To Leonard Zeskind: Anti-Fascist Icon

 

To Leonard Zeskind: Anti-Fascist Icon

Leonard Zeskind, icon of the international anti-racist/anti-fascist movement has died. He passed away on April 15 at home in Kansas City, Kansas. I learned of his passing last week as I was preparing to travel to a conference. Upon my return home on Sunday I scoured the media for obituaries for Lennie. I found them in social media outlets and the local press around Kansas City. But surprisingly, I have yet to find one in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Nor can I find evidence of his passing on Democracy Now, the leftist radio program hosted by Amy Goodman.

This is surprising, given that we have entered a period of a blatant attempt to establish a fascist regime in the United States. Leonard Zeskind was the leading intellectual and community organizer in this country and internationally against organized white supremacy since the 1980s. His 2009 book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement for the Margins to the Mainstream is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand the antecedents of Trumpism and how we got to where we are today.[1]

I first met Lennie at a conference entitled “Hands of My Neighbor” in Seattle in 1986. It had been convened following the shocking murder of the Goldmark family there (2 adults, 2 children) on Christmas Eve, 1985. The assailant, White supremacist/anti-Semitic zealot, David Lewis Rice, mistakenly believed that the family was Jewish, and that Charles Goldmark was a communist and part of any international Jewish conspiracy to control the world economy.

The Center for Democratic Renewal was invited to oversee the conference. It was founded by Reverend C.T. Vivian, a compatriot of Martin Luther King, Jr., a veteran of the Selma Alabama campaign and the marches on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965. The Center, originally the National Anti-Klan Network, was founded to provide a site for Blacks and Whites to work together to fight white supremacy.

By 1986 Lennie Zeskind was a lieutenant of Reverend Vivian as research director at the center. He attended the conference and spoke that weekend. I was among local activists who were asked to facilitate workshops. during the conference. Lik so many young Whites during the 1960s, Lennie was impressed by the force of the civil rights movement. But unlike most others, he made it his life mission to understand the roots of White supremacy, and its mistruths, in order to counter it and defeat it.

We crossed paths again in the late 1990s as a coalition of regional groups had come together to defeat White supremacists working to realize the “Northwest Imperative,” the notion that the northwest quadrant of the lower 48 US states --- the whitest part of the country --- should be conquered and turned into a “White republic.” He had formed the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights. He was an indispensable consultant and mentor to those of us fighting the anti-government Militia movement that captured the nationalist imagination after the Whie supremacist terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, which killed 169 people.  

In 1998 Lennie received the MacArthur Foundation “Lifetime Genius” Award for his work. When I was a leader of the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force in Washington during those years, we asked Lennie to do a community organizing workshop for us. In a meeting in which I was one of two people of color among the 15-18 attendees, Lennie had one simple message. He exclaimed that all of the identity politics movements of the day --- women, LGBTQ, environmental, and even labor --- were doomed to fail if they did not address racism in their work.

There was considerable pushback to Lennie’s argument on that occasion, but his unwavering stance that day left an indelible impact on me that I carry to this day. There were two other themes that he was already warning about in the 90s: was the way that far right extremism was being mainstreamed into American politics via the Republican Party, and the role of anti-immigrant passions in solidifying that far right.

As we watch and hopefully are mobilizing to fight Trumpism today mainstream Republicanism has been sidelined as far right extremism has captured the Republican Party. And ever since he descended the escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, anti-immigrant racism has been the hallmark of his hegemonic movement.

Still, Leonard Zeskind’s counsel to progressives at the turn of the century rings true today. As we engage in the intersectional political work to oppose fascism, we must be mindful that America was built upon systemic racism. Therefore, as we tackle all of the other “isms,” we must simultaneously fight racism to create the society in which we all want to live.[2]

 

 

 

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[1] Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement for the Margins to the Mainstream. New York: Macmillan, 2009.

[2] For more background on Leonard Zeskind’s life and writings see Bill Berkowitz, Leonard Zeskind (1949-2025): Author of Blood and Politics, Groundbreaking Exposé of White Nationalism, rf, Independent Media for People, Not Profits. https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/18/leonard-zeskind-1949-2025-author-of-blood-and-politics-groundbreaking-expose-of-white-nationalism/;

Leonard Zeskind, IREHR. https://irehr.org/leonard-zeskind-biography/.