THE displaying of a nazi swastika flag at Sen Sanders' campaign rally in Phoenix on 5 MAR is disgusting, shameful and unfortunately not surprising the way politics have degenerated in this country. I can't find any comment condemning this action from (NOT MY) pres drumpf / trump, (NOT MY) vice-pres pence or anyone in their fascist administration, they are not going to risk upsetting their base. From the Washington Post.....
Bernie Sanders lost family in the Holocaust. The Nazi flag at his rally was personal.
He didn’t know much about the history until he appeared on the PBS show ‘Finding Your Roots,' hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Bernie Sanders, second from left, with brother Larry, mother Dorothy and father Elias. (Bernie Sanders campaign)
March 6, 2020 at 3:30 p.m. EST
Given what Sanders (I-Vt.) has learned in recent years about his family’s Holocaust history, the event was probably deeply painful.
Like other immigrants who left Europe before the rise of Adolf Hitler, Sanders’s father wasn’t especially loquacious when it came to details about his struggles back home.
Sanders knew that his father, a paint salesman, had grown up hungry and a target of anti-Semitism during World War I. He knew that his father’s family — those who stayed behind — didn’t fare well years later during Hitler’s march across Europe.
That was about it.
But a few years ago, the remarkable details emerged when Sanders appeared on the PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” in which scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a team of researchers retrace the ancestral lives of actors, politicians and other stars. (The Sanders episode also featured Larry David, his comedic doppelganger. It turns out they are distant cousins, which understandably blew both of their minds.)
Gates and his team discovered that Elias Sanders had traveled to the United States by himself, with just $25. What he escaped was horrific. The town of Dobra was assailed not just by anti-Jewish forces but by townspeople who also wanted Jews out and took part in their plundering.
“Oh, God,” Sanders says as he reviews archival accounts during the show. “This is the first I hear about the specifics. But you think about how vulnerable … who’s there to protect you? There’s no law and order. There’s no police that you can go to because the police may be turning on you.”
“What I’m seeing,” Sanders says, “is totally horrific.”
Horrifying. Last night, a man brandished a Nazi flag at a Bernie Sanders rally in Arizona.
It’s a clear attack on the only Jewish presidential candidate — in a time of rising white nationalism & antisemitism spurred on by Trump & the GOP.
It must be condemned all over the news.
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Gates revealed more details. Synagogues were burned. Residents endured attacks from armed forces and armed peasants.
“My father grew up in a community where you did not know who you can trust,” Sanders says, putting his father’s childhood together for the first time. “Maybe the person you bought something from in two days would be ransacking your house. I mean, how do you live in that kind of environment? I mean, I knew it was tough. But now add all that together. That is a hell of a place to grow up in.”
Then Gates revealed what Elias had left behind. He showed Sanders a picture of his extended family that the senator had never seen. In it was a man about whom he knew almost nothing: Elias’s half brother Abraham, though he often was known as Romek.
Abraham was born with a withered right arm. By 1939, he and the other family members were confined in a ghetto. Abraham was a high-ranking member of the ghetto council that kept order and served as an intermediary with Nazi forces.
Gates found a letter Abraham had written to an aid organization describing life in the ghetto, and he asked Sanders to read it.
“The Jewish community,” Sanders read, “will not receive any external support. They will be condemned to inevitable death from starvation. Therefore, we beg your help.”
Gates says: “What do you think it must have been like for your father’s siblings to endure that? Can you imagine that?”
Sanders replies: “There comes a point where you really can’t imagine, you really can’t. How do we know what kind of horrors and pain people were feeling? I mean, it’s impossible, I think, for any person to know how people in that moment were feeling. But it was horrible. Unutterably horrible.”
Sanders did not know that his uncle was on the ghetto council. He also didn’t know the extreme choice he faced one May day in 1942, when Nazi officers demanded he turn over a group of resisters so they could be executed.
Abraham refused.
He was shot in the back of the head.
Gates showed Sanders a picture of the officer who ordered his uncle’s death.
“You look at people who look normal, and you just wonder how people could descend to that type of barbarity,” Sanders says. “These are normal people. They have wives, they have children. How can you go around starving people or shooting people? Because you think that they are inferior? Or different than you are?”
Gates asks Sanders how he felt learning that a family member had stood up to the Nazis.
