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One of the growing myths about American history is that white Southerners in the late 1930s were in sympathy with Hitler, when that’s the opposite of the truth.
A few years ago, I read an article about the regional patterns in Congressional support in 1939-1940 for FDR’s hard line against Germany. In my memory the author was Nicholas Lemann, former dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, although I haven’t been able to track anything down by Lemann so I may well have it wrong.
The author’s point was that FDR’s strongest regional base of support in the Senate for supporting Britain against the Nazis before Pearl Harbor came from Senators in the Jim Crow states.
Why?
The South tended to be nativist with few immigrants, nationalistic, militarist, and its leaders looked forward to the construction of military bases in the South, where the weather is good enough in winter for training and the land was cheap, to boost the South’s economy.
In contrast, the most isolationist part of the country was the more progressive north central region like Minnesota and Wisconsin, where there were more immigrants (especially from Germany, Scandinavia, and anti-English parts of Ireland, many of whom had opposed American entry into the Great War), many people were inclined toward pacifism, and leaders didn’t lust as much for military spending.
Anybody know where I can find a good historical account of this era?
P.S. Communists in the U.S. opposed FDR’s hard line against the Nazis from August 23, 1939 to June 22, 1941.
Finns (refugees from the losing side of the 1917-1918 Finnish civil war) and Jews were disproportionately represented in members of CPUSA. This bit of history is not well-remembered outside of aging Commentary magazine-type circles. I once asked a contemporary Jewish novelist why his (deservedly) popular novel set in New York leftist Jewish circles in 1940 had zero mention of the Hitler-Stalin pact that obsessed actual New York leftist Jews at the time. He didn’t really have an answer. I’m not sure that he had ever thought much about it.
The author’s point was that FDR’s strongest regional base of support in the Senate for supporting Britain against the Nazis before Pearl Harbor came from Senators in the Jim Crow states.
I wonder if they would have been so enthusiastic about this if they’d known that, once the soldiers got back, their kids and grandkids would forever be compared to Nazis. And, in fact, just assumed by some to be Nazis due to their birthplace.
If they had known this, and it had indeed dampened their enthusiasm, it would be hard to blame them, you know?
Don’t you mean Southerners in the late 2030’s?
The North and Hitler
By Michael Martin
on Jan 11, 2018
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-north-and-hitler/
“When we examine who these American industrialists were that supported Hitler, history shows us that they were largely NORTHERN men.”
Heather MacDonald in one of her books revisits a major leftist literary mag (I think it’s the Monthly Review) out of New York, on the day after declaration, which quoted many of the major left-leaning authors of the time all making comparisons to WWI and calling war a mistake.
Its well to remember that political alignments were completely different then than they are today. The Democrats, and FDR, did strongest with white voters in the South (Blacks were still mainly a Republican voting bloc). He was least popular, and the Republicans relatively strong, in the Northeast, particularly New England, and the Midwest.
However, the Midwest in the twentieth century was always the most isolationist/ pacificist region and also has had the least military spending and military presence. Its also why its filled with states that get back less in federal government spending then they put in.
However, the Midwest in the twentieth century was always the most isolationist/ pacificist region and also has had the least military spending and military presence. Its also why its filled with states that get back less in federal government spending then they put in.
Modern American partisan allegiances really come from where you stood on the Civil Rights struggle from the 1960s. This tended to harder as the older (New Deal) generations died off. My guess is that its one of the things that will change when the Baby Boom generation dies off.
You would expect states near the Canadian border to be more anti-British regardless of ethnic makeup.
Communists in the U.S. opposed FDR’s hard line against the Nazis from August 24, 1939 to June 21, 1941.
Jews and Finns (refugees from the losing side of the 1917-1918 Finnish civil war) were disproportionately represented in followers of CPUSA.
The Southern white has always been heavily overrepresented in the American military, both in quality and quantity. One reason the Civil War lasted so long is that the best Union leaders and soldiers all were Southern dudes who went home to defend Dixie, while the North had to make do with the incompetent and/or unaggressive generals and really-not-that-into-it conscripts and foreigner mercenaries (Irish).
