Yesterday, Searchlight heard the dreadful news that Lenny Zeskind had died. Lenny was one of our closest and dearest friends, comrades and collaborators. He was a giant of the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement in the United States over many decades, and his loss is inestimable.
For many years Lenny was Searchlight’s US correspondent. He also wrote the definitive and ground breaking book ‘Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream’.
We will publish an obituary in due course, but in the meantime, we are republishing below an article which Lenny wrote for the recent, 50th anniversary edition of Searchlight magazine, describing when and how he and Searchlight began working together. We will miss him desperately.
Lenny Zeskind (1949-2025) RIP.
When we started working together
By Leonard Zeskind (1950-2025)
1988. My partner and I were in London for a week for a much-needed vacation – courtesy of 140,000 frequent flyer miles flown the year before. We were staying with a wonderful couple from Race and Class. They introduced us to Gerry Gable from Searchlight magazine; it has been a multi-decade relationship.
Wit and intelligence
At the time, I was wearing my Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) hat, as well as research director from the Center for Democratic Renewal. IREHR had started publishing a magazine in 1982, in direct imitation of Searchlight’s wit, intelligence, but not its beauty.
The Center for Democratic Renewal was founded by Civil Rights activists in 1979 after a Klan attack in Decatur, Alabama.
When Gerry and I met in person, we shared many stories: differences and similarities in the Jewish community, labor movement, and the tasks ahead. He took me to see the Cable Street Mural and other sites of the anti-fascist movement in England.
Pledged to help each other
The first date we took action together was 23rd April, 1988, where we marched in a London anti-racist parade in solidarity with stopping Jean Marie Le Pen in France.
When Le Pen ran for president in 1974 on the Front National ticket, he received less than 1 percent of the vote. In 1984, the Front National grabbed fourth place in elections to the European parliament with 10 percent of the vote.
Gerry and I pledged to help each other beat the fascists in the coming years. I found connections to “political soldiers” in the U.S. who had trained in England. Gerry put it on TV.
Skinhead movement
In 1991, CDR hosted a conference in Atlanta where Gerry Gable came from Searchlight. He told us about the international skinhead movement, which had originated in England.
Later, we toured Sweden together in the early 1990’s, helping communities there understand the threat of skinhead music culture. We found Harold Covington, an American, hiding in the bushes of London.
In February 1990, anti-fascists in Germany organized a conference and invited me and Graeme Atkinson from Searchlight. I then went on to Leipzig and saw that the ‘pro-democracy’ marches had turned into nationalist marches.
Because of Searchlight
And largely because of Searchlight, I was able to report this development back home in the United States.
Today, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights is ably lead by Devin Burghart.
And we will continue to work in the tradition of Searchlight.
