(Jewish Group) Ben Platt Denounces Antisemitic Protesters at 'Parade' on Broadway

[Behind the Aegis]

Ben Platt is speaking out against the antisemitic protestors at the first preview performance of Broadway’s revival of “Parade,” a musical about the true story of the false conviction and lynching of a Jewish man in 1915.

“For those who don’t know, there were a few neo-Nazi protesters from a really disgusting group outside of the theater, bothering some of our patrons on their way in and saying antisemitic things about Leo Frank, who the show is about, and just spreading antisemitic rhetoric that led to this whole story in the first place,” Platt said on Instagram.

In a video circulated on Twitter, people were gathered outside Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theater holding signs and calling Frank a “Jewish pedophile.” One person, reportedly a member of the neo-Nazi group The National Socialist Movement, is seen asking patrons, “You want the truth about who you’re going to see tonight? You’re paying $300 to go fucking worship a pedophile, you might as well know what you’re talking about.”

Platt thanked the theater workers for keeping audiences and show members “super safe and secure.” He went on to say the “vileness on display” underscores the importance of the revival. “Parade” dramatizes the life and death of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner who was falsely convicted of raping and murdering his 13-year-old employee Mary Phagan. He was sentenced to life in prison before he was kidnapped and lynched by an angry mob. The national attention of the case and the trial led to increased antisemitism, which galvanized the birth of the Anti-Defamation League while also activating a revival of the defunct KKK.

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Tick-tock

There is also a thread in LBN.

[Haggard Celine]

1. Lynchings used to be very common in America.

People would gather and form a mob and kidnap the prisoner out of the jail and do all sorts of things with him. He'd usually be hanged or burned or both. It wasn't just a Southern thing, either.

Just about any small town had superstitious people who were profoundly ignorant and they could be worked up into a frenzy by a persuasive speaker. The prisoner might be a Jew or a Gypsy or a black man caught having sex with a white woman.

We still have a lot of ignorant people all over this country, but hopefully out of the dark ages, better educated than their forebears. Just about every country has a lot of these people, and that's who Fox and the Republican Party target as their base. Hopefully these people will never be a majority like they used to be. They're still a lot more powerful than they should be.