Graphic credit: Maryland Tyranny Response Team
Posted on 03/23/2002 3:19:46 PM PST by Hail Caesar
P.J. Hogan's Heroes
Graphic credit: Maryland Tyranny Response Team
Distributor of 'Nazi' flier urged to resign county posts
by Eric Fingerhut
Staff Writer
Local Jewish organizations are calling on a Bethesda man who distributed a flier depicting three members of the Maryland General Assembly as Nazis to resign from two Montgomery County public positions.
Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan has initiated proceedings to remove him from one of those posts, but Augustus Alzona says he has no intention of leaving either position.
Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington and American Jewish Committee Washington chapter leaders say that Alzona is not fit to continue as a member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee or of the Montgomery County Committee on Hate/Violence due to his involvement with the distribution of the controversial flier last week at House and Senate hearings in Annapolis.
The flier, which states that "Montgomery County Democrats have a FINAL Solution for ALL of Maryland's Gun Owners," depicts State Sens. Brian Frosh (D-Dist. 16) and Christopher Van Hollen (D-Dist.18) and Del. Mark Shriver (D-Dist. 15) in Nazi uniforms, smiling, with the words "for the CHILDREN" on their hats. A concentration camp prisoner poses in the background, with a C on his chest -- apparently standing for "communist."
The three are sponsors of a bill that would require the licensing of gun owners in Maryland, similar to the way the state licenses drivers.
In a letter on Tuesday, Duncan informed Alzona that proceedings had been initiated to remove him from the Montgomery County Committee on Hate/Violence.
The county describes the committee as "a citizen's advisory group created to work with the [county's Human Relations] Commission to educate the residents of Montgomery County about hate/violence, to recommend policies, programs, legislation or other initiatives needed to decrease and eliminate hate/violence in the county, and to promote respect for social and cultural diversity."
"In my view, Mr. Alzona's actions of last week are highly offensive, do not keep with this spirit of inclusiveness and do a disservice to the fine work of the Montgomery County Committee on Hate/Violence," said Duncan, who also gave Alzona the opportunity to resign his position voluntarily.
The county executive, with council approval, may remove a member of the committee for just cause, but that member must receive the opportunity to respond to the allegations, either before the council or in writing.
Alzona, the treasurer of the 15-member body, was appointed to the committee as a business community representative in 1998 and reappointed to a three-year term in 2000.
"It smacks of partisanship," said Alzona of the Duncan move. "I'd like my day in court."
Ron Halber, JCCouncil executive director, praised Duncan's action, but said he hoped that Alzona would resign before being officially removed.
"When one assumes public leadership, that includes standards of tolerance and inclusiveness," Halber said. "If he wants to show some leadership, he could do so by resigning," and "spare the taxpayers the waste of money and valuable time."
Two top Republican officeholders in Montgomery County, Rep. Connie Morella and County Council member Howard Denis, have called on Alzona to resign from his elected post on the county Republican committee. The county Republican Party has followed suit.
"Trivializing the Holocaust is over the line," said Denis. "The Holocaust was so awful, it's common decency not to drag it into political debate."
Alzona says he has no plans to resign from the committee, and will probably run for re-election.
"I represent a certain constituency," Alzona said, noting that he is the only Asian/Pacific-American member of the Republican committee in the state and has strong support in the conservative wing of Maryland's Republican Party.
Denis said that he intends to campaign actively against Alzona in the election for committee spots, which will take place on primary Election Day in September.
David Bernstein, director of the American Jewish Committee's Washington area office, said Alzona should resign from his public posts and praised Morella and Denis.
"We have to applaud the political leadership and party leadership for their forceful condemnations of this," he said. "Using Nazi imagery is inappropriate in a political campaign."
Brittanie Zelkind Werbel of the Anti-Defamation League's Washington regional office, said her organization is "glad to hear that [political leaders] are taking action."
"I think it's definitely a reason for concern that someone who is distributing hate literature offensive to anyone who survived the Holocaust ... is a member of a government-sanctioned group working against hate," she said.
Alzona, who lost to Frosh in a state Senate race in 1998, is a member of the Maryland chapter of the Tyranny Response Team, a group that has been active in Montgomery County opposing any kind of gun control measures.
The group's Web site, which had a copy of the controversial flier posted on Monday but has since taken it down, says the group is "the embodiment of mans' [sic] desire for freedom."
Zelkind Werbel said the TRT has in the past used Nazi imagery to support its pro-gun argument, and also has links to militia groups throughout the country.
Alzona said that the flier was "Mel Brooks-like ... political ridicule of those three lawmakers for having .. a Nazi-like mentality of favoring registration, fingerprinting, photographing, numbering and licensing of all Maryland's gun owners."
He also said is only guilty of doing his job as a Republican committee member by attacking Democrats.
He added that the flier is being used to "lynch me through the media because I am a known gun rights activist in the party."
Steve Rosenthal, a friend of Alzona's who is "active in the firearms civil rights community" and lives in Arlington, said he is Jewish and was "not offended" by the use of Nazi imagery, although he can "understand why [Frosh, Van Hollen and Shriver] are upset being compared to Nazis."
He notes that if citizens had been able to keep their guns in Nazi Germany, "things wouldn't have turned out any worse."
