There was this march planned in Toledo.  Ohio is a Middle American city which I know about because a character named Klinger in the Mash TV series came from there.  I did not know there were Nazis in Toledo.  I did not know that masked opponents of Nazis became violent because they opposed the White Supremacists who were the Nazis and who wanted to march on the sidewalks of a Toledo neighborhood.  It was decreed by the city officials that a permit was needed to march in the streets but one was not needed if the marchers walked on sidewalks.

There was no calm in Toledo during that march.  It was a scene out of Nazi-land in Germany when thugs in uniforms marched against Jews, Socialists, Democrats, homosexuals and other peace-loving types who were blamed for the bad times following a lost war.  I have some thoughts on the fact that this march was broken up and peace and calm were discarded by those who could be termed the “good guys”.

I suppose that marches are o.k.  I have a memory being in one or two – particularly in the Army back when I was in training to kill in W.W. II.  We marched well and I thought I did it particularly well because I had been a Boy Scout and we marched there too – good practice for later on. But these were sanctioned marches and we were the good guys going off to war to fight bad guys. And, after very few marches in Europe, we won and settled down to occupation duties and there were fewer marches than before and during the war.

I have no love for the new, born again, Nazis.  These White Supremacists have a connection to times before WWII. Then there was segregation. Anti-Semitism was rife not only in Germany where it was acted on in mass extinction, but in Europe, particularly in Russia and Poland and – in the United States.  I suspect that the marchers wanted to express their title as “Nazis” by provoking the response they received.  In times past there were white robed Klan members who marched with blazing torches to intimidate Negroes.  These Nazis used a dispute between Black and White neighbors as the excuse to strut down those sidewalks.  These Nazis, because of their names and past, probably wanted to intimidate and start neighbors fighting against neighbors – but the violence was all against them. Ultimately, the tactics of the opponents of hate who didn’t want the march used the opportunity to express THEIR hate. This is disturbing.

The officials in Toledo helped not at all.  Allowing the march on sidewalks despite protests was a mistake. The ugly crowd of angry people who opposed hate threw stones at police and burned a bar was not democracy.  White supremacy is hate.  Nazis hate. Can hate be cured by hate? Who are the good guys?