Mark Bray Quotes


The question is: What is the relationship between neo-Nazis and their victims? What is the relationship between fascists and the rest of society? Is the goal to create a set of abstract rights that allow them to coexist, or is the goal to struggle against them and prevent them from being able to organize? That’s a fundamental question. It’s a political question that divides civil libertarians from many leftists and anti-fascists.


Citations

Mark Bray, Democracy Now interview with Amy Goodman, August 16, 2017

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Two days later, Ohio National Guardsmen following Rhodes's orders killed four unarmed, non-violent, students on the Kent State campus and wounded nine others. The claim of the governor's apologists was that he was speaking metaphorically and never wanted anyone killed or injured. After this quotation and a few others, politicians—particularly Presidents and Governors—have been more aware that their statements and words may have very significant consequences including death, so they are particularly careful of their rhetoric when there are controversial incidents. Note that Governor Rhodes saw students protesting a war as dangerous revolutionaries. None of the students who were killed had been trained in anything revolutionary.


This is one of the first literary works explicitly attacking Fascism at the start of WWII. The quotation is a line of the protagonist. The play opened in New York and shortly after President Roosevelt ordered a command performance at the National Theater in Washington. A Movie with Bette Davis and Paul Lukas was then made of the play. Many films and plays with anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi themes followed.


Often called Blackshirts. He is one of the few politicians in the world who saw Fascists and Nazis in the middle of the political spectrum.


So often in America, citizens and government officials have made alliances or joined organizations under the theory that “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.” It has almost always been a mistake ranging from joining the Communist Party in the 1930s to supporting the dictators or the Middle East, Asia, and South America. In the 1930s Fascism was growing and already on the march and neither America nor England—the leading democracies were not doing anything to combat the threat. America was emerging from the Great Depression, had a string Isolationist movement, and a small but influential group of Fascists and Hitler enthusiasts. Also, no one outside of Russia knew about the Stalin atrocities.


The security system at Los Alamos while the atomic bomb was being developed was absurd. Scientists from all over the country had to be hired quickly. Many of them had friends and relatives who had various left-wing associations; some came from Germany or had German connections. A number of the key scientists were German refugees from Hitler's persecution. The military security people, using their traditional standards, would not clear people if they had any left wing friends or associates or they came from Europe and there were no records to prove that they were not fascists or communists. Most of the refugees got out with their lives and had no records, but they were among the best scientists in the world. J Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director, and General Leslie Groves needed the scientists as the work had to be done. Groves approved important personnel for hire pending security clearance which never came and which Groves knew would never come. Nonetheless the people were working by the time intelligence officers outside the project realized what was going on. People without clearance had some of the most sensitive jobs at Los Alamos. Not a single one of those people turned out to be a security risk or a spy. There was a spy however who had come the English scientific delegation, but the security people had cleared him. Barnett however, as Oppenheimer’s personal assistant had access to almost everything having to do with the development of the bomb. She never did get cleared for her job.


The military security people were so used to ferreting out communists in the 1930s that they had a hard time adjusting to the fact that the security risks or people who might have German connections or backgrounds. Many immigrant scientists were recruited for work on the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb and they only did security clearances. The military security people kept checking on any communist background they might have had as opposed to possible connections with fascist organizations. By the end of the war they had adjusted but then had to go back to looking for communists as the Cold War evolved.


Before and while he was prime minister, he was the owner of most of the television and other media in Italy and one of the wealthiest men in that country. He was, like many politicians the world over, a womanizer, but he had a penchant for underage girls and was found guilty of not only having sex with them but sometimes paying them. He had also been convicted of tax evasion. He felt he was persecuted because in Italy, almost all the rich businessmen cheat on their taxes—it’s a national sport, and older men have been sexually exploiting young girls for centuries. So he argues that if he were not a visible conservative politician, he never would have been prosecuted for these “crimes” which were very common in Italy. He was extremely conservative on the Italian political spectrum, and most Italians were to his left, and that is true for the judges and magistrates in Italy, so there was no way that he could interact with judges / magistrates who were not more left wing than he.


He finally had to. In the government of national reconciliation, the Fascists—called Conservatives after WWII—were led by Don Manuel and he took the second place while the Republicans with the majority had the Prime Ministership. The Communists were part of the Republican coalition as they had been in the Civil War.


The Civil Rights Act of 1964 This is a classic example of a twisted logic what was used for many years in the 20th century Red Scare in America. The International Communist Party was critical of the United States legal racial segregation as it was one of the great weaknesses of U. S. Capitalism for most people in the world. The American Communist party also echoed the party line. Almost all socialist organizations supported the Civil Rights Bill as well. Therefore argued Russell and most Southerners, it should be opposed as a Communist effort to weaken America. What they did not mention was that the majority of Democrats and Republicans supported the bill. That the vast majority of all the American churches and other religious organizations supported the bill, that Business groups all across the country wanted legal segregation ended. The only reason there was a long debate is that the Southerners used the filibuster where a small minority could block Senate legislation. But the American majority was so great for civil rights that the filibuster was defeated and the law passed which changed America forever.


The Kansas City Public Libraryhad been vandalized in the wake of the Donald Trump victory in the 2016 Presidntial race. Almost all of the racist, white supremicist, and Nazi organizations and their members were Trump supporters although Mr. Trump denied that he had ever overtly solicited their support, However hia frequent racist and misoginistic remarks attracted frings groups and people who had never before endorsed an American major party Presidential candidate. After Trups victory there was a large increase in the nunber of racist, religious and ethnic attacks against people and property, despite the fact that Trump had appeared on 60 Minutes and told these extremsits in no uncertain terms to "Stop". Neo Nazis and other White Supremecists generally do not with shows like 60 minutres however, and Trump and his staff made little effor to communicate Trums message through the vehicles that they communicagte through.


Mark Bray
Mark Bray
  • Born:
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Historian, Political Activist

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He was a core organizer of the Press Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. He completed his PhD in Modern European and Women's and Gender History at Rutgers University in 2016, and is currently finishing his manuscript "The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and the Ethics of Modernity in Spain, 1893-1909." Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House, 2017) and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero Books, 2013) as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School (PM Press, 2018).