People Are Talking About This 1939 American Nazi Rally For Obvious Reasons
by Megan Liscomb · BuzzFeedHot Topic
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On Sunday, with a little over a week to go until Election Day, former president Donald Trump took time out of his busy Bible-selling schedule to visit the non-swing state of New York for a rally in Madison Square Garden.
At the event, speakers made a variety of racist and inflammatory statements. Opening "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico, a US territory, a "floating island of garbage" and "joked" about Black people carving watermelons. Former Fox News bowtie-wearer Tucker Carlson dropped hints about the great replacement theory and mocked Vice President Kamala Harris's identity as "Samoan-Malaysian low-IQ."
Tucker Carlson with one of the most shameless comments of all time: "The liberation he has brought to us is the liberation from the obligation to tell lies." pic.twitter.com/dfAlskDEKz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2024
Disgraced former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed that Palestinians are taught to kill Americans when they're literal toddlers. Other speakers compared Harris to a prostitute with "pimp handlers," called her "the antichrist," and called the Democratic party and its supporters "degenerates." In short, it was a very racist night that came on the heels of a handful of former Trump officials calling him a fascist.
One of the ways people are trying to understand this fraught political moment is by looking to history. And unfortunately, Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden echoes another dark moment in American history: the Bund rally of 1939, when 20,000 Americans converged in the same venue for an evening of Nazi rhetoric.
"We, with American ideals, demand that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it."
--Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, 1939
"America is for Americans and for Americans only!"
--Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, 2024 pic.twitter.com/8zCi0xmA08
— Josiah Hawthorne (@JosiahHawthorne) October 27, 2024
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The Feb. 20, 1939, rally was put on by the German American Bund Party, a pro-Hitler domestic political organization. Led by Fritz Kuhn, it's estimated that the German American Bund Party had 25,000 members — including 8,000 Sturmabteilungen (aka Storm Troopers).
The 1939 event was billed as a "Pro American Rally."
According to New York Times reporting from 1939, 1,700 police officers were posted outside the venue where an estimated 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters gathered.
The "Americanism" rally was scheduled in February in honor of George Washington's birthday. Speakers at the event described Washington as "the first American fascist," and the stage was decorated with a portrait of the first president flanked by swastika banners and American flags.
Footage from the event shows attendees doing the Nazi salute.
And uniformed Storm Troopers marched down the aisles of the venue.
Speakers denounced "job-taking Jewish refugees" and referred to then-President Roosevelt as "Rosenfeld," implying that he was "in the pocket of rich Jews."
Bund leader Fritz Kuhn spoke at the event, calling for a "socially just, white, gentile-ruled United States," and "gentile-controlled labor unions."
During his remarks, a young Jewish man named Isadore Greenbaum rushed the stage. The Nazis beat up Greenbaum until the New York police simultaneously rescued and arrested him. Greenbaum was later fined $25 for his disruptive action, and supporters (including the arresting officers) took up a collection to pay it for him.
If you have six minutes to spare, this footage of the event is absolutely worthwhile to see for yourself:
Following the rally, it was all downhill for this iteration of American Nazis. It came to light that Kuhn had embezzled $14,000 from the Bund party. He was tried for tax evasion later in 1939 and sentenced to serve two and a half to five years in Sing Sing prison. And, as American forces joined the war against Hitler in Europe, pro-Nazi sentiment went back underground in the US.
In 2024, historians can say that the Madison Square Garden rally was the beginning of the end for the German American Bund party. Whether MAGA may soon meet the same fate is still anyone's guess.
TRUMP: I'm doing a rally in Madison Square Garden
SOME PEOPLE: The Nazis held a rally there in 1939
TRUMP SUPPORTERS: How dare you call him a bigot
SPEAKER AT THE TRUMP RALLY: https://t.co/HZak0PYJn4
— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) October 27, 2024
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