from my email:

Editor’s Note:

What should you do if neo-Nazis come to your town to rally? University of Washington historian Laurie Marhoefer, an expert on the original German Nazis, says counterprotests can actually play right into the Nazi strategy of drawing their opponents into violent clashes. In Nazi Germany, she writes, “violent confrontations with antifascists gave the Nazis a chance to paint themselves as the victims of a pugnacious, lawless left. They seized it.”

And historian Matthew Delmont of Arizona State is troubled by people’s surprise at the resurgence of white supremacism in the U.S. “When Americans celebrate the country’s victory in WWII,” he writes, “but forget that the U.S. armed forces were segregated, that the Red Cross segregated blood donors or that many black WWII veterans returned to the country only to be denied jobs or housing, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.