In February 1939, a crowd of 20,000 fascist sympathizers gathered in Madison Square Garden for a rally hosted by the German American Bund. It seems incredible now, because as we all know, less than three years later, the United States would be at war. The attack on Pearl Harbor effectively silenced the "America First" movement as the country joined the fight against Japan and Nazi Germany.
But that was 80-plus years ago, and maybe in 2024, the idea of the American Bund is not so incredible after all.
That's because since the rise of Donald Trump, home-grown Nazis, Proud Boys and other miscreants have gathered and marched again in America. Trump has emboldened them to come crawling out from under their rocks and broadcast their hate. On January 6, 2021, at his urging, they attacked the Capitol and tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Now, Trump has announced that he, too, will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden on October 27. (Prices in New York City can be pretty high, so we agree that it would be a good move to get the Trump campaign's rental payment in advance.)
At the American Bund event, 100,000 people protested outside. Since it seems foolhardy for Benedict Donald to spend the last few weeks of his campaign in a reliably blue state, you can only imagine that a big, violent counter-demonstration is what he's hoping for. Back in 1939, then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dispatched nearly 2,000 uniformed and undercover police officers to keep things calm. What will Mayor Eric Adams do this year? We cats hate to even ask, and we HISS.
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