Summary

A group of masked men with Nazi flags protested outside a performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Howell, Michigan, shouting antisemitic slurs.

Audience members were reportedly frightened and needed escorts to their cars. The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which staged the play, described the protesters’ presence as a disturbing reminder of the fear faced by Holocaust victims.

The Anti-Defamation League condemned the display. The incident follows other recent displays of racism in the area.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      FFS, how many times are the “liberal media” going to call the insurrectionists ( a way too nice of a term, by the way - they are truly terrorists in every sense of that term ) “rioters”?

    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Here, I fixed it:

      A group of people Nazis carrying Nazi flags demonstrated outside a community theater performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Livingston County, Michigan, in a display of antisemitism.
      Several masked men Nazis showed up waving Nazi flags and reportedly shouted antisemitic and racist slurs outside the American Legion Post 141 in Howell on Saturday during the play, according to CNN affiliate WXYZ.
      “People were shocked. They were appalled,” Army veteran Bobby Brite told WXYZ. “Everything you would expect.”
      Brite said many of the 75 people who watched the play were afraid to leave the building and had to be escorted to their cars.
      “Nobody in America should feel like that,” he said.
      Demonstrators Nazis were also seen in the nearby town of Fowlerville, according to eyewitnesses.
      Alex Sutliff and his wife were driving home through downtown Fowlerville when they came across a group of masked men Nazis waving Nazi flags.
      “They were saying awful antisemitic things that I don’t even feel comfortable repeating myself,” Sutliff told CNN on Tuesday.
      Sutliff, who filmed the brief encounter, said the group of Nazis “all stuck their hands up” and chanted “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.”
      Sutliff’s interaction with the demonstrators Nazis took place at a stoplight, and when the light turned green, he drove away before things could escalate.
      He and his wife called local police to report what they saw, and then circled back to let the demonstrators Nazis know that authorities were on their way.
      “The second that they heard that they were on the way, they all packed up their stuff and ran away.”
      CNN has reached out to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office for further details.
      The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which put on the production, said in a statement the play “centers on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust” and added the cast and crew “endeavored to tell their story with as much realism as possible.”
      “On Saturday evening, things became more real than we expected,” the group said. “The presence of protesters Nazis (this one I may be willing to let slide if it’s a direct quote) outside gave us a small glimpse of the fear and uncertainty felt by those in hiding.”
      “As a theatre, we want to make people feel and think. We hope by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”
      Citing the sheriff’s office, The Detroit News reported the demonstrators Nazis left after being told to vacate the legion post’s parking lot, then ensued in a brief exchange of words with patrons while across the street.
      The Anti-Defamation League’s regional office in Michigan said on social media it was “disgusted by the far-right extremists Nazis (again, this may be a direct quote?) who praised Hitler and waved Nazi flags outside of an American Legion hosting the play.”
      The county has faced similar displays of racism this year. In July, White supremacists Nazis marched through Howell, located roughly 40 miles northwest of Detroit.
      Threats to Jews in the US tripled in the one-year period since the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, preliminary data provided to CNN by the ADL showed. In the weeks following October 7, reports of hate crimes and bias incidents targeting Jews, Muslims and Arabs all surged.
      “The Diary of Anne Frank” was published posthumously and has been translated into more than 70 languages in more than 60 nations, with several film and stage adaptations. Her diary is often a teen’s first introduction to the horrors of the Holocaust caused by Nazis during World War II.
      She and seven others, all Jewish, hiding in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam for nearly two years were detained and deported in 1944. Anne later died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp at age 15.
      Growing fears of antisemitism remains a present issue – including in Amsterdam. In July, a statue of Anne in a local park was vandalized with the word “Gaza” scrawled in red paint. More recently, people were beaten and injured in violent clashes between fans of an Israeli soccer team and counter-protesters in the city over the weekend, which Dutch authorities condemned as antisemitic.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      20 days ago

      CNN have been normalizing Nazis for years. Almost as if CNN is owned and operated by Nazis…

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Maybe the anti-mask stuff was projection all along. They thought since they would only wear a mask to be hidden, no one else would either.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    The far right extremists are feeling more and more emboldened.

