Nazis protesting outside Cathedral of Hope on Oct. 8. (Photos courtesy of Mike Hendrix)

Modern-day Nazis have no clue about history; they’re just broken people who have only hate, bigotry

Nazis? Seriously? Nazis?

The Nazis who showed up at our church, Cathedral of Hope, on Sunday, Oct. 8, most likely have no idea what Nazis really were, since I can guarantee the people who were holding signs and wearing swastikas Sunday were most likely born after 1960.

They don’t know the National Socialist German Worker’s Party and that, aside from being antisemitic, the Nazis were a response to the Treaty of Versailles and the harsh reparations that burdened the German economy.

And then there is the whole Aryan Race thing — I would make a bet that not a one of these modern-day Nazis could pass the stringent pseudo-ethnological guidelines set forth in the Nuremburg Race Laws of 1935. If you couldn’t trace your ancestry back to 1800 as full-blooded German, then you weren’t truly German.

Aside from their ignorance of WWII history, these “Nazis” showed up outside a Christian church protesting Jews! Guess the whole “Jesus was actually a Jew” thing was lost on them. They were also spouting hate against LGBTQ folks, though they didn’t use any of those letters.

I have to wonder if these people’s grandparents or great-grandparents might be rolling in their graves at the thought of their grandchildren waving swastikas, the very symbol of the guys in WWII many of those grandparents fought against and defeated.

I doubt if these yokels would even care. They simply want to vent their hatred — hatred of anything and anyone different than themselves.
They are badly broken people who have no ability to empathize with any other human being. To fill the void this leaves in their lives, they use blind hatred and bigotry.

I am glad there were no counter-protests or, really, anyone other than the police who paid attention to them. They were obviously wanting media attention and probably someone to confront. Instead, they made a laughable demonstration of their own brokenness and ignorance.
If it sounds like I pity them, I do. They are a hot mess.

And yet I also fear them — not with the “quaking in my boots” kind of fear, but the fear that their tenuous hold of their version of reality might snap. These are the kind of folks who go off the rails and cause a lot of damage to innocent bystanders.

I am grateful that they moved on to other locations later in the day. Apparently, they were the “Bus and Truck” version of Nazis.

My hope is that I won’t see these Nazis again, but I suspect, in today’s environment, it’s only a matter of time until I do. As the Republican Party continues to disintegrate into more and more radical factions, the political climate of America is simmering towards a boil. Groups like these neo-Nazis now have social media with which to spread their bile.

The social network formerly known as Twitter is now a morass of misinformation and prejudice. Trump’s Truth Social (which is neither “Truth” nor “Social”) has become the Dark Web of fringe ideas, providing fodder for conspiracy theories.

It’s time to push these would be Nazis back under the rocks they crawled out from. I dream of a day when the only time I see Nazis is in museums and an occasional musical by Mel Brooks.

Hardy Haberman is a longtime local LGBT activist and board chair for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. His blog is at DungeonDiary.blogspot.com.