Goose-Steppers Stirring Strong Emotions

ANALYSIS

Goose-steppers stirring strong emotions

By Owen Eshenroder

Probably the least welcome and most offensive guests in modern Ann Arbor history are scheduled to arrive today, if a neo-Nazi group from the Detroit area makes good on its threat to rally here.

In a sense, members of the S.S. Action Group hardly even have to goose-step up to City Hall to shout their slogans of hate. They’ve already won a twisted victory of sorts by dredging up a host of bitter memories, forcing a reaction from the local citizenry and causing a division in the ranks of Ann Arbor’s progressive-radical wing.

It is by no means certain that the Nazis will show up, despite their promise to do so. If they do show, the potential for violence is considerable, and that is what most worries city officials who recall the 1979 incident in Greensboro, N.C., where five persons were killed when fighting broke out among Communists, Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members during an anti-KKK demonstration.

CITY OFFICIALS have adopted an outward stance of paying no attention to the Nazis, in hopes of giving them no badge of legitimacy to savor. What that actually means, of course, is that the attention they’ve given the group has been private rather than public. You can bet that plenty of police will be on standby today.

Counter-rallies will be held at both the Federal Building Plaza, where local religious leaders, politicians and civil libertarians will gather for what is billed as an “affirmation of human dignity and freedom,” and at City Hall, where leftists and organized labor activists have vowed to intimidate the Nazis from holding forth.

Actually, there is a strategic split between the confrontationalists, with two groups - one called the Committee to Stop the Nazis on March 20, the other called the Coalition Against the Nazis - promoting their own counter-rallies at noon today at City Hall.  

To the general public however, it may be a difference without a distinction.

The Coalition is backed by the Revolutionary Socialist League and the National Lawyers Guild, among others.  Coalition spokeswoman Judy Levy accuses the leftist Spartacist League, one of the primary mobilizing groups behind the Committee, of disruptive tactics and being "full of a lot of hot air."

Not to be out-rhetoriced, Carl Lewis, a spokesman for the Committee, says the Coalition has demonstrated "no intent to do anything but sit and discuss slogans."

THERE IS STRONG community disagreement over whether direct action or avoidance is the most effective means of reacting to the Nazis.  

Ann Arbor City Councilman Lowell Peterson, a Democrat and liberal activist, says the Federal Building demonstration is intended as "a dignified response to an undignified presence."

Spartacist Al Nelson sees it differently.  "The Ann Arbor establishment liberals seem to be burying their heads on this,” he claims.

Josephus King, a Detroit labor leader, agrees. “I don’t think totally ignoring people is the way to make them go away,” he says. “That’s not what you do with bad teeth in your mouth.  You pull them."

Mayor Louis Belcher, who is scheduled to speak at the Federal Building rally, has declared that while most Ann Arborites are "repulsed" by the Nazi plans, “This city will not tolerate any violence. None. Period."
 

Frank Hicks, a Spartacist and UAW activist, has said fears that leaders of the Committee to Stop the Nazis will incite protesters to violence are unfounded.

But at a news conference Thursday, Hicks and his fellow Committee organizers stopped short of making a flat commitment to non-violence.

Councilwoman Joyce Chesbrough, a Republican, is one of many who have urged local residents to avoid any clash with members of the S.S. Action Group.

"Ignore it," she says.  "Stay as far away as you can.  Don't play into their hands."

A MICHIGAN DAILY columnist with a demonstrated affection for stirring the pot has likewise advised his readers to pay no heed to the Nazis - “these simian goons, these pitiful morons, these backward dregs from the effluent of society” - and to flood newspapers and TV stations with angry letters and phone calls if they indulge in over-coverage of the story.

The question of what constitutes appropriate news coverage of the Nazis and their opponents has also produced strong feelings in some quarters that the less said and written, the better.

Typical of that mindset is City Attorney R. Bruce Laidlaw. “Don’t write anything more,” he advised a reporter after a story in The News announcing the Nazis’ onerous intentions. “They’ve gotten their penny’s worth.”

Owen Eshenroder covers Ann Arbor city government and politics for The News.  He is a native of Wyandotte and a graduate of Michigan State University.