P4M "APPOINTMENT TELEVISION" PRE-VIEW: "Nazi America: A Secret History"

Americans often express this smug "It can't happen here" attitude about ideologies they find abhorrent, like Communism and Nazism. Well, it can happen here. As you know, there have been plenty of American Communists-- many of them progressive, well-meaning intellectuals-- and lots of American Nazis-- all of them hateful, misguided assholes.

"Nazi America: A Secret History," showing tonight on the History Channel (9 p.m.), documents the latter from the '30s, when they marched through American cities as the German-American Bund; through the '50s, when George Lincoln Rockwell was promising to "kill every Jew, Catholic, and Negro;" to the present, when Aryan Nationeers march in Skokie, set up web sites, thump The Turner Diaries, and otherwise make things bad for nice people.

Why watch? Well, because the fact that it does happen here, and everywhere, means that we have to be in a constant state of making sure it doesn't happen anywhere. Watching mad-nasty white supremicists on TV can help us stay in touch with some necessary commitment against that shit. According to the New York Times, Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks neo-Nazi movements, "estimates that some 500 such groups are at work." That's a lot of shit to counter.