About 200 people gathered outside of Natty Greene’s brew pub in Greensboro on Aug. 29 to express their opposition to a regional planning conference of the Detroit-based National Socialist Movement that was taking place at an undisclosed hotel in the city.
People had many different and personal reasons for demonstrating against the Nazis, ranging from civic pride to moral and religious values, from historical lessons and the loss of family members in past atrocities to a desire to build a multiracial movement to improve the lives of all people of modest income.
Alex Maness, a 37-year-old professional photographer displayed an American flag on which he had scrawled a peace sign. For Maness, like many others, the upcoming anniversary of the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootings had special significance.
“I grew up here,” Maness told Ed Whitfield, a community activist and member of the Cakalak Thunder drum corps. “I was a pretty little kid when that stuff went down in 1979. It’s reverberated through this town ever since. How could I not do something? Fuck those motherfuckers.”
Photograph of Mark Ortiz (center) and Philip Keller and Joy Waegerle (towards left) (credit Jordan Green)
Sergey Kobolev, a Russian engineer who emigrated to Greensboro 10 years ago, wore a white T-shirt with a hand-written message: “Neo-Nazism = neo-fascism. What’s new? Did we learn the lesson?”
He said his grandfather had been killed while defending the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany’s invasion during World War II, and that his wife’s grandmother was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.
He was indignant that more Greensboro residents had not chosen to publicly declare their opposition to the National Social Movement, and alluded to the passive response of German civil society in the 1930s that allowed the Nazis to seize state power.
“Those burgers were asleep in 1932,” he said. “I’m surprised there’s not more people here. You couldn’t even imagine how powerful they can get. Learn history. Where were all these intelligent Germans [when the Nazis rose to power]? Nobody took [the Nazis] seriously.”
Mark Ortiz, a 59-year-old Kannapolis resident, described himself as “a lifelong antifascist.” Ortiz works as a racear chassis consultant and contributing writer for Racecar Engineering magazine.
“When I was in school in the fifties and sixties they wouldn’t tell me what fascism was,” he said. “I had to find out on my own. I read a book by Mussolini in which he says, “Fascism is the merger of state and corporate power.”
He went on to define national socialism is a combination of fascism, anti-Semitism and racism.
“I’m against racism because all people are people,” Ortiz said. “Racism is the enemy of solidarity. It keeps people from working together.”
Unlike many others who profess to oppose what the Nazis stand for, but view protesting as feeding into their energy and distracting from other important work, Ortiz said he sees two important reasons to take a public stand.
“Partly to build a larger movement to address the conditions that give rise to fascism, and partly to curb a nasty and racist Klan-like group,” he said. “If they go unopposed, the next thing that happens is they beat people up.”
Philip Keller, a white UNCG sophomore, attended the anti-Nazi protest with his friend Joy Waegerle, a UNCG freshman who wore a T-shirt proclaiming “Love wins.”
“I have a lot of love for black people, Keller said, later adding, “As a Christian, I believe in God’s love for all people, and that that’s the only thing that would help us overcome racism.”
Waegerle said she was uncomfortable with some of the sentiments expressed at the rally such as a sign reading, “I love dead Nazis.”
“I wish we could go talk to them and sit down with them,” she said. “I’d like to ask them what makes them think they are better than other people. We are the same even though we have different pigments of skin and different drops of blood.”
Waegerle said she has faith that Nazis’ hearts can be changed, although she acknowledged that it would be a difficult assignment.
“There is a possibility if there’s a lot of prayer and a lot of talk because a lot of Nazis are Christians,” she said. “What they stand for is against a lot of Jesus talk — that I am here for the Jews and the gentiles. For them to claim Christianity and to be a hate group at the same time is completely against what’s true.”
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