I tend to be suspicious of theories that explain everything all at once, but this discussion of the Civil War really flicked on a light bulb for me. Once this model is in your head, it puts a lot of things into a new configuration that makes sense: modern racial oppression, the Tea Party, the Birther movement, and why I’ve never been able to sit through Gone With The Wind without stomping out in a rage. We lost the Civil War. The Confederacy is still pulling strings.
The Civil War was easy to misunderstand at the time, because there had never been anything like it. It was a total mobilization of society, the kind Europe wouldn’t see until World War I. The Civil War was fought not just with cannons and bayonets, but with railroads and factories and an income tax.
If the Napoleonic Wars were your model, then it was obvious that the Confederacy lost in 1865: Its capital fell, its commander surrendered, its president was jailed, and its territories were occupied by the opposing army. If that’s not defeat, what is?
But now we have a better model than Napoleon: Iraq.
After the U.S. forces won on the battlefield in 1865 and shattered the organized Confederate military, the veterans of that shattered army formed a terrorist insurgency that carried on a campaign of fire and assassination throughout the South until President Hayes agreed to withdraw the occupying U. S. troops in 1877. Before and after 1877, the insurgents used lynchings and occasional pitched battles to terrorize those portions of the electorate still loyal to the United States. In this way they took charge of the machinery of state government, and then rewrote the state constitutions to reverse the postwar changes and restore the supremacy of the class that led the Confederate states into war in the first place.
By the time it was all over, the planter aristocrats were back in control, and the three constitutional amendments that supposedly had codified the U.S.A’s victory over the C.S.A.– the 13th, 14th, and 15th — had been effectively nullified in every Confederate state. The Civil Rights Acts had been gutted by the Supreme Court, and were all but forgotten by the time similar proposals resurfaced in the 1960s. Blacks were once again forced into hard labor for subsistence wages, denied the right to vote, and denied the equal protection of the laws. Tens of thousands of them were still physically shackled and subject to being whipped, a story historian Douglas Blackmon told in his Pulitzer-winning Slavery By Another Name.
So Lincoln and Grant may have had their mission-accomplished moment, but ultimately the Confederates won. The real Civil War — the one that stretched from 1861 to 1877 — was the first war the United States lost.
Read the whole thing. You can’t fight back if you’re unaware of the battle you’re in.
Beginning a proud tradition of war-losing that continues to this day. Yes, there were failures to lose: the World Wars, for instance, and the invasions of mighty Grenada and Panama, but otherwise, it’s pretty much Loserville all the way down. Why does the US spend more than the next 13 nations combined on war-making capacity? To cover the growing feeling of inadequacy from losing at war all the time. Sad, really.
This book is a must-read IMO. Slavery didn’t really end until WWII was upon us and it started occurring to people in Washington that it kind of looks bad to be condemning Hitler for throwing everyone he didn’t like into concentration camps when our treatment of black people was little better. That and the fact that technology had finally begun to really surpass the productivity you could get out of any number of black bodies, no matter how mercilessly you worked them.
Well, I found it interesting and enlightening. It certainly explains everything.
What’s scary is not that it’s just scary, it is the realisation that closely related WyVerns (/World Views) are making it slowly and silently worldwide, but coming close to outnumbering whatever paraothery still trying to reach equilibrium.
CaitieCat, Harridan of Social Justice #1
But does anyone actually ever win a war?
———-
The Universe. A mess since beginning. No wait, already a mess before that.
Wasn’t WWII when the USA was throwing citizens of Japanese ethnicity into concentration camps?
I disagree: Treason implies that someone switched side: the Dixies never wanted the US to be a Republic.
@ CaitieCat etc,
I’ve always liked the English attitude of rejoicing in our defeats, from the Maldon poem “Hige sceal þē heardra, heorte þē cēnre, mōd sceal þē māre, þē ūre mægen lytlað.” on down to the Charge of the Light Brigade and all those poems about the miseries of WWI.
