I don’t recall the exact day in April of 1962 but it was a beautiful San Diego day. Unlike most of my days at San Diego State College (now University), I was wearing a coat and tie, for I was helping open the Richard Nixon for Governor Office in downtown San Diego. It was my first entry into California statewide politics. Before leaving campus, I joined several thousand other State students in gathering in the open air Greek Bowl to watch and listen to the head of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell.
Growing up during World War II, I was not very sympathetic towards Nazis especially if they were American-born.
As Chairman of the Men’s Judiciary Board at State I had participated in a meeting where decisions were made regarding the Rockwell appearance such as we asked the police to keep officers out of sight so edgy activist students wouldn’t get excited. We decided if there was any trouble, student leaders (and some football players) sitting in the front row would handle the trouble.
The trouble occurred. Several of us rushed in to break up the fight between Rockwell’s bodyguards and two Jewish students who threw eggs at Rockwell. One managed to knock Rockwell to the ground. Needless to say, all local television news videotaped the trouble.
After the busy and crowded Nixon headquarters opening I was greeted at home by my San Diego Police officer father and World War II vet with, “did you enjoy punching out Nazis?” There I was all over the local news trading punches with a skinny Nazi complete with a red armband with a Black swastika. I replied, “Yes I did.” I still relish the moment 55 years later.
That was a long time ago. The scene flashed before my eyes this weekend when I watched Ku Kluxers, Nazis and White Supremacists parade around Charlottesville, Virginia, a state I reviled in the Sixties for its hardcore racism and segregation lead by neo-Confederate congressmen and Senators.
The fighting that occurred there looked like déjà vu all over again. This time, someone died.
As it happened I was in Arizona this weekend, a state that President Trump handily carried in contrast to my California in which Trump was obliterated by Hillary Clinton last year. I didn’t hear a single Arizonan raise a voice about what happened and didn’t hear single person reject President Trump’s statement regarding the violence.
I was upset. I couldn’t believe that President Trump could possibly have missed this opportunity to blast these homegrown terrorists of the Right. Saturday was all about racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
I am not alone. But I must defer to someone not as biased as I am. Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia is one of the country’s best commentators on politics. He has been associated with the University of Virginia for “47 years.” His comments on Saturday and Sunday were that in his decades at the University he had never seen what he saw in his front yard on Saturday.
On Monday, he, like so many of us, watched and commented on President Trump’s emergency statement to the country that attempted to make up for his embarrassing comments on Saturday; comments in which he forgot to criticize the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists for the trouble they caused. A riot and confrontation is one thing, the murder of a young woman anti-Nazi protestor is another.
Professor Sabato clearly stated that President Trump was “forced” to make Monday’s statement because the trouble-making domestic terrorists were crystal clear in their statements that they support President Trump and consider him one of them. Sabato says that these terrorists believe that President Trump is their President and he approves and encourages them with a “wink and a nod.”
So, who to believe?
President Trump ate his own Saturday words on Monday by specifically attacking Nazis, White Supremacists and other Charlottesville troublemakers for their “racism” and “violence.”
“Racism” he said is “evil” and it has “no place in America;” Is that the Trump we have as President or is he the Trump that KKK alumnus David Duke says he supports. Does David Duke and his KKK, Nazis and White Supremacists see more in Trump than we do?
Raoul Lowery Contreras is the author of “The Armenian Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” (Berkeley Press) and “The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade” (Floricanto Press); he formerly wrote for the New York Times’ New America News Service.
