To people who claim we shouldn’t punch Nazis or use violence to shut them down: we should because it works. This excellent article details how American Jewish gangsters literally beat up Nazis and broke up their rallies in the ‘30s when Nazi groups were starting to get popular in the US:
Nazi Bund rallies in New York City in the late 1930s created a terrible dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. With 20,000 members, the Nazi Bund was the largest anti-Semitic group in the nation. They organized large public rallies and marched to drumbeats wearing brown shirts and swastikas, and carrying Nazi flags. Jewish leaders wanted the meetings stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a judge and former Republican congressman, was one Jewish leader who believed that the Jews should demonstrate more militancy. In 1935, he surreptitiously contacted Meyer Lansky, a leading organized crime figure born on the 4th of July, and asked him to help.
Lansky rounded up some of his tough associates and went around New York disrupting Nazi meetings. Young Jews not connected to him or the rackets also volunteered to help, and Lansky and others taught them how to use their fists and handle themselves in a fight. Lansky’s crews worked very professionally. Nazi arms, legs, and ribs were broken and skulls cracked, but no one died. The attacks continued for more than a year.
…Judd Teller, a reporter for a New York Jewish daily…said the attacks by the Jewish mobsters was sufficient “marination” to drastically reduce attendance at Nazi Bund meetings, and discouraged Bundists “from appearing in uniform singly in the streets.”
But this wasn’t just an isolated case in New York. The article describes how Nazi groups popped up all over the country and Jewish gangsters in the area would rise up to stop them. When you read the accounts from the Jewish gangsters about what happened, a pattern emerges. They attack the Nazis at their rallies, who disburse and stop holding rallies or wearing Nazi uniforms in public. It’s likely that violent action effectively silenced Nazism in America:
As a Jew, Abner “Longie” Zwillman, who bossed the rackets in [New Jersey] was not about to allow the Nazis to operate with impunity in his territory. In 1934, he turned to Nat Arno, a Jewish ex-prizefighter, and asked him to organize an anti-Nazi group. Arno recruited tough Newark Jews and ex-boxers, and the group called itself The Minutemen…[who] saw to it that no Nazi Bund meetings would be held in the New Jersey area, particularly in Newark and the small towns surrounding it. Arno and his men monitored the movement of the Nazis and, after finding out where their meetings were held, would break them up…
The Minutemen’s most famous exploit occurred in Schwabbenhalle on Springfield Avenue bordering the German neighborhood in Irvington… [After using a stink bomb to drive the Nazis out, the Minutemen] were lined up on both sides and…started hitting, aiming for their heads or any other parts of their bodies with our bats and iron bars… Heshie Weiner, a participant in the fracas, remembers that one of the Nazis who came running down the stairs, had the indiscretion to shout “Heil” and was met by a chorus of iron pipes. Weiner claims that after this attack, “I never heard any more of Bund meetings by the Nazis in our area.”
They also stopped Nazis in Minnesota:
Minneapolis, Minnesota was also a center of anti-Semitism during the 1930s, except here the problem was William Dudley Pelley’s pro-Nazi Silver Shirt Legion. …Pelley claimed he created the Silver Shirts to “save America as Mussolini and his black shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his brown shirts saved Germany.” [The head of an all-Jewish crime syndicate, David] Berman despised anti-Semites and determined to destroy the Silver Shirts. He found out where the Silver Shirts met and prepared his men for a raid. Meanwhile he notified his men that the next time he heard about a meeting, they were going to break it up…
As soon as the Silver Shirt leader mounted the podium and began shouting for an end to “all the Jew bastards in this city,” Berman’s lookout signaled to him. Berman and his men charged through the door and began beating every Silver Shirt within reach. The meeting turned into pandemonium, with the audience screaming and running for the exits followed by every Silver Shirt still able to stand. The attack lasted 10 minutes. When it was over, Berman, his suit covered with blood, took the microphone. “This is a warning,” he said in a cold controlled voice. “Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same treatment. Only next time it will be worse.” He then took out a pistol and fired a shot into the air. He and his men then left the hall. It took two more such attacks to frighten off the Silver Shirts…
And they attacked Nazis in California:
[Mickey] Cohen began getting calls from Jewish organizations and leaders asking him to help them oppose the Nazis. One of his callers was a Jewish judge who informed Mickey about a Nazi Bund meeting. “I told him all right, don’t worry about it,” said Cohen. Cohen gathered together some of his Jewish mobster friends and raided the Nazi meeting. “We went over there and grabbed everything in sight—all their bullshit signs—and smacked the shit out of them, broke them up as best we could,” said Cohen.” Nobody could pay me for this work. It was my patriotic duty. There ain’t no amount of money to buy them kind of things,” he said.
Imagine if these guys hadn’t stood up and these groups had gained more influence in the US? Beating up tyrants works. Also read the article because the more in-depth accounts of the attacks are really vivid and satisfying lol
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