The Deacon's Bench
Monday night, I received the following email in response to this post, about a group in Maryland upset over a production of Mel Brook’s musical “The Producers.”
I repost the email in its entirety.
Deacon Greg Kandra –
My name is Jeffrey Imm, with Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.). You wrote a blog posting on your Catholic blog about R.E.A.L.’ s protest in Maryland, which was misrepresented in a Washingtonian article.
Deacon Greg Kandra, certainly if you want to make comments on R.E.A.L.’s views, you readily could have asked.
However, I would like to point out that Christians in Maryland and across the United States of America, and other parts of the world remain targets from violent extremists supporting the white supremacist Nazi ideology. There is a court case ongoing right now for a Nazi terrorist attack that killed 3 Christians in Kansas City. In June, we saw 9 Christians killed by a Nazi / Confederate terrorist in Charleston. We have repeated threats against Christians across the U.S. and the world by Nazis, who also target African-Americans of all faiths, and every other minority group. We have seen a Nazi terrorist murder 6 Sikhs in broad daylight in Wisconsin in another attack on a Sikh house of worship. In recent years, our churches and houses of worship have regularly been targeted by Nazis and Nazi mass terrorist bombing plots keep getting narrowly averted – but both a radioactive dirty bomb and a terrorist bomb with shrapnel to kill thousands at Martin Luther King, Jr. parade have been avoided. Another Nazi bomber was recently arrested in Wheatfield, New York with 7 shrapnel-filled bombs. The recent theater murderer in Lafayette, LA, was also a Nazi terror group supporter.
Especially given that a Maryland Nazi murdered an African-American man Stephen Tyrone Johns (who lived in Maryland) at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in a failed terrorist attack in Washington DC, R.E.A.L.’s position is that the “normalization” of Nazi racist hate images by those who believe this can be an effective part of modern comedy and satire does not combat hate. R.E.A.L. believes that the continued use of such images only “normalizes” them, so that people no longer take them as the serious threat that they remain to our society, and Nazi terror threats in the United States continue.
Perhaps you don’t hear about these or you are not concerned about them. But R.E.A.L. is, and it is our freedom of speech to challenge images of hate, especially under these circumstances.
I respect your defense of humor and satire. But Christians in the United States and around the world are continuing to face life and death issues from violent extremists. Since you took the time to chuckle at R.E.A.L.’s protest, perhaps you could also take a moment to help some of the Christians who are being killed in America and around the world.
I understand you serve those in Brooklyn, but please remember that Christian lives in Maryland have face great tragedy here too. I believe the people in New York City area sometimes forget that.
Thanks.
Jeffrey Imm
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)
usa@realcourage.org
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