When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

At 5:57 p.m. Monday night, roughly 20 people carrying cameras, projection equipment and stacks of informational flyers hustled through the bitter cold down Eighth Avenue from West 33rd Street in Manhattan. They stopped directly across the street from the west side of Madison Square Garden, and a few minutes later began projecting on the side of the self-described World’s Most Famous Arena scenes from an event that took place inside 80 years ago to the day.

Billed as a celebration of “Americanism” on George Washington’s birthday, the 1939 event drew over 20,000 people, all eager to hear a speech by Fritz Kuhn, the leader of a group called the German-American Bund. Onstage behind Kuhn hung a massive portrait of the nation’s first president, flanked by swastikas. “We, with American ideals, demand that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it,” Kuhn said after joking about the negative light in which he had been portrayed by the “Jewish controlled press.” He went on to explain that those ideals include a “socially just, white, Gentile-ruled United States.” The audience applauded.

The team projecting images of Kuhn onto Madison Square Garden on Presidents Day 2019 was doing so on behalf of A Night at the Garden, an Oscar-nominated documentary short made up of footage of the Nazi rally, which took place just seven months before the outbreak of World War II. Director Marshall Curry wants as many people as possible to see the film. He doesn’t care how. “Frankly, we’ve encouraged the pirating and sharing of it,” he tells Rolling Stone. “We just want to get this chapter of history out into the public.”

Outside of quasi-legal guerrilla projection jobs, Curry is promoting the project through newspaper and cable news ad buys. An hour before the film was beamed onto the side of Madison Square Garden, a 30-second spot ran on CNN during The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer. Later that night, one would air during The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. The film’s producers tried to buy time on Hannity last week, but they were rejected by Fox News. The network’s national ad sales representative explained that the ad, titled “It Can Happen Here,” was “not appropriate for our air,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“We thought they would run it,” says Curry. “We were surprised for sure.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/madison-square-garden-nazis-796197/

[Persondem]

1. Good post. Needs more visibility ... K & R nt

[hibbing]

2. Is that the whole movie at the link?

I looked and did not see it on Netflix. I want to know about the guy who rushed the stage.

Peace

[TeamPooka]

6. Yes. It is a short subject films. Seven minutes long and nominated for an Oscar

[hibbing]

7. Thanks

I got that it was a short, just was not sure how short. I'm going to have to spend some time researching this.


Peace

[Blue_Tires]

3. Funny, because that's what the stands look like any time

Duke is playing a baskeball game at the garden...

[backtoblue]

4. K&R

[pecosbob]

5. I read about that the other day when Fox denied them commercial time

sounds about right for the Nazi Network. Yeah, I went there. And as for the other poster's comment concerning Duke, I'm certainly not a Duke-hater, but I always wondered if Duke University had connections to Duke Energy. I'm definitely not a fan of Duke Energy...I hold them responsible for all the coal-sludge pit pollution in the region lately and they have long done everything they can to avoid responsibility for it.