Au contraire, the problem is not that the US lost and fallaciously promulgated its faux-victory. The problem is that the South did not recognize its loss, and continued as if it had not been defeated (with only minor adjustments to stay within the letter of the conqueror’s laws). And then used the liberties, the US gave all, to continue down their own path disregarding the words coming at them from the rest of the country; claiming “In. dee. pen. dance”, and “states rights”, to close their ears and ignore dissent from the “other” ~tyrant~ states.
.
oh, this overgeneralizing theorizing (and cherry picking) is fun stuff ~~~~~~~~~~~
I like to see history as a pendulum. Progress is made but then there is a backlash, but overall the pendulum moves forward. The French Revolution got rid of royalty (in a terrible way though) but then they got Napoleon and Napoleon III. But a short time later France moved towards democracy. People in power often fight to keep their power but we have gotten rid of kings and queens in most of the world. It took several millenia but I think the world is changing more quickly. As bad as the internet can be, it can also expose inequalities and oppression and injustices. I try to look at history over the long term because otherwise I would just get depressed and hopeless.
slithey tove, it’s like how Democrats are with Republicans now. When they have them pinned against the ropes… they just walk away, assuming they have won. (Or they’re afraid of victory. Or paid to throw the fight.) And the Republicans never, ever fail to come back and punch the Democrats in the kidneys, as thanks.
re @5:
Yes, _but_ …IF the N’s only threw the J’s into concentration camps, the war would be just a history book chapter. The horror that painted the N’s as “Evil Monsters”, was their final solution for depopulating those conc.camps. As guilty as US was of concentrating an ethnicity into camps, the equiv of the final solution was never even considered by the US. The US final solution, to the war with that ethnicity, was far more horrific than the N’s final solution attempt. Ours worked, theirs was interrupted by defeat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
adopting the opposite view is so refreshing ~~~
Hitler admired the way Americans exterminated our native population, so I’m afraid we did get to the “final solution” approach first.
I’m reading the book “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War,” by Nicholas Lemann. It’s covering the actual coups and military actions that certainly sound like the “sectarian violence” our media loves to glower on about overseas.
If you study all those roadside markers down in the South and read between the lines, cast the “riots” as massacres and do a little light reading, this article is a foregone conclusion.
Now I’m going to go walk around amongst streets and monuments and courthouses named after confederate generals and see what I might have missed on some tarnished plaque.
re PZ@12:
shhhh…. what’s that over there? Squirrel!!!
[practicing “convenient lookaway” skills to distract from obviousities ^_^ ]
PZ Myers #12
HE DID NOT! Read the other comments there as well. You’re promoting a bullshit idea from one bullshit book by a person who wasn’t even a historian!
How do we defeat them?
Will it require wholesale abandonment of the aristocratic/feudal worldview? If so, how do we make that happen before they destroy the democratic/Enlightenment worldview?
I for one am all for forcing the South to secede if they hate it here so much. I like the idea of loudmouthed fuckin’ Texas siddenly finding itself on the border with Mexico without all that delicious federal payola.
Hardly an original thought on my part, but the Civil War is one of those occasions where the loser actually got to write the history.
I grew up in the south, and even my very liberal, very socially conscious, very pro civil rights American history teacher taught the Civil War with a bit of a pro-south bias (not nearly as bad as most of the other teachers, but still noticeable).
Azuma @ 17
Yeah… No. Texas is one of the largest economies in the world. It doesn’t need fence money (they’d be happier with volunteer militia standing at the border with guns). With it’s autonomy and no fed supervision, I’d be very afraid of what they could get away with. Mexicans are already treated like shit by our federal gov’t; I can’t imagine the abuses potential without oversight.
The Civil War was … a total mobilization of society, the kind Europe wouldn’t see until World War I.
No, the war launched by the French Revolution against the Holy Roman Empire was the precedent-setter for total mobilization, including not just mass conscription but, e.g., the scraping-out of every stable (for the concentrated urea necessary for making gunpowder).
Rather odd for a writer who immediately cites Napoleon’s wars to get that wrong.
