The neo-Nazis were having pizza too. My French student sat at the table next to the Nazis with her girlfriend and child but she must not read the newspaper or follow local social media because she didn’t seem to know. The neo-Nazis’ pictures are all over the place. They are quite famous in our little town.
They remind me of the bikers I hung out with, years ago. The bikers liked to be part of a team, too, a badass team, a team other people were afraid of, instead of them being the ones afraid all time. The bikers gloried in other people’s fear and in being part of something bigger than themselves.
I don’t get the Nazis who don’t seem like people in a permanent state of down on your luck. I don’t get what forms them, but I do see how they must love the way our attention moves away from our own concerns and goes, not to big gibbous moon outside, not to the smiling French woman and her son and sweetheart, but to them.
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Categories: Fascism, gender, immigration, memoir, Oregon, racism
Alison Clement 
Love this Alison!
Almost holding my breath while reading it, maybe I was,
cowardly bullies come in all stripes and “uniforms”. We have one in a Suit leading our country because “good people” didn’t vote.