It’s tradition that a nation’s hard-to-control areas also contradictorily produce the hardest/best soldiers. For example, sfter the British finally put down the Scots after centuries of trying, the large, aggressive Scottish troops—who had previously made a name for themselves serving onthe Continent as mercenaries in Prussia and in the French military for hundred of years (both the Garde Du Corps and Garde Ecossaise were French units almost exclusively Scottish going back to the beginnings of the Auld Alliance)—well, the Scots now became Her Majesty’s most loyal attack dogs in the military. It’s not for nothing that James Bond, her majesty’s greatest secret agent (and former Naval commander), was made to have strong Scottish ancestry.
So too with the difficult-to-control, wild South for America.
These weren’t pro forma reds, they were fellow travelers and sympathetics, and they did change their tune when Moscow did. Also I remember a lot of them weren’t Jewish, the main ethnic group seemed to be Irish or English. Not finding it online but it would have been published as a column before being compiled into a book.
Facts don’t matter. The usual suspects are busy photoshopping little mustaches on every southerner they can find from the period.
There were Nazi summer camps in the northern US though: https://gizmodo.com/how-american-nazis-used-summer-camps-to-indoctrinate-th-1743267747
“its leaders looked forward to the construction of military bases in the South, where the weather is good enough in winter for training and the land was cheap, to boost the South’s economy.”
Still the case, too. I’ve told my Northern friends who crow about getting rid of those fascistic military bases that they might want to reconsider that. Do they really want the South to continue to influence the culture and tenor of the militry that much by further concentrating bases there?
No sensible country concentrates its military power in one region. Progs aren’t sensible, though. They don’t realize that if they’d keep bases distributed through blue areas that the locales will have at least some effect on the soldiers, and probably accelerate the “Nu-military” they want so badly. Concentrating them in the one remaining part of the country where a traditional military outlook is already woven thoroughly into the culture probably does something to hinder that.
As Hackett-Fisher pointed out in Albion’s Seed, the lowland Southerners (from the Royalist regions of SW England) and the Scotch-Irish hillbillies have supported every war America ever fought, regardless of the ideology behind the war or the nature of the enemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Battalion
Why would they be anti-British? By the 1930s Canada had been effectively independent for decades.
In Philip Roth’s alternate history novel The Plot Against America, Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 election. Really putting the fiction into historical fiction, Roth has Lindbergh winning every state below the Mason-Dixon except Maryland.
Aside from that, if you have to a book about America throwing a brief Nazi hissy-fit, I understand that a writer named Roth would be most concerned with what would happen to Jews. But it couldn't even get that right. I wasn't scared for any of them. It was just like, well, that stuff happened.
Per capita, the South has always produced more soldiers, and more medals, than any other region. I think the best explanation is in James Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, but Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture provides a wider picture.
It is an ethnic thing. ‘Southern culture’ was formed primarily by the marriage of Scots-Irish with Celtic fringe Anglo-Norman country squire. Each of those groups came to this continent with it ground into their marrow bones to be ready, to be honored, to fight for the land on which they live.
The WASP is a very different creature, and the Yankee WASP made the Southerner the nation’s first villain. That has never really changed. It has gone mostly dormant for stretches, but now it is once again raging.
The USA as it is now is suicidal, and thus it is a given that its Elites and their sacred cow pets want to remake history to further damn the South.
I say that if they really believe what they claim about the white South, they should offer to pay all white Southerns $500,000 to leave the USA permanently, so their places can be taken by more Numinous Negroes and ‘moderate’ Mohammedans.
I took a class on World War 2 a while back during college and one of the things I vaguely remember learning about was how Jim Crow reared its ugly head during the war. I believe the incident quoted below was what we briefly discussed.
Although I’m not a huge fan of these anthem protests today, I could see the above as being one of the few instances where someone might legitimately feel like their country let them down and that their own flag wasn’t worth standing for. That Southern restaurants would openly serve German POWs but shun African American soldiers is one of those things that truly boggles the mind. I suppose this is all part of the uh Original Sin that’s led us into our current state of affairs…
Some of these rubrics were discretionary restriction of custom. Others were incorporated into commercial law in the states in question. We can check period statutes, but I'll wager the law in all these places would have required separate seating or required limiting colored custom to take-out. There were actually annual guidebooks published at that time which directed black customers to establishments which served blacks (either exclusively or in separate seating).
