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American Nazis at Madison Square Garden, 1939
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sebtoast 9y agoThere seems to be some kind of issue with the video between 2:08 and 2:10. You can see the flags going back and forth as if someone rewind the footage. Maybe it's an editing error?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- forgottenpass 9y agoit seems amazing that it isn’t a stock part of every high school history class. This story was likely nudged out of the canon, in part because it’s scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to forget. Everyone is outraged that the 5 things they're passionate about aren't taught (enough) in school. The problem is that they're never same 5 things as the next guy. Everything that follows the word "likely" is this guy crafting a narrative that fits his world view and appetite for rage much better than the more realistic answers: teacher's priorities pulled in a million directions at once and schools somehow have to fit as much as possible into an education program bounded by funding, timing, and classroom sizes.
- jkeat 9y agoYou can say that to excuse all sorts of revisionism.
- smt88 9y agoThe ugly parts of our country's history are under-taught, especially the closer you get to the present. This is an anecdote that points to a categorical problem.
- coldtea 9y agoThat's a quite novel way of whitewashing the kind of whitewashing of official school (and even academic) history that countries usually do and has been studied and documented by historians and activists time and again. No, topics like the Native American concentration camps or the history of the Japanese Americans in WWII, the gory details of the US racial and labour history, and other such things were not historically kept away from school books for decades on end because "too many things to teach, too little teaching time". The same reason the Japanese don't keep their WWII doings in China out of their books because they have so much other stuff to cover.
- baursak 9y agoI thought it was common knowledge that support for Nazis in America was widespread all the way leading to American involvement in WW2. Here's another sample: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los-angeles-hitler-in-la-20171008-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los... What Lewis did not anticipate is that local authorities would prove indifferent to — or supportive of — the Nazis and fascists. Within weeks of going undercover, Lewis’ network of spies discovered a plot to wrest control of armories in San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego — part of a larger plan to take over local governments and carry out a mass execution of Jews. Lewis immediately informed L.A. Police Chief James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis of the Nazi scheme to seize weapons and, as Lewis warned in a memo later, to “foster a fascist form of government in the United States.” Lewis was shocked when Davis interrupted him to defend Hitler. The police chief, he noted in the memo, told him: “Germans could not compete economically with the Jews in Germany and had been forced to take the action they did.” The greatest danger the city faced, Davis insisted, was not from Nazis but from communists living in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. As far as Davis was concerned, every communist was a Jew and every Jew a communist.
- flachsechs 9y agoif every white american spent a week as another race, i don't think a single one would be 'shocked' or 'flabbergasted' about any of this.
- js2 9y agohttp://galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
- kevmo 9y agoI wish "Black Like Me" were mandatory reading in public schools: Black Like Me, first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by white journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under Racial Segregation. Griffin was a native of Dallas, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line. It's short and fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me
- Shidizity 9y agoWhy is this on HN?
- duxup 9y agoThat's kinda a freakish alt history look there with George and nazi activity.
- kevmo 9y ago"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -Lyndon Johnson.
- Spooky23 9y agoThat's a spot-on quote that captures one of the fundamental tensions of US History. Johnson is a enigmatic figure, as he grew up experiencing this, and did great things to bring justice to people, yet had his own personal and policy failings that stand in jarring contrast. Much of the institutional racial and policy oddities in this country stem from this form of control, which was used to make and keep slavery an institution and keep the lower classes in check. One of the rallying cries of the draft riots (that is uncomfortably close to the modern Trump-ist white nationalist rallying cry) is that slaves were valued more ($1,000 for a slave) than the Irish ($300 to avoid war service) and were on the rise, and that rise would drag down wages when freed slaves flooded New York labor markets.
- gspetr 9y agoThis is not an apples to apples comparison. The slaves were already in the US. Illegal immigrants are not. I don't see much arguments from the right that it's the blacks and not illegal immigrants who are driving down wages, given the fact that black unemployment has gone WAAAAY up since the 50s. Black teenagers had a better employment rate than white teenagers back in the day.
