Ron Jacobs is some kinda US revolutionary, and the author of what is purported to be the first comprehensive history of the Weather Underground, The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Verso, 1997). He’s also had a brush with neo-Nazis, as the following extract from an interview (‘What’s Next?’) in the latest issue of Monthly Review zine reveals:
JR : In ‘It Did Happen Here’ [see below] you talk about Nazi youths in Olympia. Did you live in Olympia at the time? How did you cover this story, and what did you find out about the modern neo-Nazi movement?
RJ: I did live in Olympia at the time of Bob’s murder by the two [neo-Nazis]. I was good friends with a group of young anarchists and others who put out zines, did a lot of political agitation and organizing, and opposed [neo-Nazis] and war whenever and wherever they could. I also worked at the Olympia library with a young woman who was a good friend of Bob’s. She turned me on to a couple folks who were in Sylvester Park the night Bob was killed. I had my notes when I left Olympia in 1992 and followed the story from there, with the help of Anna Schlecht and a few other Olympians. It was then that I wrote the story. The modern neo-Nazi movement is small but rabid. The fact that young people could become so involved in hate took me by a bit of a surprise at first, but it shouldn’t have. I think that we haven’t heard the last of these groups. In fact, their numbers may even increase as the anti-immigrant movement continues in our nation’s legislatures and newspapers…
See also : Ron Jacobs, ‘It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia’, Counterpunch, October 2/3, 2004; Olympia Unity in the Community, the coalition formed to fight racist and fascist shit in the wake of Bob’s murder; recent neo-Nazi activism in Olympia, via Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace.
‘SERBIA: Neo-Nazis threaten to kill independent journalist’, Committee to Protect Journalists, New York, April 3, 2007 : “The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats made against Dinko Gruhonjic, head of the Vojvodina branch of the independent news agency BETA and chairman of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina, by a local neo-Nazi group.
The threats, which were posted on a neo-Nazi Web site this week, stem from Gruhonjic’s coverage of National Formation, a neo-Nazi group based in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, the journalist told CPJ. Gruhonjic’s reports publicized the group’s activities, including a 2005 organized attack where neo-Nazis armed with crowbars attacked participants marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht — a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and parts of Austria in 1938 — according to local and international press reports…”
‘Neo-Nazis Kill Anti-Fascists in Izhevsk, Russia’, UCSJ, April 4, 2007 : “Neo-Nazis murdered an anti-fascist activist in Izhvesk, Russia (Republic of Udmurtiya) and may be responsible for a second killing, according to a March 29, 2007 report in the local newspaper Tsenter and an April 4, 2007 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. On March 27, several dozen neo-Nazis reportedly attacked anti-fascist youths in the downtown area as they were skateboarding. One of the victims later died in the hospital. Four youths were detained in relation to the attack, but were later released, apparently after their alibis were confirmed. The Sova report added that a 14 year old girl who may have been injured in the earlier attack died in the hospital on April 2.
The Tsentr article gave a brief history of neo-Nazi violence in recent years — a February 2004 attack that left a young man with serious brain trauma, and an August 2006 knifing. Prosecutors dropped extremism charges against suspects in the first case and the investigation into the stabbing expired without any charges.”
- Fascism is not something to be ignored, and it’s not something to be debated.
It is to be smashed.