David Simon is making a mini-series of Roth’s novel.
I'm going to get published with a movie deal and serious critical buzz. I'll plagiarize the Flash Gordon movie as Shlomo Ben Judah Conquers The Natsi Empire. It will have an unrelenting tone of utter seriousness not seen since Manos: The Hands Of Fate. Every single scene will include both the phrases "we must never forget" and "it can't happen here." Even the scenes where only bad guys are onscreen. When the secret police look at footage of Hitler while interrogating Topol and note, "now, he showed promise!" I will deliverately leave a Gilbert and Sullivan update clause for future productions to insert whoever is the current American president. The screenplay will come with educational material packs to get into the public school racket. Brian Blessed is still alive, right?
By the way, the good thing about Hollywood taking so dang long to make anything is that we had a lull before the full onslaught of Trump-obsessed material gets released. All of which will probably be about fascism and gas chambers.
It's tradition that a nation's hard-to-control areas also contradictorily produce the hardest/best soldiers. For example, sfter the British finally put down the Scots after centuries of trying, the large, aggressive Scottish troops---who had previously made a name for themselves serving onthe Continent as mercenaries in Prussia and in the French military for hundred of years (both the Garde Du Corps and Garde Ecossaise were French units almost exclusively Scottish going back to the beginnings of the Auld Alliance)---well, the Scots now became Her Majesty's most loyal attack dogs in the military. It's not for nothing that James Bond, her majesty's greatest secret agent (and former Naval commander), was made to have strong Scottish ancestry.
So too with the difficult-to-control, wild South for America.
Midwesterners > Southerners > Easterners
Midwesterners > Westerners > Southerners > Easterners > Pacific Westerners
The Marine Corps has historically been considered heavily Southern, though perhaps that’s changed recently. Much of this was probably due to, after a minor and lackluster showing in the first major battle of the Civil War (First Battle of Bull Run / Manasas) the USMC took no significant part in the Civil War. That enabled bright young Southern officer material to serve with pride in the USMC when memory of the war was still fresh, imparting a southern character to the institution. It helped that the USMC’s major facilities (bases, schools, and training grounds) were in the south.
USMC:
If I remember correctly, FDR’s Secretary of War, James Byrnes, was a southerner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes
Notice the New Deal connection: how much of that was infrastructural investment for rural and Southern communities?
It's tradition that a nation's hard-to-control areas also contradictorily produce the hardest/best soldiers. For example, sfter the British finally put down the Scots after centuries of trying, the large, aggressive Scottish troops---who had previously made a name for themselves serving onthe Continent as mercenaries in Prussia and in the French military for hundred of years (both the Garde Du Corps and Garde Ecossaise were French units almost exclusively Scottish going back to the beginnings of the Auld Alliance)---well, the Scots now became Her Majesty's most loyal attack dogs in the military. It's not for nothing that James Bond, her majesty's greatest secret agent (and former Naval commander), was made to have strong Scottish ancestry.
So too with the difficult-to-control, wild South for America.
If memory serves, Bond’s Scottish background was a retcon that was introduced after Connery was cast as a way to explain Bond speaking with a Scottish accent.
Some of that had to do with Winfield Scott. Non-Southerners in the pre-Civil War army complained that he favored Southern officers, which made advancement difficult for people from other regions of the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_Bond,_1st_Baronet
The World is not Enough.
Sure but contrary to our uh good friend John Derbyshire’s exhortation for civility between blacks and whites in this country today, white Southerners had a pretty well documented history of racism and violence towards blacks and in general tended to treat blacks fairly poorly on average. Hardly a paragon worthy of emulation here.
Wow, talk about synchronicity. I hadn’t thought about that book for years, until it got brought up today, when the show was apparently announced.
From the New York Times:
Yeah, that’s eerie, all right. Look at all those concentration camps going up across America. I mean, the book is practically ripped from the headlines, just like an episode of Law & Order!
Of course, Donald Trump isn’t an anti-Semite, or a white supremacist, or even sympathetic to Fascism, but he’s still evil because… well… because he’s probably going to start putting Jews in concentration camps.
Granted. If this was even remotely possible, Philip Roth would have to be the stupidest person alive for saying this in a major newspaper. And there would be no possible way that David Simon would get this show put on TV.
