STATEMENT ON THE NAZI DEMONSTRATION AT COLUMBUS LGBTQ FUNDRAISER
By the Anna Hass Morgan Club, CPUSA
On Saturday April 29, Kaleidoscope Youth Center and Land Grant Brewing hosted their second annual Drag Brunch, a free admission event with 100% of proceeds donated for the support of LGBTQIA+ youth in central Ohio. Nazis associated with Blood Tribe, the same group which recently threatened participants at a children’s event in Wadsworth Ohio, gathered outside Land Grant Brewing to threaten and intimidate participants in this fundraiser.
Video widely circulating on social media shows masked Nazis clad in red and black with masked faces openly shouting fascist threats under the watchful protection of Columbus police. Ostensibly present to protect first amendment rights, Columbus police were notably not utilizing the heavy tactical gear widely applied during similar public demonstrations, such as those that occurred during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Also unaddressed were the rights of participants of the Drag Brunch, who presumably have a first amendment right to gather peacefully and free from violent intimidation. The Nazis left the scene after approximately 30 minutes and no arrests were made.
Public statements by Columbus city officials characterized the Nazis’ presence as not characteristic of the local community and thanked Columbus police for their peacekeeping efforts.
These events illustrate two fundamental realities of our society today: the growing threat of fascist violence and the tacit compliance of the state apparatus. Despite the openly violent nature of the fascists’ demonstrations, these groups organize freely. Their direct bodily threats to marginalized LGBTQIA+ individuals, an extremist enforcement of patriarchy, are defended as within the bounds of protected speech.
The violent persecution of homosexuality was one of the first campaigns of the Nazi Party and its supporters after their ascension to power with the support of finance capital in Germany in the 1930s. In addition to the near total destruction of the German LGBTQ community, the Hitler movement galvanized and normalized the use of state violence to dispossess vulnerable individuals and was subsequently extended to an even wider population. Events taking place today echo the advent of fascism in Germany.
We make no assumptions about the state’s commitment to defending working people from fascist violence. We call on all community organizations — labor groups, faith communities, women’s rights organizations, business leaders, and others to not only condemn these fascist demonstrations but to openly oppose their continued operation in our communities. We must come together as a United Front against fascists and their supporters.
The Anna Hass Morgan Club, the whole Ohio District Communist Party USA, and all socialists must play a central role in building and uniting this popular front to oppose fascism in our time. While fascism has many allies across today’s political landscape, we recognize that the roots of fascism extend beyond the political arena into the very foundation of our exploitative economic system. The emergence of fascism is the inevitable consequence of the unrelenting quest for capitalist profits and domination over working people.
However, we must be prepared to support any government or politician that opposes the growing fascist danger. This United Front of working people, socialists, progressives, liberals, and sympathetic factions of the capitalist class can and must stand in unified opposition to this threat against our communities.