies the dems aren’t really that worried or they would have made concessions to the regular citizens instead of making sure “nothing will fundamentally change”.
I’m afraid you’re the one who has fallen for it…
There were plenty of reasons to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2024–climate change, affordable housing, healthcare, global stability, a continuation of what is actually a solid economy (especially when you look at markets, GDP growth, take home pay, employment numbers, and the latest inflation numbers).
But, funny enough, that’s all irrelevant to anyone with half a brain.
The real reason to vote for Harris in 2024 was as a means of voting against Trump and the fascist clown posse known as the Republican Party. This is the part where I could spend an hour writing our all of the reasons that Trump and the Republicans have been, continue to be, and will be bad for the country and the planet, but if you haven’t figured that one out by now you’re beyond help just like all the people who made the terrible decision to allow this to happen.
I don’t blame the politicians for being politicians–that’s like blaming a dog for barking. I have reflected deeply on this past election, and the only conclusion that I can logically reach today is that it is the American people who are to blame for putting these terrible politicians there in the first place (either by voting for them OR failing to vote against them).
One day America will cease to exist, and if there is anyone left on Earth at all, their history will accurately show that it was the American people who dumbed themselves to death.
Because cops protect their own.
A group of masked men with Nazi flags
Just say Nazis CNN. It’s not hard. Even the headline sucks.
masked men
Fucking cowards
As Nazis are. Bunch of scared, racist pedos (and before you come at me for the pedo comment, just take a moment and look up how many Nazis have pedo charges)
I figured that’s why they started all the Pizzagate/Qanon horse manure - it’s sheer projection.
And I thought masks were bad. Not just bad, but downright dangerous.
That’s what we kept being told all through COVID.
Surprised none of them passed out from lack of oxygen./s
“Demonstrators” is some really soft-handed phrasing, CNN. There’s a better word for people who wave nazi flags: “Nazis”.
Here, I fixed it:
A group of
peopleNazis carrying Nazi flags demonstrated outside a community theater performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Livingston County, Michigan, in a display of antisemitism.
Several maskedmenNazis showed up waving Nazi flags and reportedly shouted antisemitic and racist slurs outside the American Legion Post 141 in Howell on Saturday during the play, according to CNN affiliate WXYZ.
“People were shocked. They were appalled,” Army veteran Bobby Brite told WXYZ. “Everything you would expect.”
Brite said many of the 75 people who watched the play were afraid to leave the building and had to be escorted to their cars.
“Nobody in America should feel like that,” he said.
DemonstratorsNazis were also seen in the nearby town of Fowlerville, according to eyewitnesses.
Alex Sutliff and his wife were driving home through downtown Fowlerville when they came across a group of maskedmenNazis waving Nazi flags.
“They were saying awful antisemitic things that I don’t even feel comfortable repeating myself,” Sutliff told CNN on Tuesday.
Sutliff, who filmed the brief encounter, said the group of Nazis “all stuck their hands up” and chanted “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.”
Sutliff’s interaction with thedemonstratorsNazis took place at a stoplight, and when the light turned green, he drove away before things could escalate.
He and his wife called local police to report what they saw, and then circled back to let thedemonstratorsNazis know that authorities were on their way.
“The second that they heard that they were on the way, they all packed up their stuff and ran away.”
CNN has reached out to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office for further details.
The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which put on the production, said in a statement the play “centers on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust” and added the cast and crew “endeavored to tell their story with as much realism as possible.”
“On Saturday evening, things became more real than we expected,” the group said. “The presence ofprotestersNazis (this one I may be willing to let slide if it’s a direct quote) outside gave us a small glimpse of the fear and uncertainty felt by those in hiding.”
“As a theatre, we want to make people feel and think. We hope by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”
Citing the sheriff’s office, The Detroit News reported thedemonstratorsNazis left after being told to vacate the legion post’s parking lot, then ensued in a brief exchange of words with patrons while across the street.
The Anti-Defamation League’s regional office in Michigan said on social media it was “disgusted by the far-right extremistsNazis (again, this may be a direct quote?) who praised Hitler and waved Nazi flags outside of an American Legion hosting the play.”
The county has faced similar displays of racism this year. In July, White supremacistsNazis marched through Howell, located roughly 40 miles northwest of Detroit.