But still. If you look at the history of the Jewish people, you can understand why guys like Roth and Simon would want to err on the side of caution.
(And, by “caution”, I of course mean “gross, suicidal recklessness”.)
I've always been underwhelmed by Roth's novels. OTOH, the short story Goodbye, Columbus hit the nail on the head for me. I somehow came to be dating a popsie several glorious times from Teaneck New Jersey whose father was closer to her than need be. A perfect match to the heroine of that story. As Roth and I are but one year apart in age, it may have been the same goddess. My best friend, Bob Charles (R.I.P.) was a friend of Roth's at the U of Chicago and attended one of Roth's weddings.
Irish were also heavy on the left, though I don’t know their proportion in the CPUSA. But Finns were more useful to the Commies than either Jews obsessed with goy’s misdeeds and Irishmen with Anglo-Saxon ones.
Finnish historical resentment was largely directed at Swedes. They didn’t care about us, so there was little chance of them popping off Kinsley-style and alienating the natives. Thus Arvo Gus Hallberg, aka Gus Hall, was a natural to lead the party for years.
None of these people could go back– someone else controlled their homelands. In contrast, German and Italian principalities had just become united countries, and Norway achieved independence. Those disgruntled here could return home, and very many did. The ones who stayed were by-and-large happy here, and thus less radical.
This would be the same David Simon, of Wire fame, who insists that it’s okay that the government is always watching us because after all, nobody’s actually watching all that material, they’re just collecting it?
I’m going to get published with a movie deal and serious critical buzz. I’ll plagiarize the Flash Gordon movie as Shlomo Ben Judah Conquers The Natsi Empire. It will have an unrelenting tone of utter seriousness not seen since Manos: The Hands Of Fate. Every single scene will include both the phrases “we must never forget” and “it can’t happen here.” Even the scenes where only bad guys are onscreen. When the secret police look at footage of Hitler while interrogating Topol and note, “now, he showed promise!” I will deliverately leave a Gilbert and Sullivan update clause for future productions to insert whoever is the current American president. The screenplay will come with educational material packs to get into the public school racket. Brian Blessed is still alive, right?
Yes.
.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes
Notice the New Deal connection: how much of that was infrastructural investment for rural and Southern communities?
Walter Duranty was literally English– he was born in Liverpool. A true-blue Yankee like Anita Whitney was quite rare, and thus a prize acquisition for the movement.
German American disloyalty in the 1940 and 1944 elections is sort of a verboten subject, but it happened. To give an example, McIntosh County, ND is 72% German American according to the 2000 census. FDR won 86.9% and 52.4% in his first two elections there. In 1940 and 44 he won 8.3 and 7.8%. In these two elections, 3rd and 4th generation Germans voted with the same ethnic solidarity as Obama-era blacks and yet nobody ever talks about it.
Weird how that's a verboten subject, but it's still totally cool to compare southerners to Nazis, even though they actually did go off to fight.
Maybe the German-Americans could just foresee the future, and were looking out for their fellow citizens.
You cite "German American disloyalty in the 1940 and 1944 elections..."
Disloyalty to whom?
My Dad voted for Thomas Dewey in 1944. Of course he had to use an absentee ballot because he was in England at the time, in the 8th Air Force, flying combat missions over German occupied Europe.
I guess he was “disloyal” too – maybe even a traitor. But then again, he was one of those “nazi” southerners.
Good thing we were “fighting for democracy” so that we had the right to vote for President-for-Life FDR, ……………..and nobody else.
You are correct about Lemann’s comments. They appeared in his September 26, 2013 NY Review of Books review of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson (Liveright, 706 pp.)
They were more torn in the previous war. Southerners loved Wilson– only FDR won by greater margins in the region– and seemed to support him on everything but women’s suffrage. They were quite ready to go to war, but with one big reservation:
They did not want blacks to be drafted, and senators like Tillman and Vardaman came right out and said so. But you can imagine how popular that stance would be in the rest of the country, whose own white boys would also be marching off to die.
So blacks were drafted, but only to be cooks and the like. To be armed with nothing more deadly than a steak knife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
Ok, but remember that the South was also the most enthusiastic for the recent dumb Middle East wars of no positive consequence for the South or the US. It could just as easily be explained by lower average intelligence, greater ignorance, greater bellicosity, greater religiosity (of a certain kind that lends itself to greater militarism), or some combination thereof.