- Spooky23 9y agoSorry, but you’re dead wrong on this. The US and its predecessor colonies imported slaves by the shipload well into the 19th century. You can literally go back to the original Virginia colony, where the landowners didn’t like the high costs and turnover (due to malaria and AWOL) of indentured servants from England. So they started importing African slaves, who didn’t need to be paid, didn’t have a term contract, and often were resistant to malaria. They started having problems with slaves escaping and joining up with frontier communities of former or escaped indentured servants. That's where the racial supremacy stuff started -- to keep people at odds and under control. The illegal immigrant issue isn't the same, but isn't totally different either. There's a demand for cheap labor without normal labor protections, and demand for life outside of third world countries.
- deanCommie 9y agoIt's all fun and games until 6 million jews die.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- Mizza 9y agoAnother weird moment in history: Nazis attend the Nation of Islam summit, 1961 - https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAALfQ/Ss8iDFtDQYQDYTxngXc3uLVd4cz_rKBowCLcB/s1600/George_Lincoln_Rockwell_nation_of_islam.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAAL... Black nationalists and white nationalists coming together. Bizarre stuff.
- QAPereo 9y agoHorseshoe politics at its finest; when you’re extreme enough, the people like you are those who manage to be equally extreme. By then the underlying ideologies have converged on the same basic notions of rejecting the mainstream and revolution.
- arianon 9y agoNot too bizarre, both groups were Nationalists, so I presume that they saw that cooperating on their common objective (total racial segregation) was more useful in the long term. Interestingly, both George Lincoln Rockwell and Malcolm X were assassinated by members of their own parties (a former one in Rockwell's case, though). Sadly, I don't know much else about them.
- sdenton4 9y agoMoar context: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x-met-the-nazis-0000620-v22n4 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x-met... Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a highly-placed anti-semite, which made alliance with the nazis possible.
- jff 9y ago> Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a highly-placed anti-semite I'd be pretty surprised if the Nation of Islam had only one highly-placed anti-semite.
- HoppedUpMenace 9y agoI clicked on this and saw that there is a man that bears a striking resemblance to Obergruppenführer John Smith from "Man in the High Castle."
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoI would like to point out that the raised hands / sig heil was normal American reverence to the flag, and had nothing exceptional to do with the event depicted. It was an inspiration to the Nazi Germany sig heil just like a few other aspects of American culture. The ritual around the pledge of allegiance was subsequently changed to simultaneously be distinctive from fascists and communists.
- UncleSlacky 9y agoYes, it's known as the Bellamy salute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute
- louithethrid 9y agoIf you squint at the Reichskriegflagge- you can see the Coca-Cola Colours.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agois that intended to be an absurdity in relationships?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dalbasal 9y agoThere are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a child. The first one is the “banality of evil” view. The nazis were nothing special. One of many populist and racist parties. One of many hateful ideologies. The only thing that stands them out is the results. They actually won power through weirdness of politics in that time and place. They actually started a massive war (lucky timing). They actually went on the massive genocidal campaign implied by their rhetoric. Normal people. Normal (if somewhat distasteful) party. Abnormal actions. It’s kind of related to the “one damn thing after another” theory of history. The other (more intuitive, and unavoidable) view is the pure evil view. Hitler & Eichman were uniquely evil people. The SS were evil people. They had an evil doctrine, evil symbols, evil political methods. Evil resulted. Watch out for this sort of thing. Know the devil when you see her. Never Again! Anyway, in 1939 I’m not sure nazism stood out as a unique evil different in some way from domestic far right movements like the kkk. It’s historical perspective that gives it the symbolic meaning that shocks us today.
