Lets Do History! 90 Years Ago, Donald Trump's Dad Was Arrested At A KKK Riot.

 
 (Image from Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Donald Trump's very thoughtful denunciation of the "hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides -- many sides" in Charlottesville, Virginia, hasn't won him a lot of credit, even though the White House later issued an unattributed statement clarifying that one of the "sides" was definitely the white supremacists, so What Do You People Want? In fact, the Nazi trolls at the Daily Stormer were pleased as brass-knuckled punch that the statement "didn't attack us" and contained "No condemnation at all" of white supremacists. Also, just this morning, after almost 48 hours, Trump finally said the words, actually said racism is evil, and denounced the neo-Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists by name, so now everything is excellent and wonderful, OKAY??? (Don't worry, the Daily Stormer crowd knows he only had to do it to keep from being destroyed by the Jewsmedia, and they know where his heart really is.)

Not that anyone should be surprised, since, as David Duke was so intent on reminding his president, he's in office thanks to all the angry whites who voted for him. But let's not forget that Mr. Trump has his own long history of racist renting policies and race-baiting opinions , which he certainly couldn't condemn because Donald Trump makes no mistakes ever. Oh, yeah, and he settled those discrimination lawsuits -- from the Nixon Justice Department -- with no admission of wrongdoing, so there was no discrimination or wrongdoing. That's pretty obvious.

Then, of course, there's the uncomfortable reality that condemning a violent rally by white supremacists might feel to Trump like a betrayal of a family legacy, seeing as how his own beloved paterfamilias, Fred Trump, was arrested and later released following a violent KKK rally in May 1927, a fascinating detail of Trump History originally excavated by the tech blog Boing Boing in September 2015. There were a bunch of riots all over New York that day, led by fascists and the KKK:

In the fascist brawl, which took place in the Bronx, two Italian men were killed by anti-fascists. In Queens, 1,000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighborhood, eventually spurring an all-out brawl in which seven men were arrested.

See? Antifa people have ALWAYS been violent, at least in the Bronx. And after the KKK rally in the Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, one of those arrested following the brawl was Fred Trump, father of Donald:

As the Washington Post notes, the Klan rally wasn't so much about race as about filthy immigrants and Papists:

The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that "Native-born Protestant Americans" were being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City." "Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon," it continued, "when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language."

Take out the Catholic-bashing and it sounds more than a little like a 2016 Trump campaign rally, huh? Fred Trump appears to be the only one of the seven arrested to have been released without charge; he was arrested "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so," according to another 1927 account. No word on whether he was wearing a robe; we'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, but he definitely refused to rent to blacks later in his life.

Also, big surprise! During the campaign, Donald Trump denied it ever happened:

"He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened," he said to the Daily Mail. "This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place."

See, Trump has really evolved and become presidential: Today, he might even decry the "violence on many sides" associated with the KKK in the '20s.

Also, since we're doing history, let's call attention ( again ) to this astounding excerptfrom a 1943 War Department film called "Don't Be A Sucker," which explained how America is a lot different from Nazi Germany -- but could just as easily fall to voices of division and hate.

THIS IS AMAZING!

1943: US War Dept released this video to tell Americans not to fall for fascists. #Charlottesville   pic.twitter.com/ubLtwa34ea 

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) August 13, 2017 

And since the whole film is worth seeing, here it is in full -- the first few minutes are cheesy as hell, but once it gets to the scene with the America First guy in the park, it picks up speed:

The film was actually rereleased after the war in 1947, presumably as the Cold War got xenophobia rolling again, and some sources connect it to the move to desegregate the armed forces. One thing's for sure: It's a far better discussion of how the Nazis used hate to divide up a Nation into winners and despised losers than, say, a screed claiming the Nazis were exactly like today's Democrats. 

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[ WaPo / BoingBoing / IMDB / Internet Archive ]