It’s helpful to remember that much of the 19th and most of the 20th support of the Left in the U.S. from many ethnic groups came from the Labor Union section. The unions were viewed as having made great advances in protecting workers and giving them higher pay and benefits, and since the Left organized them, the Left got the credit.
Labor unions also worked in foreign countries to drive people to the Left. George Orwell saw the bad conditions of workers and saw the labor unions fighting for the workers and felt sympathy and became a man of the Left. It was only later he realized that while unions could be forces for good, the Marxist-left was completely evil.
That’s roughly true so far as regions go. But blacks already bolted Democrat before the 60s, for instance. And that doesn’t address trans-regional “identities” such as agedness and so forth. Nor does it directly have to do with class or city versus suburbs/country, or married versus single, man versus woman, and so on.
The Lend-Lease Act passed in March 1941 on a vote of 60-31. Only one Southern senator – Robert Reynolds of North Carolina – voted against it. Every other region of the country was much more divided – 5 of 12 New England senators voted against it, as did 3 of the 6 senators from the Left Coast.
Of course if you read the Wikipedia article on the Act it only discusses partisan differences in support (Democrats were much more supportivre of Lend-Lease than Republicans), but makes no mention of regional ones.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes
Notice the New Deal connection: how much of that was infrastructural investment for rural and Southern communities?
FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction of hydroelectric dams was a huge boon to the hillbilly part of the South. See George Clooney’s speech in praise of the TVA modernizing the South at the end of “O Brother Where Art Thou” — it’s played as comic, but it’s also totally reasonable.
Anyway, to me that was one of the best Coen brothers' movies. I haven't often seen movies that romanticize the Great Depression period in America. They picked all those great songs from the period for the soundtrack too. It's one of the best soundtrack albums out there. How can you not like the Soggy Bottom Boy's Man of Constant Sorrow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meCZ5hWNRFU
Each song tells key truth.
Steve Sailer wrote:
Which of course created a simple way to determine who among the Reds and their fellow travelers had some sense of personal decency vs. those who had no personal integrity at all.
Incidentally, I am currently reading a fascinating book about how the Soviets systematically courted and seduced Western literary, artistic, and intellectual figures prior to WW II: Stephen Koch’s Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals (be sure to read the revised edition). Despite the subtitle, this is less about Munzenberg as an individual than about the pre-war Western cultural scene and the general madness within the Soviet Union.
The book is extremely revealing about some of the figures we have all heard about. E.g., Hemingway was cowardly scum pretending to be manly, whereas Ernest’s drinking pal John Dos Passos turns out to have been a man who actually cared about innocent human lives. Koch also has revealing vignettes about Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, the Bloomsbury set, etc.
It is also interesting to hear of a time when poets (!) and novelists actually had significant influence on society.
Dave
German American disloyalty in the 1940 and 1944 elections is sort of a verboten subject, but it happened.
Weird how that’s a verboten subject, but it’s still totally cool to compare southerners to Nazis, even though they actually did go off to fight.
Maybe the German-Americans could just foresee the future, and were looking out for their fellow citizens.
They did not want blacks to be drafted, and senators like Tillman and Vardaman came right out and said so. But you can imagine how popular that stance would be in the rest of the country, whose own white boys would also be marching off to die.
So blacks were drafted, but only to be cooks and the like. To be armed with nothing more deadly than a steak knife.
Black American units that did fight in the Great War were seconded to the French:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
Isn’t there a bit in the book about a sinister Southern Jew?
Twenty bucks says that, if he makes it into the show, the actor who plays him will bear an uncanny resemblance to Stephen Miller.
I don’t have a problem with a Scottish Bond, but I always thought Connery’s accent was best left unexplained. Making Connery Scottish sort of ruins the joke. After all, he’s been a Russian, an Irishman, and some sort of ancient Spanish-Egyptian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB92HixdJbg
Isn’t there a bit in the book about a sinister Southern Jew?