Threats to Jews in the US tripled in the one-year period since the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, preliminary data provided to CNN by the ADL showed. In the weeks following October 7, reports of hate crimes and bias incidents targeting Jews, Muslims and Arabs all surged.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” was published posthumously and has been translated into more than 70 languages in more than 60 nations, with several film and stage adaptations. Her diary is often a teen’s first introduction to the horrors of the Holocaust caused by Nazis during World War II.
She and seven others, all Jewish, hiding in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam for nearly two years were detained and deported in 1944. Anne later died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp at age 15.
Growing fears of antisemitism remains a present issue – including in Amsterdam. In July, a statue of Anne in a local park was vandalized with the word “Gaza” scrawled in red paint. More recently, people were beaten and injured in violent clashes between fans of an Israeli soccer team and counter-protesters in the city over the weekend, which Dutch authorities condemned as antisemitic.CNN have been normalizing Nazis for years. Almost as if CNN is owned and operated by Nazis…
FFS, how many times are the “liberal media” going to call the insurrectionists ( a way too nice of a term, by the way - they are truly terrorists in every sense of that term ) “rioters”?
Someone should send this to Netanyahu as an example of actual antisemitism.
The far right extremists are feeling more and more emboldened.
Don’t hide from these assholes. That’s how they win.
no, instead march screaming “from the river to the sea”, that’ll show em
No, the real way to show 'em is to punch them square in the jaw. If you’re acting the part of a Nazi, you’d better get ready for what the public is prepared to do to Nazis.
get ready for what the public is prepared to do to Nazis.
Elect them to office?
Too soon
No, it’s not.
Too soon to call them nazis? No, go ahead. I’d prefer if we didn’t dilute the term, so if fascist is more accurate, then maybe use that instead. But if someone’s a nazi, call them out, document it, make their employers know who they have on their payroll.
Too soon to joke about? Yes, definitely. Joking about the current situation dulls people’s perception of what’s happening. You need Americans to have their eyes wide open for what’s coming.
I took OP’s comment as being made in jest, thus my “too soon” comment.
I took it as the statement of an uncomfortable fact that we have to deal with. And saying “too soon” is what the gun lobby in the US says after a school shooting.
They did a fairly extensive study in the 1940s on how to deal with Nazis.
Findings were that punching, while not necessarily a bad thing to do to them, was quite a bit less effective than other forms of engagement due to the Nazi having a tendency to get back up after a punch alone.
What Would Captain America Do?
Currently on court supervision for assault so it’s not worth it. They want a negative reaction anyway.
Well, if they want a broken jaw, we should oblige them.
Thank you for your service. Unfortunately it is worth it and a lot more of us need to be doing our part so we can avoid getting caught by the state.
Let everyone know that if you put diesel exhaust fluid (def) into a diesel fuel tank that it will completely destroy the entire fuel system causing thousands of dollars of damage. You definitely don’t want to do that.
🧐
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it should be legal to shoot fascists
They gave our grandpas medals for shooting Nazis.
If you do, and you’re arrested, demand a jury trial. If I’m on it, you have nothing to worry about.
There’s a 50% chance any given juror will also be fascist, it seems.
Or will say “sure they had nazi flags but it was just a complaint about the economy”
Never let the law stop you from doing what’s right.
Amen
Ramen
When you vote in a Nazi, expect Nazis to be validated.
Are you saying that there aren’t good people on both sides? Or was it bad people?
Oh there are bad people on all sides of every conflict. Good people though, not so much
I can’t tell if you’re super icky or mocking the super icky
Well, America, you voted for this bullshit. Drink it up.
Yeah, but it was more of an issue with people being unable to bother stopping it. People could’ve gone and voted and we wouldn’t be here but they have bullshit excuses, so meh! Those non voters are guaranteed to move forward with the “what are y’all so upset about again? The parties are the same anyhow” line of shit as we feel the effects of fascism set all the way in.
Democracy belongs to those who show up…
What are they protesting CNN?
Journalist malpractice to not call 'em what they are.
“I take it back, people are not truly good at heart. They’re miserable fucking assholes.”
The fact that such hateful people still exist in the world is staggering. Anne Frank was only 15 years old when she died, so not only are they being incredibly racist, they’re also mocking the death of an innocent child. We only get to live on this planet for a short time, so why can’t we just love eachother?
Arnold palmers dick is just too big and vibrant to respect life.
And then they were all gunned down by good guys with guns, right? Right?
