Here is something that should be sobering for us all.
I have seen and participated in a lot of anti-Nazi threads recently. I have made comments about idiot Trump's statements on Confederate statues and "erasing history".
babylonsister posted a very poignant statement from the relative of a WWII vet about Nazism and its current incarnation. The title of the thread is "Today I've been thinking a lot about this whole Neo-Nazi thing" check it out.
One thing that gives me pause however, is, that as a person of color having grown up in a larger population center where there was a good deal of racial tension and who has experienced racism and discrimination first hand, someone whose seen bigotry coming form his own family; is the general sense I am getting that this situation with the Nazis, Confederates, and White Supremacy is something apart from us, something foreign, something that our fathers and uncles or grandfathers and great uncles went overseas to fight. Something that happened 150 years ago in America, that we have not fully dealt with, but still something that is a bit removed.
I remembered hearing something about the Nazi Party and where they modeled their regime so I went looking and found thhe link I will post below. There are other books and articles on the subject.
http://time.com/4703586/nazis-america-race-law/
Nazism was at least influenced by the culture of White Supremacy in the United States. Germany did not export Nazism as a new thing, just a different take and a clearer model of White Supremacy that has been entrenched in the United States since its founding. I am glad that we are standing up and fighting back and saying "not here, not now" I just think that we need to really dig deep, and not just think that we are shutting down something that is separate from the history of the US. To really heal and move forward, we all have to acknowledge the history of this country, from slavery, to the taking of native lands and killing of entire peoples and their way of life, to nativism and exclusionary immigration policies both historically and today, to the Civil War and its aftermath including Jim Crow, to the war against drugs which was a way to keep people of color and white allies against the establishment down, to the current system of incarceration. These idiots, emboldened by the idiot in the White House are not foreign, they have a deep history in the US and learned their ways from family, community, and society.
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At a ceremony in Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford is presented with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle on his 75th birthday. Henry Ford was the first American recipient of this order, an honor created in 1937 by Adolf Hitler. This was the highest honor Nazi Germany could give to any foreigner and represented Adolf Hitler’s personal admiration and indebtedness to Henry Ford. The presentation was made by Karl Kapp, German consul in Cleveland, and Fritz Heller, German consular representative in Detroit.
In Germany, Ford’s antisemitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several antisemitic parties and a member of the Reichstag.
http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/
See also: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of 1940s Nazi Sympathizers
Charles Lindbergh may have been known as a legendary pilot, but he had another, more sinister position in American History: as a Nazi sympathizer and spokesperson for the America First Committee.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/charles-lindbergh-and-the-rise-of-1940s-nazi_1/
