HISTORY OF FASCISM
Why we cannot brush off display of Nazi-like posters
The 80-million ghosts of the Second World War haunt our collective history, writes Tristen Taylor
On May 8, which was 84 years after the founding of the Third Reich, Stellenbosch University students put up 12 posters calling for a meeting of like-minded individuals to "Fight for Stellenbosch". They were almost exact reproductions of Hitler Youth posters from the 1930s. Three students have been suspended and one, Dean Dart, has admitted his involvement. I occasionally lecture at Stellenbosch University and I want to stomp on these jackbooted fascists. My family fought against Nazism. One grandfather battled his way through Italy. He came home and refused to speak about the war. My Chilean grandmother served in the Royal Navy and showed me the exact spot, a nondescript traffic circle, where she was bombed in the Blitz. The first serious love of my life, a woman I would have died a hundred times for, was Jewish. The SS got most of her family: maybe the gas chambers, maybe the mobile killing squads. The Einsatzgruppen shot a total of 2-million people (1.3-million Jews) in the Baltic...
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