Twenty bucks says that, if he makes it into the show, the actor who plays him will bear an uncanny resemblance to Stephen Miller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMwddHeeP44
The whole commie-Nazi romantic interlude has, if not Bern memory-holed, at least has been obscured. The commies themselves would rather forget. Sometimes you hear about it from “red diaper babies,” but their stories aren’t for wide consumption.
Here in MN we hear about Lindbergh, of course. But that’s mostly what the rest of you hear: that one line about Jews in his speech, and intimations of crypto-nazism.
The memory of Robert LaFollette is still a bit in the air, though we try not to think of Wisconsinites.
I haven't got Lindbergh's speech in front of me but his statement was reasonable regarding the Jews. He said that they along with American Anglophiles had vested interests which both groups were entitled to but which were detrimental to America's interests.
To get a taste of SJW myth-making, take a gander at Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus . It basically depicts Southerners as buffoonish Quislings to the Reich:
http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
In Roth’s novel the spear-tip of creeping American fascism is a program instituted by the fictional Lindbergh Administration to take Jews out of the cities and ‘Americanize’ them on summer-camp style learning farms. In reality, it was Roth’s boyhood hero FDR who speculated about doing almost the exact same thing in a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister.
There was Nazi propaganda against the United States that managed to be both anti-Black and anti-KKK. At least, I think that is what is going on here. Nazi propaganda was also extremely anti-Masonic.
https://peacethroughvictory.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/propaganda-collection-1/liberators-kultur-terror-anti-americanism-1944-nazi-propaganda-poster/
Haha! You are correct; The Red Finns (the ones my ancestors didn’t get a chance to kill off) wound up running for their pathetic lives, and boarding steam ships to USA and Canada in 1918 – they came to work the mines and forestry/saw mills in the Mid-West. University of Washington has a lot of info about Finns in the USA.
As weird as it sounds, it is always awkward when “old Finns” in this country randomly meet me…because almost immediately, they realize I am from a Patriot family…and their relative was a sell-out communist. But, my ancestors prevailed..theirs fled in disgrace if they weren’t executed by the “Whites.”
Wikipedia claims there was a reconciliation after the slaughter of the Finnish Civil War, and Left vs Right ceased to be an issue.
Blacks were already voting majority Democrat by FDR’s first term, mainly because of economic/welfare issues.
Having never read Roth, I picked up that book unprepared for how historically silly it would be.
Aside from that, if you have to a book about America throwing a brief Nazi hissy-fit, I understand that a writer named Roth would be most concerned with what would happen to Jews. But it couldn’t even get that right. I wasn’t scared for any of them. It was just like, well, that stuff happened.
When I reached the end my main reaction was, “Man, this guy has a chip on his shoulder against gentiles!”
He’d be better off doing It Can’t Happen Here, though that could be my Minnesota talking.
By the way, the good thing about Hollywood taking so dang long to make anything is that we had a lull before the full onslaught of Trump-obsessed material gets released. All of which will probably be about fascism and gas chambers.
https://peacethroughvictory.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/propaganda-collection-1/liberators-kultur-terror-anti-americanism-1944-nazi-propaganda-poster/
I see references to Chicago gangsters, Jewish moneybags, Negroes, lynching and Ku-Kluxers, Jazz records, Freemasonry, beauty pageants, majorettes, and Indians.
Halvorson:
You cite “German American disloyalty in the 1940 and 1944 elections…”
Disloyalty to whom?
Still the case, too. I've told my Northern friends who crow about getting rid of those fascistic military bases that they might want to reconsider that. Do they really want the South to continue to influence the culture and tenor of the militry that much by further concentrating bases there?
No sensible country concentrates its military power in one region. Progs aren't sensible, though. They don't realize that if they'd keep bases distributed through blue areas that the locales will have at least some effect on the soldiers, and probably accelerate the "Nu-military" they want so badly. Concentrating them in the one remaining part of the country where a traditional military outlook is already woven thoroughly into the culture probably does something to hinder that.
Military enlistees, without doubt. Largely southern and midwestern.
The officer corps, though, a different matter. Not only are a certain proportion of them distributed by state, the service academies are now hotbeds of ‘received opinion’ and p.c. orthodoxy. The recent p.r. stunt pulled by the AFA superintendent is hardly unusual. These are political creatures with their moistened fingers perpetually to the wind. For one thing, like most everyone else on earth they know who butters their bread.
