BY MARK CURTIS
FORT MADISON, Iowa - When the movie Schindler's List was shown on television here last weekend, it opened a discussion on the nature of anti-Semitism and the fascist agenda. Most guys were blown away by the scale and brutality of the Nazi pogroms and concentration camps. However, one man offered a different view.

First, he insisted, nowhere near 6 million Jews were murdered; "do the math, it's just not possible." Second, it was wartime and "people die in war." Third, he said that 1930s Germany was a lot like the

United States today, with certain forces, especially Jews creating corruption, profiteering, and filth that is dragging the country down, and Adolf Hitler took extreme actions to stop it.

Although this is the fascist viewpoint with all the trimmings, explicit or implied remarks blaming a shadowy Jewish conspiracy for today's economic breakdowns are being put forward by a number of politicians. Rightist demagogue and Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan likes to emphasize that it was U.S. treasury secretary Robert Rubin who put together the Mexican peso bailout package. Rubin is Jewish and formerly of the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs. Buchanan is joined by other right-wing political figures like Louis Farrakhan and Pat Robertson in thinly-veiled Jew- baiting.

Jew-hatred has been a constant plank in every fascist and rightist movement that has its eyes on capturing state power. The reason is explained in Daniel Guerin's book Fascism and Big Business. Anti-Semitism, Guerin says, is the pass key. The pass key works because of the widespread myth that Jews control the banks.

The fascists' anti-Semitism is their "anti-capitalist" pass key to the millions who have an instinctive hatred for the rich, especially loan-sharking bankers. Fascism is a movement aimed at grabbing power and destroying the unions and the political organizations of the working class. It is based on the middle class - not the wage workers, but not the rich either - the small business people, farmers, professionals, etc. Schindler's List doesn't explain it this way, so I did. One guy wondered if Hitler could have been stopped before the bloodbath began. Another said he felt Buchanan was "dangerous, especially to the prisoner populations."

I was challenged by the guy with the right-wing ideas who recalled the Jewish-sounding names of big shots in banking, entertainment, and television. But having Alan Greenspan run the Federal Reserve doesn't make it a Jewish-controlled agency anymore than Bill Clinton in the White House makes it a Baptist-controlled presidency. The U.S. ruling class - the capitalist families who own industry and banking - are not Jewish. That's a historical fact.

I don't see Jew-hatred on the rise in the attitudes of most working people. Nevertheless, the economic slide means more anti-Semitic propaganda by rightists fumbling for their pass key.

Opposing bigotry, racism, and sexism is needed if the labor movement is going to defeat capitalism and its rescuer, fascism. Oscar Schindler rescued about 1,000 people, but millions were butchered by the Nazi regime. That's why we should arm ourselves politically now, before the skirmishes become big class battles.  
 
 
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