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In contrast to the swastika, the fasces, which have become synonymous with the Italian fascist party, are becoming more ubiquitous. Fasces, from the Latin word fascis, is a bound bundle of wooden rods, and can be found on American monuments, including at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.However, as the United States National Parks Service notes, there is a stark difference between the meaning of the symbol when used by Italian fascists, for whom it represented nationalism, totalitarianism and imperialism, and when used by the United States, for whom it represents “strength through unity”, or, as the Great Seal of the United States proclaims, E pluribus unum (Out of many, one). At Charlottesville, the man who was convicted of driving a car into a field of protesters was photographed at the rally carrying a shield with the fasces symbol on it. The expression “Sieg Heil  ”, commonly known as the “Hitler greeting”, was mandatory for civilians in Nazi Germany. Post-­war Germany made its use illegal. It is also outlawed in Austria, Poland and Slovakia, and in many other countries it is categorised as hate speech. It was ubiquitous at Charlottesville. The UTR participants also chanted “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil (Blut und Boden)”, a shorthand manner of positing that the genuine citizens are those with pure blood and who are intimately connected to the “soil” – Jews are interlopers. “Kike” was commonly heard: one of the organisers carried a banner that stated, “Gas the kikes, race war now”; another composed a song called “Gassing Kikes and Trannies”, and claimed that he had been persecuted and was “in jail for gassing kikes and trannies”. Finally, the white supremacists at the march also invoked the Nazi concentration camps as a rallying cry, Auschwitz in particular. The Daily Stormer proclaimed: “Next stop Charlottesville. Final stop: Auschwitz.” 64 the jewish quarterly
page 67
The enduring appeal of antisemitism As the rhetoric, symbolism and thought present at Charlottesville make clear, antisemitism is the ideological foundation stone of the far right’s racism. Sadly, in the years since Charlottesville, the extreme right has grown in strength and audacity, as the insurrection on Capitol Hill so clearly demonstrated.Those who adhere to this ideology were – and are – convinced that they were being given a “dog whistle” or a green light by President Trump to engage in extremist activity. In short, they felt empowered. And while this is most evident in the United States, it is not unique to it. However, it is important to recognise that in much of the Western world, antisemitism emanates from both the right and the left. Antisemitism from the left has been evident, for example, in the British Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership and on university campuses in both North America and the United Kingdom. Often this antisemitism is couched within expressions of overt hostility to and degradation of Israel. That, of course, is not to suggest that hostility towards Israel or criticism, however severe, of its policies automatically constitutes antisemitism. It does not. But sometimes it does. Such was the case when, in 2016, the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone tried to link Zionism with Nazism, thereby discrediting the former through its putative link to the latter. He offered multiple historical canards in order to do so. Consider, for example, Livingstone’s pronouncement that Hitler’s “policy was originally to send all of Germany’s Jews to Israel and there were private meetings between the Zionist movement and Hitler’s government which were kept confidential, they only became apparent after the war, when they were having a dialogue to do this”. Hitler’s policy was not to send all Jews to Israel. There was no Israel then. His policy was to terrorise them into leaving Germany. There was one set of negotiations white insurrections 65

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In contrast to the swastika, the fasces, which have become synonymous with the Italian fascist party, are becoming more ubiquitous. Fasces, from the Latin word fascis, is a bound bundle of wooden rods, and can be found on American monuments, including at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.However, as the United States National Parks Service notes, there is a stark difference between the meaning of the symbol when used by Italian fascists, for whom it represented nationalism, totalitarianism and imperialism, and when used by the United States, for whom it represents “strength through unity”, or, as the Great Seal of the United States proclaims, E pluribus unum (Out of many, one). At Charlottesville, the man who was convicted of driving a car into a field of protesters was photographed at the rally carrying a shield with the fasces symbol on it.

The expression “Sieg Heil  ”, commonly known as the “Hitler greeting”, was mandatory for civilians in Nazi Germany. Post-­war Germany made its use illegal. It is also outlawed in Austria, Poland and Slovakia, and in many other countries it is categorised as hate speech. It was ubiquitous at Charlottesville. The UTR participants also chanted “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil (Blut und Boden)”, a shorthand manner of positing that the genuine citizens are those with pure blood and who are intimately connected to the “soil” – Jews are interlopers. “Kike” was commonly heard: one of the organisers carried a banner that stated, “Gas the kikes, race war now”; another composed a song called “Gassing Kikes and Trannies”, and claimed that he had been persecuted and was “in jail for gassing kikes and trannies”. Finally, the white supremacists at the march also invoked the Nazi concentration camps as a rallying cry, Auschwitz in particular. The Daily Stormer proclaimed: “Next stop Charlottesville. Final stop: Auschwitz.”

64

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