Ein Kapitel der amerikanischen Geschichte, das gar nicht mal so sehr präsent sein dürfte: Auch dort feierten einige, nicht wenige, einst die deutschen Faschisten. Regisseur Marshall Curry sammelte historische Aufnahmen aus verschiedenen Archiven, um den Kurzfilm „A Night at the Garden“ zu machen.
The footage is so powerful, it seems amazing that it isn’t a stock part of every high school history class. But I think the rally has slipped out of our collective memory in part because it’s scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to forget. We’d like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Americans were instantly appalled. But while the vast majority of Americans were appalled by the Nazis, there was also a significant group of Americans who were sympathetic to their white supremacist, anti-Semitic message. When you see 20,000 Americans gathering in Madison Square Garden you can be sure that many times that were passively supportive.
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, “Americanism.”
(Halford E. Luccock)
