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In 1977, Frank Collin and his Chicago-based National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) \u201cannounced its intention to hold a pro-NSPA and white power demonstration on the steps of Skokie\u2019s village hall on May 1, 1977.\u201d \u00a0(Details and quotes from Nazis in Skokie: \u00a0Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment<\/em>, by Donald Alexander Downs, a book which isn\u2019t a prizewinner in readability but had the advantage of being in the basement bookshelves; I\u2019d acquired it in grad school, though it\u2019s a bit of a surprise that it survived all the purges in the meantime).<\/p>\n The story of this rally is generally known, to a certain degree. \u00a0The city of Skokie attempted to ban Collin and his group from rallying, and Collin fought back, with the aid of the ACLU, arguing that the First Amendment protected the NSPA\u2019s right to gather. \u00a0Survivor groups were horrified, but the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1978 that Collin and his group did indeed have such a right. \u00a0(Downs argues that this right should be abriged, that the court decided the case wrongly and\/or should overturn that judgement in favor of a statement that \u201cspeech\u201d may indeed be banned when it is \u201ccommonly accepted as vilifying or derogatory\u201d \u2013 p. 157 \u2013 but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n Despite this unwanted outcome, there were positive impacts of this court fight.<\/p>\n When neo-Nazis threatened to march in Skokie in the late 1970s, Holocaust survivors around the world were shocked. They realized that, despite their desire to leave the past behind, they could no longer remain silent. In the wake of these attempted marches, Chicago-area survivors joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois. . . .<\/p>\n To ensure that young minds continue to learn these lessons, the organization successfully secured the 1990 passage of the Holocaust Education Mandate, making Illinois the first state to require Holocaust Education in public schools. In 2005, the organization was again influential in expanding this mandate; the Holocaust and Genocide Education Mandate now requires Illinois schools to teach about all genocides.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (From the \u201chistory\u201d page<\/a> of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.)<\/p>\n But what happened with the march itself? \u00a0One tends to assume that it happened as planned. \u00a0In fact, I was out for much of the day today, checking the news periodically, and as I was driving home, was building this image in my mind of the denouement: \u00a0Nazis with cruel, taunting signs, surrounded by we-shall-overcome singing protesters.<\/p>\n But instead, there was a compromise of sorts: \u00a0Collin had in the meantime also applied for a park permit for a rally at Marquette Park in Chicago, but the Chicago Park District had demanded the payment of an insurance amount meant to be so high as to prevent the group, $250,000. \u00a0Collin filed suit in court, and, ultimately, the district court ruled (on June 20, 1978) that the imposition of an insurance requirement was illegal (p. 79). \u00a0As the parties were awaiting this ruling, a set of negotiations played out, and Collin ultimately agreed to \u201ctrade\u201d the Skokie rally for one in Marquette Park, which took place on July 9th, 1978; a second rally took place just before, on June 24th at the Federal Plaza.<\/p>\n And what happened at this rally?<\/p>\n The NSPA held its Marquette Park and Federal Plaza rallies with massive police protection and audiences. \u00a0The scenes were ugly. \u00a0At the Plaza six thousand angry counterdemonstrators jeered and threw objects as Collin \u2014 protected by police lines and a screen and barely audible over the din of an angry crowd \u2014 shouted into his megaphone: \u00a0\u201cThe creatures should be gassed.\u201d \u00a0At Marquette Park, on July 9, local toughs and racists vilified counterdemonstrators from Skokie and black areas; police broke up several burgeoning fights. \u00a0(p. 81)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A couple other items of note from Downs\u2019 narrative:<\/p>\n Among the reasons he gives why Collin backed down from his decision:<\/p>\n First, he did not want to lose his life at Skokie (\u201cthe thought of snipers alone must have chilled him often,\u201d [David] Hamlin [from the ACLU] remarks). \u00a0Second, some fellow NSPA members weakened Collin\u2019s resolve when they told the press in late May that they would not go to Skokie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, prior to Collin backing down, large numbers of Jewish and anti-racist groups had planned to come to counter-protest.