- eli_gottlieb 9y agoPure evil can in fact pass for normal, banal politics in certain times and places. That's the problem. Normal, banal people learned not to think thoughts like, "Are we the baddies? We've got skulls on!" and, "But what would I think if they were doing this to me?" Remember, the late 1930s also had Stalinism, Japanese Imperialism, the British Empire sponsoring things like the Bengali Famine, and various American imperial/colonial efforts as well. There was a lot of evil to go around. The proper advice is: know the Evil Impulse when it appears in yourself, and then you can have a good idea of how to spot it in others.
- sremani 9y ago“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- apo 9y agoA couple of points of context. The rally was organized by the "German American Bund," an organization that Nazi Germany had distanced itself from before the Madison Square Garden rally: On March 1, 1938 the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization. This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund This was not a mass movement by any stretch, but seemed instead to be centered around a group of German-American immigrants. The video depicts a Pledge of Allegiance ceremony that lacks the phrase "under God" because it was added in 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_States)#Addition_of_.22under_God.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_S...
- UncleSlacky 9y agoCorrection: "under God" was added in 1954, at the instigation of the Knights of Columbus. The Bellamy salute was retired in 1942, though.
- StavrosK 9y agoWait, so this group was too Nazi for the Nazis?
- dreta 9y agoI’m sick and tired of articles like that popping-up on this site. This is not Twitter. Why is irrelevant political content not flagged immediately.
- dang 9y agoThe mandate of this site is intellectual curiosity. Take a look at the first paragraph of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I'd say this video footage easily qualifies as gratifying intellectual curiosity (it did mine, anyhow), despite the provocativeness of the material. Had the discussion gone haywire we'd have downweighted the thread, but it isn't too bad. Actually we've downweighted it a bit, but before that we turned off an automatic software penalty that applied. Balancing act.
- neves 9y agoWow, the swastika besides a giant George Washington is a really impressive image. Sure you can use the words freedom and justice for anything. Who is the guy talking in the lectern? The one who is despised as a demon by the "jewish controlled media"?
- rdtsc 9y agoAnd if you heard Chomsky he describes how growing up there were beer parties in US when Paris fell to the Nazis. Those things was quickly swept under the rug later, and not talked about much. Also the involvement of American companies in supporting the Nazi effort including Ford and IBM and probably others. I grew up hearing about Nazis. For the Soviet Union it was _the_ big war, a war of survival basically. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war. One drove them all the way to Berlin. Got wounded by them. I also heard stories from teachers about the horrible atrocities they've experienced. One jarring one was how their Jewish childhood friend was raped, dismembered and buried in the backyard by German soldiers. They watched through the fence in the back of the garden hiding in the bushes. That is why it is grating to hear everyone use "Nazis" like a joke. "You are such a Nazi", "Everyone who doesn't agree with my political views is a Nazi". "The store clerk is a fascist cause they made me wait too long", etc.
- peterwwillis 9y ago(This is a tangent unrelated to the topic) Three years after this rally, Pearl Harbor happens, which results in the US entering into the already-running World War II. Virtually all people of Japanese ancestry are forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps - around 115,000 people, 62% of which were US citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... At the same time, "the government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few [11,000 out of the 1.2 Million born in Germany and 5 Million with two German parents]. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans Of the 695,000 ethnic Italians in the US at the time, only 1,881 nationals were detained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_American... The justification of rounding up all ethnic Japanese into camps was "we're at war, we will do anything to protect our country". But that same logic was never applied to the Germans or Italians, even though their countries were bigger threats than Japan. A government commission found the treatment of ethnic Japanese to have been racially motivated, and actually paid reparations to those that were interned. But even so, this practice was never made illegal. I find this especially interesting since a certain US President seems to have some strong feelings toward certain ethnicities and religions. In the event we went to war with a country with such an ethnicity, we would probably see these camps again, because no law has made it illegal, and there is legal and military precedence for it. It's also a near-certainty that no Supreme Court will go against a President during wartime.
- aezell 9y agoWhen the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited at the beginning, there is no "under God." I knew that it had been added in 1954 but it's interesting to hear it so clearly missing here given that the event occurred in 1939.