    Don’t hide from these assholes. That’s how they win.

      • Astronauticaldb@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        No, the real way to show 'em is to punch them square in the jaw. If you’re acting the part of a Nazi, you’d better get ready for what the public is prepared to do to Nazis.

          • Netux@lemmy.world
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            20 days ago

            Thank you for your service. Unfortunately it is worth it and a lot more of us need to be doing our part so we can avoid getting caught by the state.

            • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              Let everyone know that if you put diesel exhaust fluid (def) into a diesel fuel tank that it will completely destroy the entire fuel system causing thousands of dollars of damage. You definitely don’t want to do that.

              • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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                20 days ago

                Too soon to call them nazis? No, go ahead. I’d prefer if we didn’t dilute the term, so if fascist is more accurate, then maybe use that instead. But if someone’s a nazi, call them out, document it, make their employers know who they have on their payroll.

                Too soon to joke about? Yes, definitely. Joking about the current situation dulls people’s perception of what’s happening. You need Americans to have their eyes wide open for what’s coming.

                I took OP’s comment as being made in jest, thus my “too soon” comment.

                • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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                  20 days ago

                  I took it as the statement of an uncomfortable fact that we have to deal with. And saying “too soon” is what the gun lobby in the US says after a school shooting.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          They did a fairly extensive study in the 1940s on how to deal with Nazis.

          Findings were that punching, while not necessarily a bad thing to do to them, was quite a bit less effective than other forms of engagement due to the Nazi having a tendency to get back up after a punch alone.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    “I take it back, people are not truly good at heart. They’re miserable fucking assholes.”

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    They had a flag! Why call them anything other than Nazis protesting outside Anne Frank theater performance? Corpo-fascist apologists.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Man,you’re talking like it’s 2016. Or even 2023.

      Buckle up for the next 4+ years. Holy shit.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Hm, let me count the ways:

      1. It might hurt their feelings.
      2. Tone Police - let’s lower the temperature, everyone!
      3. bOtHsIdEs!
      4. The media has to be “objective” on such things.
    • b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 days ago

      Only people against the genocide of Palestinians and against Zionism get to be called Nazis and anti-semites.

      People waving actual Nazi flags are “free speech advocates” or “demonstrators”, and certainly not Nazis.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      I made a comment on another thread that seems to have been deleted for being a duplicate:

      If you’re wondering why CNN is calling them “demonstrators” and not “actual fucking nazis”…

      The billionaires weren’t shy about why they bought CNN:

      “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” he said. Then he suggested a model: “Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have ‘news’ news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.”

      https://www.vox.com/2022/8/26/23322761/cnn-john-malone-david-zaslav-chris-licht-brian-stelter-fox-peter-kafka-column

      And they don’t care if what they’re saying is true anymore, they care if people believe it’s true already:

      Zaslav said this past week there was a new [YouGov] poll showing overall trust in the U.S. for CNN up 11 points. “That’s what we are going for. Our view is there’s advocacy networks on either side, that we have the best journalists in the world, we need to show both sides of every issue.”

      https://deadline.com/2023/05/cnn-republicans-warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-1235371510/

      When one side is literal nazis, showing both sides means treating Nazis like normal demonstrators.

      None of these billionaires are buying up media to inform people, or even just to make more money.

      They buy them to control the narrative. So that regardless of what party someone votes for, the wealthy always win

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      Yeah, but it was more of an issue with people being unable to bother stopping it. People could’ve gone and voted and we wouldn’t be here but they have bullshit excuses, so meh! Those non voters are guaranteed to move forward with the “what are y’all so upset about again? The parties are the same anyhow” line of shit as we feel the effects of fascism set all the way in.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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      21 days ago

      It’s a lovely little town. You’d never know driving through. I even used to work there briefly, never saw a single hint of racism. They have a pretty good Thai restaurant.

      Of course, I also never saw a single black person there. I briefly contemplated moving there and then just quietly voting against all their bullshit, but I don’t really want to be that close to folks like that. Certainly don’t want my kids around it.