<\/p>\n Jewish Federation spokesmen stressed the need to make the counter-demonstration as peaceful as possible. \u00a0They worried that violence would harm the Jewish image and therefore prove to be counterproductive. \u00a0Yet spokesmen admitted that had the NSPA come to Skokie, the Federation and law enforcement agents could not have prevented violence. \u00a0Militant groups such as the Jewish Defense League, the Jewish War Veterans, and the Coalition Against Racism threatened crowd control plans. \u00a0When 50,000 aroused people gather, it is difficult to manage groups bent on causing trouble. \u00a0(p. 83)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, the Chicago Tribune has an archived article<\/a> from March of this year which provides a slide show of various rallies held by this group in the early to mid-70s, and a number of them are captioned as resulting in fistfights quickly broken up by police.<\/p>\n Fast forward 40 years.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a Washington Post article<\/a> on today\u2019s events, in which a rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, \u201cUnited the Right,\u201d in which white nationalists intended to protest the removal of a statue of General Lee from the park, was cancelled before it even began due to violence. \u00a0As the Post says,<\/p>\n Earlier, police evacuated a downtown park as rallygoers and counterprotesters traded blows and hurled bottles and chemical irritants at one another, putting an end to the noon rally before it officially began. . . .<\/p>\n On Saturday morning, people in combat gear \u2014 some wearing bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs, sticks and makeshift shields \u2014 fought one another on downtown streets, with little apparent police interference. Both sides sprayed chemical irritants and hurled plastic bottles through the air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Images from its photo gallery include white nationalist rally-goers and counterprotesters fighting. \u00a0Its video shows the white nationalists marching silently, and then shows a few interviewees claiming they were standing up for \u201cwhite culture that\u2019s being erased.\u201d \u00a0There\u2019s a chant of \u201copen borders for Israel\u201d which seems to be<\/a> some sort of claim that Jews are behind mass immigration, e.g., of Muslims to Europe, and should get a taste of their own medicine by having non-Jews overwhelming Israel. \u00a0And there\u2019s a very bizarre clip of an interview with one Sean Patrick Nielsen (about 1:06 in the video), who lists his causes: \u00a0first, white heritage, second, the free market, and third, \u201ckilling Jews.\u201d \u00a0This is so mind-blowing that that I just can\u2019t make sense of it without some sort of deceptive editing explanation, e.g., \u201ckilling Jews is wrong and has to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n For a nonpaywalled source, I also looked at \u00a0CNN<\/a>, which\u00a0unhelpfully says that \u201cclashes broke out,\u201d but nothing more, preferring to use its pixels to complain about Trump\u2019s lack of a specific condemnation of the white nationalists.<\/p>\n What happened? \u00a0Why, in 1978, and in the prior rallies from the Tribune photos, were these events peaceful-ish, with violence dispensed with in the few words of \u201cfistfights ended by being separated by police\u201d, but not in 2017? \u00a0(And I\u2019m not even addressing the issue of the car-attacker, which is a whole separate story, one individual on the attack, rather than this mob violence.)<\/p>\n My impression is that these racists have always played the game of professing, \u201cwe\u2019re nonviolent\u201d and hoping to bait the counterprotesters into violence, to claim victimhood afterwards. \u00a0Is it as simple as saying, \u201cin 1978, the counterprotesters didn\u2019t take the bait?\u201d \u00a0Did the police rush in more quickly to stop the fights, back then? \u00a0Were a faction of counterprotesters today spoiling for a fight? \u00a0Who threw the first punch? \u00a0(Buzzfeed<\/a> speculates that the lack of immediate police action was because the white nationalists were, well, white, but that just doesn\u2019t make sense, since my impression is that the usual response is to have police in force keeping the two groups separate, which is generally thought of as protecting the \u201cvulnerable\u201d group, e.g., in this case, the white nationalists.)<\/p>\n