In an act of cowardly weakness, neo-Nazis have defaced a statue of Anne Frank in Boise, Idaho. Anne Frank was a young Dutch Jew who wrote a wartime diary while hiding in an attic and was killed while imprisoned at the Auschwitz death camp in 1945.
Attaching a swastika-laden “we are everywhere” sticker to the memorial, the culprits presumably sought to intimidate local Jews. Instead, this antic proves only that today’s neo-Nazis know they lack any serious public respect.
I obviously use the word, respect, flexibly here.
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party never won the true majority favor, at least in electoral terms, of the German people. But the Nazis were able to win power by matching the public support they did have to the fear-cultivated respect of other Germans. And the Nazi’s pursuit, consolidation, and expansion of political power was always hyper-public in its manifestation. From Hitler’s rantings in Mein Kampf, to his mass rallies, to the emergency powers Enabling Act which followed the 1933 Reichstag fire, to the 1938 Kristallnacht assault on Jewish businesses, successful Nazi empowerment has always rested on proud and public displays of power. It is telling that the most successful line of Joseph Goebbels’s absurd 1943 (Germany’s fate was sealed by then) “Total War” speech was his rhetorical question, “I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?”
Hitler would not find much pride in those who used the darkness of night to put a sticker on a statue. This is not to defend Hitler’s Nazism as somehow more impressive. It was only impressive so far as it was a mortal threat to humanity and basic morality. And it is for that reason that Nazism’s annihilation was so glorious.
My point here is that the Idaho defacers are failing even by the standards of their own sick ideology. While Hitler’s particular idiosyncrasies shaped Nazi Germany’s identity, Nazism is ultimately dependent on its officers’ ability to publicly persuade, cajole, and brutalize their way to political dominance. It’s in that context why this Anne Frank incident is so pathetic. Claiming Nazis are everywhere and all Jews are vulnerable, it aims to emulate the dominant power narrative that defined Nazism of old. But in its cowering fashion and fleeting form, this sticker attack reminds us only that today’s American neo-Nazis are isolated losers (and often individuals with deep personal insecurities). This is not to say that neo-Nazi criminals or terrorists should be ignored. They require attention (though, fortunately, their penchant for stupidity often assists in their detection by law enforcement). But as a viable political entity, today’s Nazis are a joke.
There is thus one apt response to this insult of a courageous young lady and the many millions who died with her. Our common recognition that like those they worship, these Nazis are inevitable losers.