Frankly, the enlistees aren’t that far behind. Indoctrination is more important than just about anything else in today’s military, and this fact has been well documented in this very forum.
Of course, this forum also contains a number of military partisans who assured us that the AFA stunt would result in an official investigation whose results would be publicized for all to see.
Really. He said it just like that. NPR: ‘You Should Be Outraged,’ Air Force Academy Head Tells Cadets About Racism On Campus
The military of today isn't the sea of toxic white masculinity it was even 10 years ago. The population it recruits from is only 50-50 white/non-white. While there are limiters such as IQ and criminal records, we cannot expect the loyalty from the military that was previously expected. The Special Forces may be different.
Would these guys count? I’m not that familiar with the Irish in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Battalion
I'm going to get published with a movie deal and serious critical buzz. I'll plagiarize the Flash Gordon movie as Shlomo Ben Judah Conquers The Natsi Empire. It will have an unrelenting tone of utter seriousness not seen since Manos: The Hands Of Fate. Every single scene will include both the phrases "we must never forget" and "it can't happen here." Even the scenes where only bad guys are onscreen. When the secret police look at footage of Hitler while interrogating Topol and note, "now, he showed promise!" I will deliverately leave a Gilbert and Sullivan update clause for future productions to insert whoever is the current American president. The screenplay will come with educational material packs to get into the public school racket. Brian Blessed is still alive, right?
The Wire was a masterpiece, aside from my usual complaint about all the better t.v. shows being about degenerate people doing unwholesome things. There are other sorts of stories, Hollywood. But write what you know.
Oh, and the criminals were all way too smart. The cops and politicians were too smart, too, but the criminals are waaay outside a realistic range of intelligence. But they have to make the drama interesting, I know.
I watch little video clips, interviews, documentaries about that show, and its makers have a completely different take on it from me. I mean, insanely, wildly different. But they do it realistically enough that a person with my views recognises Baltimorean tragedy. Just not the whys of it, in my opinion. But we can come together on the fact that Baltimore sucks.
The rest of his oeuvre isn’t very good. The anti-Iraq War miniseries, eh. The post-Katrina New Orleans thingy, pfft. The miniseries Show Me a Hero had a bit of an iSteve-y premise: federally-mandated “scattered-site” public housing “desegregation” in Yonkers in the late-80s, early 90s, as resisted by badwhites and pushed by a Polack mayor (played by Man of Many Races Oscar Isaac.) Not very good.
Now, it appears Simon is slowly becoming interested in his own people. The Deuce is superficially about pimps and ho’s, police corruption, and mobsters opening up massage parlors in Taxi Driver-era New York. But really, it’s about the brave Jewish revolutionaries who brought pornography to the masses.
Soon, he will release a show about alternate-history America throwing a fascist hissy-fit and taking their repressed anger (and small penis shame or whatever) out on Jews.
Was this Michael Chabon?
It's tradition that a nation's hard-to-control areas also contradictorily produce the hardest/best soldiers. For example, sfter the British finally put down the Scots after centuries of trying, the large, aggressive Scottish troops---who had previously made a name for themselves serving onthe Continent as mercenaries in Prussia and in the French military for hundred of years (both the Garde Du Corps and Garde Ecossaise were French units almost exclusively Scottish going back to the beginnings of the Auld Alliance)---well, the Scots now became Her Majesty's most loyal attack dogs in the military. It's not for nothing that James Bond, her majesty's greatest secret agent (and former Naval commander), was made to have strong Scottish ancestry.
So too with the difficult-to-control, wild South for America.
Whorefinder, your analysis is so lazy and ill informed that I am forwarding this to the NYT. I think you may have a future there.
The memory of Robert LaFollette is still a bit in the air, though we try not to think of Wisconsinites.
guest:
I haven’t got Lindbergh’s speech in front of me but his statement was reasonable regarding the Jews. He said that they along with American Anglophiles had vested interests which both groups were entitled to but which were detrimental to America’s interests.
I understand why the America First movement told him to shut it, because they didn't need bad PR. I also understand why the opposition went berserk, at least from a propaganda perspective. But why does history still care? Man, we have giant blond spots surrounding WWII and its build-up. Ones which shall certainly never be corrected.