Furthermore ‘federal payola’ goes to services other than building and maintaining a border fence. Services are provided (such as healthcare/humanitarian aid) that are funded with Federal money. Yanking that puts people in precarious situations.
Sorry if I’m on an off-topic soapbox. But I’m Nuevo Mexicano and immigration is something I’m intimately familiar with and concerned about. I know how hard it is to get across the Sonoran or Chihuahuan Deserts. Many of my friends have suffered abuses at the border, and many still have family members recovering from mistreatment. The idea that Texas (or any border state) can just secede while we laugh at the silly thought of Mexicans invading a state of bigots is harmful.
/endrant
Thirding recommendations for this book. It took me a couple of months to get through it, because I kept getting nauseous while reading. Institutionalized slavery cannot be unseen.
AlexanderZ @ # 15 – You will have to come up with better citations than a link to your own overwrought comments.
Consider this, from Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence:
Unlike your comment that is completely unreferenced, and is written by a Random Person on the Internet.
Golly, I really want to subscribe to your newsletter!
I’m not certain it’s absolutely appropriate to compare the plight of Amerindians with the actions of Nazi Germany in WWII. If you think it is, you need to read Bloodlands…
About the only quibble I have (as a non U.S. person) is in the last bit. Where he denies that states have (or rather had) the right of secession. From what I learned the Confederates did seceed, the U.S. accepted that until they leveled fort Sumter, which Lincoln used as a casus belli and exploited it merciless for propaganda purposes.
@2: “Slavery didn’t really end until WWII was upon us”
Are you quite sure about that? What then would you call the “War On Blacks”, eh, sorry, “War On Drugs” and the enourmous number of not-free Black people who didn’t do shit and still live in tiny cells in prisons that belong to rich White people who can make them work for no pay whatsoever, while being afforded no rights whatsoever, no protection whatsoever?
And what would you call the fact that Black people still can be killed like animals by White people and then what happens? Nothing?
Blacks in America are not free, they are not seen as fully human, they are not granted the same rights, the same dignity, as White people, they are treated as Something To Do With As You Please for White people.
Slavery in America is not over at all. Not close, and it’s still as disgusting and horrifying as it used to be. Even more so, considering all the fucking work by Black civil rights activists, and how all the violence that is still committed against Black communities and individuals is state funded and thereby state sanctioned.
Too true.
Pierce R. Butler #23
Citations for what? For something that didn’t happen?
PZ’s point was that Hitler “admired” US’ genocide against the Native Americans. Your quotes could be used to argue to that effect, except for the simple fact that the conquest and colonization of Easter Europe was part of Lebensraum, an idea that was stated in Mein Kampf, Hitler’s Secret Book and fully explained as “a ruthless Germanization” of Eastern Europe during the 1933 meeting of the Nazi leadership (Gerhard L. Weinberg,The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe further reading in The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933-36, same author).
Can you any reference to Native Americans there? Or, for that matter, at any time before 1941? If you still don’t understand, let me spell this out for you: Is there any evidence that the genocide of Native Americans was ever important to Hitler’s ideology before mentioning said genocide became rhetorically and politically convenient (since US was already involved in the WW2 even before the official declaration of war)?
AlexanderZ @ # 29: … the conquest and colonization of Easter Europe was part of Lebensraum, an idea that was stated in Mein Kampf…
Debórah Dwork, co-author of Holocaust: A History, interviewed and paraphrased by Salon:
Can you [something] any reference to Native Americans there?
As I just quoted, there was no master blueprint for the Holocaust, and historians have been piecing various clues together for seventy years now. If you insist on a single “smoking gun” document, I hope you’ve had a lot of practice holding your breath, because you’re going to need it. The threads that made up the bloody tapestry came from Armenia, America, Namibia, Wittenburg, the Gospels, the Czar’s secret police, and multiple other spinning wheels: none deserve all of the blame, none merit exculpation.
Interesting article, but should have talked about or at least mentioned the enormous growth in the U.S. prison population in the last three decades. (Though this is definitely “a universal, both-sides-do-it phenomenon,” unlike Tea Party-leaning neo confederates of the article.)
