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> I've spent 6 months reading the archives of our local papers --- not for this Nazism thing, but for work I'm doing on zoning reform (we're on the cusp of elim

by danans 2y ago

> I've spent 6 months reading the archives of our local papers --- not for this Nazism thing, but for work I'm doing on zoning reform (we're on the cusp of eliminating single-family zoning villagewide, which will be huge). Thanks for the context. I support your cause to end racially exclusionary zoning! > This is what historians are talking about when they worry about "presentism". If I understand what presentism means, I don't think I committed it in my argument. Contrasting the openness of the US at a policy level to immigrants like Kulle in the 1950s vs the threats to the status of Haitian TPS holders being made today isn't applying a standard from today to the past. Rather, it's applying a just standard from the past to today.

tptacek 2y ago
No, you didn't! I don't really think Soffer does, either, but it's an issue that's sort of bound up with the analysis that follows his book. Today, excusing someone for serving in the Waffen-SS would be coded differently, and more harshly, than it was in 1950 --- not because people in the 1950s were O.K. with the Waffen-SS, but because they knew less about it. And it's subtle, because the United States Government did know, and cared a lot (but was deeply fallible, then as now) --- but here we're talking about a story where the federal government harshly cracked down on the "Oak Park Nazi", and his defenders were just random people who were, I think, mostly ignorant about the issues at play. People look back at like 1959 Oak Park and say it was wild this guy wasn't reported to immigration as soon as he turned in his marriage certificate with the Reichsadler and "Gross-Rosen" on it, but the superintendent of OPRF high school almost certainly had no idea what the hell Gross-Rosen was; even the OSI had to go consult experts to work that out. I'm a little bit judging other people --- not you --- for judging local civic officials for not meeting the standards of a society where everybody has virtually all the world's knowledge in their pocket at all times.

by danans 2y ago

tptacek 2y ago

No, you didn't! I don't really think Soffer does, either, but it's an issue that's sort of bound up with the analysis that follows his book. Today, excusing someone for serving in the Waffen-SS would be coded differently, and more harshly, than it was in 1950 --- not because people in the 1950s were O.K. with the Waffen-SS, but because they knew less about it. And it's subtle, because the United States Government did know, and cared a lot (but was deeply fallible, then as now) --- but here we're talking about a story where the federal government harshly cracked down on the "Oak Park Nazi", and his defenders were just random people who were, I think, mostly ignorant about the issues at play. People look back at like 1959 Oak Park and say it was wild this guy wasn't reported to immigration as soon as he turned in his marriage certificate with the Reichsadler and "Gross-Rosen" on it, but the superintendent of OPRF high school almost certainly had no idea what the hell Gross-Rosen was; even the OSI had to go consult experts to work that out. I'm a little bit judging other people --- not you --- for judging local civic officials for not meeting the standards of a society where everybody has virtually all the world's knowledge in their pocket at all times.