Which Side Are You On?

George Santayana once remarked that "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

In that vein, let me educate folks who are attacking Black Lives Matter and Antifa with a little bit of the history they are associating themselves with.

1. BLM stands for Black Lives Matter, and it’s a slogan and a movement, not a organization with direct mail, paid staff, or an advertising budget. The same is true for Antifa, which stands for Anti-fascist, and which was founded by punk rock fans who opposed the invasion of their musical form by neo-nazi skinheads and white supremacists.

2. The people opposed to BLM and Antifa are the folks who would have voted for Oswald Moseley — Britain’s contribution to fascism and a big supporter of the Nazis. He literally ran a fascist party and saluted Hitler. The American equivalent are Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin — both white supremacists and fascists.

3. Both groups oppose the status quo of flagrant and structural racism and common police brutality -- the kind of racism and police brutality that ushered in Hitler, Mussolini, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox.

4. In America, the political equivalent was George Wallace and George Lincoln Rockwell.

5. The type of fascists and racists these men catered to still exist, of course, both in the UK, the US, and around the world.

6. Supporters of Moseley’s fascist party later found succor with Enoch Powell, a British conservative whose “River of Blood” speech said unless immigration of non-whites was stopped, “In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man".

7. Oswald Moseley was driven out of England to France, while Enoch Powell was driven out of Parliament and the conservative party. Father Coughlin was banned from the airwaves and died forgotten. George Wallace was shot and paralyzed by a mental patient, while George Lincoln Rockwell was killed by a fellow Nazi seeking power.

8. These are the folks on Facebook and Twitter who express amplified horror at every protester carrying a sign, every bit of graffiti, and every toppled statue. At the same time, these folks never express the slightest bit of concern about 400 years of racism and 50 years of rising police brutality.

The old labor song asked a simple question:

Which side are you on boys?

Which side are you on?