And this is arguably more effective than Jim Crow or even slavery, since legislating and instituting harsher sentencing is seen as being not cruel and unusual punishment of the citizens who make up racially disproportionate percentages of the prison population. So, even when people are released, they can have restricted voting rights, much harder employment prospects, and a prior record on which to more easily warrant further punishment if the opportunity arises. All this can continue to be written into law by politicians who assure us that they truly believe racism is bad (or that it’s ) but ignore the giant elephant in the room that is the American criminal justice system.
There’s another modern model how it is possible that so many modern conservatives are in such denial over the racist elements of their party and platform.
#gamergate
#Gamergate started with harassment of Zoe Quinn. When they were exposed, they purposely took on the mantle of “ethics in games journalism,” which apparently went over well with folks and led to them gaining many more supporters than before (when it was basically just 4channers).
There’s two weird bits to this. One is that nearly any #gamergater you talk to denies that the movement itself is about ZQ (or any of the original women being targeted), and denies that it is about harassment or silencing voices at all. The second is that you don’t ever see a self-described #gamergater that takes the idea of “ethics in games journalism” alone; they always seem to carry around baggage of anti-feminism and anti-social-justice while ignoring what seem to be legitimate ethical issues.
My hypothesis is that framing of the rhetoric is just as important in shaping who ends up believing it and joining the group as the rhetoric itself. #gamergate said it was about ethics, but the go-to example was always ZQ and other women. The described ethical problems were always about women’s personal lives. The claimed perpetrator of these ethical issues were always described as SJWs. This framing acts as a dog whistle that even the dogs don’t realize they hear; attracting #gamergaters that are generally misogynistic despite the grand stated goals of the movement being unrelated to gender. Hell, I don’t think you’d even need someone blowing the whistle on purpose beyond a point; people perpetuate the framing themselves even without realizing it. Sometimes the framing gets lost as a result, but sometimes it sticks.
The shift and evolution of #gamergate happened over the course of a year or so. However, I think the same sort of thing can happen with larger political groups over long time periods. States Rights and support for the Job Creators and Small Businesses doesn’t seem too bad at first glance, and claiming to fight for those things could attract a wide variety of not-racist supporters. However, if the framing of States Rights is slavery (or more recently marriage equality and denial-of-service laws), or the framing of Job Creators is always in opposition to the “moocher class” (poor and largely non-white), you’re going to both attract mainly bigoted supporters and perpetuate bigoted implementations of your ideals
I would guess that, for a large percentage of Republicans, the incidence of racism and sexism in their party is confusing. After all, there’s no real straightforward reason why being in favor of smaller government should make one more bigoted. Yet the framing of these potentially noble ideals is one that has been carried forwards since the days of outright racism, if only becoming less explicit and perhaps even slightly hidden to even the supporters in recent times.
Azuma @ 17
You’re offering to pay moving expenses for those of us who’d be trapped behind those lines with no feasible means of escape? Give us sanctuary? My bet is no. Frankly, I’d be all for throwing the south under a bus like that, as long as all that was left here is people who were all for this reality-show-waiting-to-happen, those convinced secession is the One True Way. But that won’t be the outcome.
@Chris at 32,
Thanks for the explanation of Gamergate.
Just like noble ideals like “family values” have been exploited by Republicans to act against the interests of the LGBTQ community and reproductive rights, support for small businesses and job creators has been exploited by Republicans to act against the interests of Unions and the poor (and the Middle Class). So you’re right that Republican “values” appear neutral until you look at the policies that they engender — all of which are designed to help the 1% and maintain the status quo.
Pierce R. Butler #30
Your initial quote was Hitler talking about the Ukraine, and presumably, the subjugation and partial extermination of the Slavic population. While this was carried out together with the extermination of Jews, Roma and other “Untermensch”, the “Slavic problem” remained a different subject, which makes your latest comment irrelevant.