“I’m proud of his courage and willingly going to his own death in order to protect innocent people,” Sanders says. “I’m very, very proud that I have a family member who showed that type of courage and decency.”
‘This is absolutely abhorrent’: Nazi flag at Sanders rally sparks outcry, concerns about safety
March 6, 2020 at 7:18 p.m. EST
Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.
“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”
While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.
“We can argue about which candidate should get the Dem nomination, but anti-Semitic acts have no place in this world,” tweeted Steven Slugocki, chairman of the Maricopa County Democratic Party. “This is absolutely abhorrent.”
Sanders addressed the incident at a news conference Friday in Phoenix, denouncing the flag as “the most detestable symbol in modern history.”
“It is horrific,” he said. “It is beyond disgusting to see that in the United States of America there are people who would show the emblem of Hitler and Nazism.”
As someone whose family was wiped out by Hitler and as an American, to have in this country somebody bringing forth the most detestable symbol in modern history is unspeakable.
18K people are talking about this
The senator did not appear to see the flag as he thanked the crowd for coming out Thursday night. Videos showed him only turning around in time to witness the man being escorted out.
“Whoever it was, I think they’re a little outnumbered tonight,” Sanders told the crowd with a smile.
The swastika flag was just one incident involving protesters that disrupted Thursday’s event, Westbrook told The Post. Later in the night, other people waving banners bearing President Trump’s name also got into minor scuffles with Sanders supporters and were promptly removed from the venue by uniformed officers.
But for many, the sight of the swastika was particularly surprising.
“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” Orlando Garrido, a rally attendee, told The Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”
On Twitter, the display was widely condemned as observers pointed out that Sanders’s Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
“You don’t have to support him to show him some empathy & solidarity against this hate,” one person tweeted.
A number of people also went after the protester, slamming him as a “racist” and a “white supremacist.” By late Thursday, another video surfaced, showing a man identified as the protester outside the venue shouting the n-word at a black Sanders supporter.
This piece of garbage protested #Bernie's rally, with a nazi flag. This is what we're fighting here. This is why we MUST win. twitter.com/NicoleSGrigg/s…
Man just Kicked out of 
27 people are talking about this
The Anti-Defamation League identified the protester Friday as Robert Sterkeson, a resident of Arizona. According to the ADL, Sterkeson is “a self-described ‘stunt activist’ who has harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations and events.”
When reached for comment, Sterkeson, 37, told The Post he did not regret bringing the flag to the event.
On Thursday, others cited the incident as more evidence that additional security, such as Secret Service agents, should be provided for presidential candidates. Thursday’s moment came just days after Jill Biden helped block vegan protesters who ran on the stage with placards and came within a few feet of her husband, former vice president and presidential contender Joe Biden.
Hanging a swastika at the rally of a presidential candidate who is Jewish and had family executed by Nazi’s during the Holocaust is disturbing and threatening.
Both VP Biden and Sen. Sanders should have secret service protection going forward.
2,548 people are talking about this
please get both Bernie & Biden Secret Service protection ASAP. twitter.com/rubycramer/sta…
437 people are talking about this
In a statement released Thursday ahead of Sanders’s rally, the Secret Service pushed back against criticisms that it is “unprepared for candidate protection.” The agency noted that candidates must formally request Secret Service protection through the Department of Homeland Security and none have done so yet.
“The Agency remains fully prepared to execute this vital mission and any suggestion to the contrary breeds unfounded public concern and irresponsibly misrepresents the skill and professionalism of our workforce,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, people praised Sanders’s supporters for their quick reaction to the protester. Video showed that the man held the flag up for less than 20 seconds before it was snatched away.
Though Thursday’s protest was handled without incident, Westbrook said the moment was still scary.
“It really wakes you up and you see how bad things really are and the climate that we’re in,” she told The Post.
Read more Retropolis:
Election 2020: What to know
The Democratic presidential primary is fundamentally a two-person race, between former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as they head toward primary contests in six more states Tuesday.
- Analysis: What the next 30 days of primaries will show us
- Four of the biggest U.S. unions are trying to get members elected as delegates for the Democrats’ convention
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren faces a big choice: Will she endorse? And if so, who?
- Sen. Bernie Sanders has built an information operation to get his message out. Go inside this effort.
Policy: Candidates have laid out where they stand on various issues. Answer some of the questions yourself and see who agrees with you.
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