Tune in at 7pm Eastern August 15, for an introduction to Levi Laub and his translation of The Vél d’Hiv Raid by Maurice Rajsfus, tracing the lasting legacy of fascist thought into the tragic events of this past weekend. Introduction by Jefe, WFTE-FM:

The Charlottesville racist rally and terror attack is a replay of how the European fascists operated before and during World War II. It is an echo of the same game plan they relied on to build their movements. It’s the same plan they relied on to occupy the European countries with just a handful of troops and massive local collaboration by the local authorities, the local police, small collaborator parties and the bulk of the cream of local society—all the best people. Even in the Jewish ghettos the Germans relied on Jewish lawyers, rabbis and businessmen to administer and police the ghettos. In France they needed only 100,000 soldiers to control 39 million Frenchmen.

The fascist concentration camps and the fascist mass murder of their communist and socialist political enemies, the mass murder of the peoples they decided were unworthy to live and whose land and possessions  they wanted to steal, like the Jews, the Slavs, the Romany, the gay and lesbian population, were the end points of their political practice.

They arrived at those end points by way of thousands of the kind of torch-lit rallies and street terror the Trump-supporting alt-righters staged in Charlottesville.

An example of how the symbiotic relationship between German fascist occupiers and native French fascist groups, and so-called “unpolitical” types worked was the German-ordered, French-operated roundup on July 16 and 17, 1942 of Jewish illegal immigrants living in Paris, mostly Jews from Poland. You know the type—undocumented aliens. 20,000 were hunted. 13,000 were captured, a third of them children. 200 ultimately remained alive at the end of the war. The fascists called it “Operation Spring Breeze.” Trump calls it “Making America Great Again.”

What follows is an interview with Levi Laub, the English translator of the most detailed study of this crime. The study is as timely as today’s news. The interview focuses on the details of how not opposing fascist ideas and practices turns you into a collaborator.

There are no innocents. As Faulkner wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

https://tunein.com/embed/player/s90143/