Michigan Nazis Wave Swastika Flags, Holler Obscenities outside ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ Play

Photo Credit: Mike Fritcher / Flickr

A Klansman, part of a Henry Ford exhibit on the fight for civil rights.

A group of masked demonstrators waving Nazi flags appeared outside a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Howell last Saturday. Witnesses reported that the five individuals were shouting racist and antisemitic slurs in the parking lot of the American Legion Post 141, where the play about the young Jewish Holocaust victim was performed.

Bobby Brite, an Army veteran who recorded video of the scene, told Detroit’s ABC affiliate WXYZ that the incident left the play’s audience shocked and frightened. “People were shocked, they were appalled, everything you would expect,” Brite said.

Brite told WXYZ the legion post hosted the play, performed by the Fowlerville Community Theatre, as a response to the rising antisemitism in America.

“We had 75 people downstairs that watched that play and out of that 75, there were 50 or 60 of them that were afraid to leave this building. We had to escort them to their cars. No one in America should feel like that,” Brite said.

Outside a performance of the Diary of Anne Frank at an American Legion in Michigan. They made vile slurs like ‘Anne Frank was a whore’ and chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” It has begun. Welcome to the new America ?? pic.twitter.com/D49TbsJrZB

— Martha ??????????????? (@gwoman9810) November 13, 2024

Livingston County Sheriff Michael J. Murphy stated that deputies responded to reports of a “disturbance.” After asking the demonstrators to leave the property, they moved their protest across the street, where “a subject then approached them, and an argument ensued.”

“Nothing physical transpired, and ultimately, the parties involved separated,” Murphy added.

Since the 1970s, Howell, Michigan, has been nationally associated with the Ku Klux Klan due to activities led by Robert E. Miles, a prominent white supremacist, and Michigan Grand Dragon from 1971 to 1979. Miles hosted KKK gatherings on his farm, about 12 miles north of Howell, using a Howell mailing address. Although Miles passed away in 1992, these gatherings, including cross burnings, continued.