The quoted remarks couldn’t have been about what would be later known as the Holocaust, because the final solution was officially beginning in October 1941 (13.10.1941 – Heinrich Himmler personally orders the construction Operation Reinhard camp) and in 1942 Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec, Auschwitz II and other death camps were under construction or partially or fully operational. Furthermore, Oct. 1941 comes long after the formation of the Einsatzgruppen whose entire purpose was the extermination of conquered population (thus whether Hitler was talking about Jews, Slavs or whoever, it was still post hoc rhetoric).
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Secession was generally understood, even in 1860 by most white Southerners, as revolution rather than a typical constitutional process. The theorists who developed the idea otherwise over the course of the 1830s and 1840s, mostly in South Carolina and entirely to protect slavery, were a minority. The question of whether or not a state had a right to secede, especially unilaterally as they did, was generally considered open and ambiguous, rather than a firm thing as one might call a proper right. When the white Southerners gathered in their legislatures and organized secession conventions, they were presuming their read on the Constitution as the one true one and essentially daring the rest of the nation to tell them otherwise. Pretty cheeky for men who knew full well that their opinions were controversial even in their peer group.
One of the reasons unilateral secession is so problematic, aside that it’s nowhere so much as implied to be a power of the states, is that the Constitution recognizes exclusive federal jurisdiction over federal property within the states. This most famously included military forts, from Sumter on down, but also extended to many other things like armories, mints, customs houses, and post offices. Together these amounted to at least a thin net of federal property in every state. The federal government owned that land outright. What happens to that land if a state wants to leave the Union? South Carolina’s answer was that it instantly reverts to the state…even if that land was literally created by the federal government as in the case of Sumter on its artificial island. Most federal property within the South was seized by local militias or state authorities soon after states declared their secession, but not all of it. Georgia and Virginia both had seizures that even granting the theories of the secessionists are dubious since they took place before the secession did.
Lincoln had a constitutional duty to protect federal property and see the laws executed within the states. That duty included appointing postmasters, customs officials, etc. Southerners of both races expected that he would use that patronage power to appoint some mix of outsider abolitionists, local dissenters from slavery, and so forth. They would then cease censoring the southern mail for antislavery materials. They would probably more strictly enforce the ban on importing slaves from Africa. They might very well refuse to return slaves who fled to federal property to their owners, as the Republicans generally maintained that slavery existed only in state law. He would absolutely use his patronage power to establish some kind of Republican party in at least the Upper South. Thus they felt they must go and go at once, in the face of a dire crisis which they expected would at best lest to their personal ruin and likely also to racial Armageddon. In light of that, constitutional niceties really didn’t enter into things.
Incidentally, Sumter was seized more or less intact. Union bombardments reduced to to piles of rubble during the war.
From over here in ol’ Europa, we were taught that the US civil war was about slavery.. until at uni ee had a seminar on US history were a nice white prof explained it was all about secession and State’s rights. He talked up the great idea of Federalism and the “United, indivisible”. I thought, at the time, that if only the ol’ continent had had our civil war, we’d have overcome racial and ethnic tensions, overcome nationalism and been as happy and united as that great experiment over the pond. Then, later it all came back to same-old, same-old!
Why do we bother teaching “American History” in high school? What passes for “American History”, at least to that level, is fluff. Then, if you are lucky or tenacious, you just might get a glimpse of the real story. Good luck with that. We are still apes, albeit with a thin veneer of improved behavior.
AlexanderZ @ # 35: … carried out together with the extermination of Jews, Roma and other “Untermensch”, the “Slavic problem” remained a different subject…
So they were together but different. Uh-huh. The million or so Catholic Poles who died at Auschwitz were just “collateral damage” to the Real Holocaust®, eh?
The quoted remarks couldn’t have been about what would be later known as the Holocaust, because the final solution was officially beginning in October 1941 …
Yeah, we should take the official Nazi bureaucratic categories as definitive and comprehensive, of course.