All three elected officials depicted in the flier said it disgusted them.
"It's pretty awful, hateful and inappropriate," said Frosh. "I have a hard time thinking anyone would think this is funny."
"It is American politics at its worst," said Van Hollen. "It trivializes the evil of the Nazi regime."
"It is outrageous ... and does not belong in a public forum," said Shriver, noting that one can have strong disagreements on policy without resorting to portraying opponents as Nazis.
This story was published on Thu, Mar 21, 2002.
What is past is prologue.
Does anyone know the Yiddish term for "dumb@$$?"
Exactly. The anti's ideological brethren - the communists - hold the record for mass genocide. They make Hitler look like a choirboy.
It's funny how the American socialists rarely mention this fact. They just keep crying about the holocaust, saying "never again."
Great graphics. Where did you get these?
A friend of mine got into a pre-opening performance of The Producers--Mel Brooks was still making changes and sitting in the back of the theatre dictating notes to his secretary.
As the curtain came down and Brooks was leaving the theatre with his wife and secretary, an old man with a cane and a heavy mid-European accent began screaming at Brooks about the real Nazis and how they were not funny, etc., and had to be restrained while Mel quietly slunk away to Sardi's.
Your point was not lost on all Jews, only the ones who purport to speak for all Jews.
There are plenty of strong quotes by TJ and others, we need to be sure we don't slip on citations, or our enemies will use the weak scholarship to discredit our arguement.
And it's coming from Demorats!
TJ (father of my alma mater UVa) did say plenty on the RKBA, such as:
"When the govt fears the people, there is freedom. When the people fear the govt, there is tyranny."
"No free people shall ever be debarred the use of guns."
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in govt."
My first reaction upon reading this was that Mr. Alzona has the right idea, but that his unfortunately less-than-prudent political tactics may prove to come back and bite him (hard, and where it hurts).
If (as has been asserted on this thread) he distributed this flier only to members of the state senate and house judiciary committees, and ‘offended democrats’ are responsible for seeing to it that it made its way into the hands of the (complicit) media, then the much ado appears to be the result of the simple fact that the truth hurts. And Mr. Alzona (possible lack of political savvy aside) appears to have hit a nerve (or two, or ten….) among the disarmament crowd. In which case, I offer him a personal (out-of-state, so for whatever it’s worth) ‘Bravo!’
The local Jewish organizations’ (Jewish Community Council, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League) assertion that Mr. Alzona’s flier ‘trivializes the holocaust’ is disingenuous, at best. His flier might just be one man’s attempt to prevent a recurrence of that about which they are (justifiably) so sensitive.
As for the calls for Alzona’s resignation from the Montgomery County Committee on Hate/Violence (a committee which, judging from the name alone, would be suspect of being nothing more than a vehicle for promoting and promulgating social engineering diversity propaganda), I say to Mr. Alzona, ‘Why not do the resignation thing?’ (not because you are not fit to serve, but because it appears that the serving may be beneath you. Your time might be better spent on worthwhile endeavors.)
A very good friend of mine lives in Montgomery County. I have heard much about (what passes for) the legal/judicial system there, and it doesn’t surprise me that the likes of Frosh/Van Hollen/Shriver are pressing for the repudiation of a Montgomery County man who voices opposition to a bill which would include (or no doubt eventually lead to) registration, fingerprinting, photographing, numbering and licensing of all Maryland's gun owners. It is that particular it’s for the good of society at large aspect of the Nazi regime to which Alzona seems to be referring....and for which those of us with even a minimal knowledge of the original intent of Second Amendment, and a minimal knowledge of events in '38-'44 Germany, are capable of connecting the dots.
Frosh, Van Hollen, Shriver and their ilk need to be aware that, even if their efforts at circumventing the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed are successful in (what passes for) the ‘legal’ sense, they have a monumental uphill implementation battle looming.
....a successful policy of domestic disarmament must be preceded by an attempt to register all firearms currently owned. In fact, the German Nazi regime used registration records as a precursor to, or as a means of, confiscating guns within its own borders and within its territorial acquisitions, and many gun owners are aware of this historical precedent. Fear of confiscation is one reason for such little compliance with current registration laws where they have been enacted in America. New York's Sullivan Law, the first major licensing and registration scheme imposed in twentieth-century America, is ignored by millions of New Yorkers. In Illinois it is estimated that about 75% of handgun owners are in noncompliance with the state's registration law....Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibition (Maryland Law Review)....Little and Kopel
If Alzona and the Maryland Chapter of the Tyranny Response Team can be successful in keeping mindless passion out of the Second Amendment debate, they will be well on their way to the goal of awakening the citizens of Maryland to the fact that a realistic discussion is what is needed in order to not disarm the general public, but to subdue that (very small) proportion of the populace which seeks to use guns against others.
Even after this particular much ado is over, and its outcome dictates the (short-term) Second Amendment atmosphere in the state of Maryland, one thing is certain: The people of Maryland….and the American people in general….have historically been armed, and are resolved to remain so.
You have mail.
NAHH it just brings your move for ridiculous and dangerous gun laws to light sure your EMBARASSED the truth hurts !!!
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