An ex-NFL player is wisely drawing attention to a divisive anti-American hate campaign by his city council.

Did they install the usual burning cross of “America First”? Or a statue of Robert Lee?

No, no that’s far too golden age. Too obvious.

In spite of vigorous and scathing attacks from liberals and minority groups, between three and six million native-born Protestant white men rushed to join the secret order. At least another half-million women joined the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. Some even claimed that President Warren Harding took the membership oath in a secret White House ceremony.

All that America First lynching stuff is so old skool and uncool. These days all the cool kids use MAGA as a reference to their grandpa’s America First.

Cue the Huntington Beach council posting an expensive giant MAGA plaque in black and gold, like an update to the 1916 KKK propaganda film screening at the White House.

Some attendees likened the plaque to political propaganda, while others simply called it tacky. Dozens of emails were also sent to the Council to urge them to drop the plaque design in favor of something less divisive.

“While celebrating the legacy of this vital institution is worthwhile, the wording contained on this plaque does not honor the library’s contributions; instead, it serves as a poorly disguised political statement,” one opposition email reads. “This is inappropriate and an irresponsible use of public resources at a time when our city faces massive budget cuts and a severe deficit crisis.”

“I find it incredibly disrespectful that the city council is attempting to memorialize a political agenda into our library through incorporating a MAGA acronym in the plaque. As a nonpartisan council, it is unacceptable to politicize this public space, especially considering the hypocrisy of the message,” reads another.

Some residents weren’t having it though, particularly an ex-NFL player Chris Kluwe, who accurately described the council having a Nazi moment. When he spoke the truth in opposition the council quickly had him arrested.

“…it is clear this council does not listen, so instead, I’m going to take my time to say what MAGA has stood for these past three weeks,” Kluwe said. “MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism.” […] Kluwe went on to criticize the president for recent mass firings and budget cuts. “MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal,” he said. “MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe said.

He’s not wrong.

At issue is a city plaque that is not merely ‘golden’ letters, but a flashpoint in our ongoing national dialogue infiltrated by the normalization of Nazism. The city council’s insistence on incorporating hateful ‘MAGA’ messaging into public spaces has drawn parallels to tragically violent repressive chapters of American history, when similar tactics were used to embed political messaging in civic institutions meant to deny freedoms.

To put it simply, scientific analysis of American history says where there’s a MAGA plaque the white supremacist terrorism will manifest. It’s like flying a swastika or burning a cross.

After midnight, on April 3, 1924, several automobiles drove onto the Columbia campus at 116th Street. Twenty or so men, cloaked in the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, stepped out of the cars and carried a seven-foot-tall wooden cross down onto the grassy lawn known as South Field. They dowsed it with kerosene and set it on fire. The flames of the burning cross could be seen from all the residence halls on the quad, as well as from the windows of neighboring apartments.

Three years after the cross burning, Trump’s father was arrested in a KKK (America First) rally.

…newspaper clips unearthed by VICE contain separate accounts of Fred Trump’s arrest at the May 1927 KKK rally in Queens, each of which seems to confirm the Times account of the events that day. While the clips don’t confirm whether Fred Trump was actually a member of the Klan, they do suggest that the rally—and the subsequent arrests—did happen, and did involve Donald Trump’s father…. A fifth article mentions the seven arrestees without giving names, and claims that all of the individuals arrested—presumably including Trump—were wearing Klan attire.

The Huntington Beach city council’s recent actions follow a concerning pattern. When residents formally objected to the controversial plaque installation, citing both its divisive messaging and questionable timing during a budget crisis, the council responded not with discussion but with an aggressive police response to peaceful protests. This approach to public disagreement – where dissenting voices are treated as adversaries rather than constituents deserving representation – raises serious questions about democratic governance and civic dialogue at the local level. MAGA leaves no room for representation, only homogenization.

This is obviously more than a story about a plaque. From Wilson’s White House screening of “Birth of a Nation” to inspire the KKK’s revival, through Jim Crow laws that were studied by Nazi Germany, to modern MAGA symbolism in Huntington Beach – there’s a continuous thread of how oppressive institutions respond to challenges of their authority. When civil rights activists stood against segregation, they were met with violence and censorship. When residents speak against divisive symbols today, they face arrest rather than dialogue.

The deeper question isn’t about the technical ability to install such messages in our public spaces – it’s about the cost to our civic unity, particularly in a region like southern California with its own complex history of racial tension. As the council’s response to peaceful protest demonstrates, these aren’t just symbols of the past – they’re active choices about who we are as a nation and what values we’ll permit to be normalized in our shared spaces.