Furthermore, Oct. 1941 comes long after the formation of the Einsatzgruppen whose entire purpose was the extermination of conquered population…
So the rolling death squads which killed (Slavs, Jews, leftists, whoever they got their hands on) by guns as well as (CO) gassing don’t count as “Holocaust” casualties either, in AlexanderZ’s book.
Please notify the US Holocaust Museum to remove all references to einsatsgruppen, since you have determined such activities were never part of their purview. I have no doubt they will express endless gratitude that you have simplified their task for them so authoritatively.
The same goes for the vast multitude of books about the Holocaust which got it wrong without your expert guidance. (Professor Dwork will certainly want to rectify her statement quoted in my previous link that “… the practice of killing Jews came before the policy decision to murder the Jews of Europe.”) Since issuing corrected editions of all of them would cost so much, perhaps you could aid all those authors and publishers by hosting a nice bonfire.
Pierce R. Butler #39
Who the hell are talking with?! Because that sure as hell isn’t me!
They were, what they weren’t, and here I’m quoting you, victims of . Because they weren’t Ukrainians. Get it?
No, but that’s an example of an important milestone.
That is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what I’ve said!
AlexanderZ @ # 41 – We do seem to be arguing at cross purposes here.
I started out attempting to defend our esteemed host’s linkage of German- and US-perpetrated genocides, then diverged into replying to (my perception of) your responses – my apologies for apparently losing the track there.
Most of what I’ve read about the Holocaust comes from library books – what I have on my shelves here at home does not seem to include much about which precedents Hitler, Himmler, & Co. had in mind. Nor (not very surprisingly) could I find much about genocides of Native American peoples from searching the US Holocaust Museum’s site. Fwliw, I do recall reading, somewhere, serious historical analysis agreeing with Myers’s comment # 12 above.
It’s also worth noting (no, I can’t at the moment cite sources*, so take this with as much salt as you wish) that Nazi intellectuals reportedly drew heavily on US pseudoscience published in the late 19th century in opposition to immigration from Slavic nations. The core motive at the time was industrialists’ resistance to workers with strong union-organizing traditions, but it expressed itself according to long-established US traditions as racist denigration of Jews and Slavs alike, much to the delight of later Rassenhygiene proponents.
*Well, there’s this (search for “Pre-Nazi and Nazi eugenicists often pointed to America as their model”).
[Apologies to all if this comment appears twice – my earlier upload didn’t seem to make it, even after a couple of refreshes, though the FtB software just chided me for duplicating what I’d previously said…]
AlexanderZ @ # 41 – We do seem to be arguing at cross purposes here.
I started out attempting to defend our esteemed host’s linkage of German- and US-perpetrated genocides, then diverged into replying to (my perception of) your responses – my apologies for apparently losing the track there.
Most of what I’ve read about the Holocaust comes from library books – what I have on my shelves here at home does not seem to include much about which precedents Hitler, Himmler, & Co. had in mind. Nor (not very surprisingly) could I find much about genocides of Native American peoples from searching the US Holocaust Museum’s site. Fwliw, I do recall reading, somewhere, serious historical analysis agreeing with Myers’s comment # 12 above.
It’s also worth noting (no, I can’t at the moment cite sources*, so take this with as much salt as you wish) that Nazi intellectuals reportedly drew heavily on US pseudoscience published in the late 19th century in opposition to immigration from Slavic nations. The core motive at the time was industrialists’ resistance to workers with strong union-organizing traditions, but it expressed itself according to long-established US traditions as racist denigration of Jews and Slavs alike, much to the delight of later Rassenhygiene proponents.
*Well, there’s this (search for “Pre-Nazi and Nazi eugenicists often pointed to America as their model”).
For some reason, the commenting software won’t let me reply here – at least, my last few attempts have produced either nothing or a “Duplicate comment detected…” chiding, but nothing that shows up after multiple refreshes.
So, I’ll try to rephrase what I said, with apologies to all if you see repetition(s).
AlexanderZ @ # 41 – Sorry if I misunderstood your intent – once we diverged from what Myers said @ # 12, I was just attempting to respond to an apparent misreading of your comments.
I have seen serious historians supporting the case that the Nazis consciously emulated US policy toward Native American peoples, but can’t find supporting evidence on either my own bookshelves or (not surprisingly) the US Holocaust Museum.
Tangentially, I have seen evidence that Hitler’s “scholars” relied heavily on US precedents from the late 19th century, when a lot of pseudoscience came out here in opposition to immigration from eastern Europe. At bottom, that derived from industrialists’ resistance to absorbing populations with a strong union-organizing tradition, but in classic US mode expressed itself as racist denigration of Slavs and Jews. See, e.g., this (search for “Pre-Nazi and Nazi eugenicists often pointed to America as their model”).
Damnit! AlexanderZ, I’ve tried to reply to you several times, but the commenting software here keeps blocking what I upload.
This comment is an experiment to see if it will let me post anything here (I just tried and succeeded on another thread).
Okay, that worked. I’ll now try a part of an earlier attempt:
We do seem to be arguing at cross purposes here.
I started out attempting to defend our esteemed host’s linkage of German- and US-perpetrated genocides, then diverged into replying to (my perception of) your responses – my apologies for apparently losing the track there.
I have seen serious historians supporting the case that the Nazis consciously emulated US policy toward Native American peoples, but can’t find supporting evidence on either my own bookshelves or (not surprisingly) the US Holocaust Museum.
Now the part that includes a link, which I suspect may have caused the blockage:
Tangentially, I have seen evidence that Hitler’s “scholars” relied heavily on US precedents from the late 19th century, when a lot of pseudoscience came out here in opposition to immigration from eastern Europe. At bottom, that derived from industrialists’ resistance to absorbing populations with a strong union-organizing tradition, but in classic US mode expressed itself as racist denigration of Slavs and Jews. See, e.g., this (search for “Pre-Nazi and Nazi eugenicists often pointed to America as their model”).
Hmmm. Again my comment-attempt disappeared – it may have had something to do with the embedded link.
Another try: Tangentially, I have seen evidence that Hitler’s “scholars” relied heavily on US precedents from the late 19th century, when a lot of pseudoscience came out here in opposition to immigration from eastern Europe. At bottom, that derived from industrialists’ resistance to absorbing populations with a strong union-organizing tradition, but in classic US mode expressed itself as racist denigration of Slavs and Jews.
Do a search for “Pre-Nazi and Nazi eugenicists often pointed to America as their model” at site:debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/ for my supporting evidence.
And again multiple attempts at posting the rest of my reply failed. I thought it may have had to do with my embedded link – did I miss a memo somewhen about not citing J•hn L*ft*s’s “d*b*nk*ng_chr*st**n*t* blog here?
The related text: Tangentially, I have seen evidence that Hitler’s “scholars” relied heavily on US precedents from the late 19th century, when a lot of pseudoscience came out here in opposition to immigration from eastern Europe. At bottom, that derived from industrialists’ resistance to absorbing populations with a strong union-organizing tradition, but in classic US mode expressed itself as racist denigration of Slavs and Jews.
For support, see the first couple of hits at this search.
Pierce R. Butler
Too many links perhaps? I know WP may eat comments with over 5 links.
Neither in Yad Vashem and I’ve checked as recently as this Thursday (during this year’s Holocaust remembrance day).
I do not dispute this fact. The origins of modern racism, eugenics, fascism and Nazism are complex and international. I was merely disputing PZ’s statement that .
AlexanderZ @ # 45: Too many links perhaps?
No, just one link – to a blog run by someone who used to have a blog here. I suspect I missed/forgot some pyrotechnics when/after that person left FtB.
I was merely disputing PZ’s statement that “Hitler admired the way Americans exterminated our native population”.
Giving up on Serious History Books and resorting to DuckDuckGo, I come up with these. None of those sources seems to carry much academic clout, though I see the first (jewishjournal.com; looks like a personal blog) does cite John Toland:
Mr. Myers, thanks for bringing this blogger to my attention. He writes excellent stuff.