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.This is what he said about the British:It is obvious and perfectly understandable that Great Britain wants the United States in the war on her side. England is now in a desperate position. Her population is not large enough and her armies are not strong enough to invade the continent of Europe and win the war she declared against Germany.
Her geographical position is such that she cannot win the war by the use of aviation alone, regardless of how many planes we send her. Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.
As you all know, we were left with the debts of the last European war; and unless we are more cautious in the future than we have been in the past, we will be left with the debts of the present case. If it were not for her hope that she can make us responsible for the war financially, as well as militarily, I believe England would have negotiated a peace in Europe many months ago, and be better off for doing so.
England has devoted, and will continue to devote every effort to get us into the war. We know that she spent huge sums of money in this country during the last war in order to involve us. Englishmen have written books about the cleverness of its use.
We know that England is spending great sums of money for propaganda in America during the present war. If we were Englishmen, we would do the same. But our interest is first in America; and as Americans, it is essential for us to realize the effort that British interests are making to draw us into their war. I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."
https://peacethroughvictory.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/propaganda-collection-1/liberators-kultur-terror-anti-americanism-1944-nazi-propaganda-poster/
Actually, that reminds me of the cleverest thing anybody did in Dungeons and Dragons (bear with me, this is clever).
Kill a giant. Not a huge one, but notably larger than a nornal human.
Hollow out his chest and implant a bank safe.
Raise him from the dead with magic. Now would be a good time to also magically guarantee his loyalty to you.
Keep all your loot (because, at the end of the day, D&D is virgins planning burglaries) inside Jeeves' new cast-iron stomach. Nobody's going to rob you. No food or other maintenance is required. And you need never leave him behind because he can walk.
You got it basically right, but you left out two groups:
Midwesterners > Westerners > Southerners > Easterners > Pacific Westerners
https://peacethroughvictory.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/propaganda-collection-1/liberators-kultur-terror-anti-americanism-1944-nazi-propaganda-poster/
That’s amazing.
In reality, it was Roth’s boyhood hero FDR who speculated about doing almost the exact same thing in a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister.
In reality, isn’t that what actual Jews did to themselves, though?
I could be totally wrong about this, but whenever I’ve seen movies or read descriptions about summer camps in the media, it always sounded like something NYC Jews sent their kids to every summer so they could actually get outside for awhile. To some place with a phony-sounding Indian name.
I went to church camp one year, but I was the only kid I knew who ever “went to camp”. Usually, when one of us decided we wanted to spend some time communing with nature, we just packed a lunch and got on our bikes and just went.
I like the blacks in the chest cage, it’s pure “and you are lynching negroes.” How dare you cage those singing birds, but also, don’t let them out.
Actually, that reminds me of the cleverest thing anybody did in Dungeons and Dragons (bear with me, this is clever).
Kill a giant. Not a huge one, but notably larger than a nornal human.
Hollow out his chest and implant a bank safe.
Raise him from the dead with magic. Now would be a good time to also magically guarantee his loyalty to you.
Keep all your loot (because, at the end of the day, D&D is virgins planning burglaries) inside Jeeves’ new cast-iron stomach. Nobody’s going to rob you. No food or other maintenance is required. And you need never leave him behind because he can walk.
Ugh, I’m afraid you’re right, but it’s because they’re the salt of the earth, not because they necessarily love warfare. They still trust that the United States of America must be a good thing, right?
It is an ethnic thing. 'Southern culture' was formed primarily by the marriage of Scots-Irish with Celtic fringe Anglo-Norman country squire. Each of those groups came to this continent with it ground into their marrow bones to be ready, to be honored, to fight for the land on which they live.
The WASP is a very different creature, and the Yankee WASP made the Southerner the nation's first villain. That has never really changed. It has gone mostly dormant for stretches, but now it is once again raging.
The USA as it is now is suicidal, and thus it is a given that its Elites and their sacred cow pets want to remake history to further damn the South.
I say that if they really believe what they claim about the white South, they should offer to pay all white Southerns $500,000 to leave the USA permanently, so their places can be taken by more Numinous Negroes and 'moderate' Mohammedans.
We can dream, can’t we? Unfortunately 1) that costs a lot of money and more importantly 2) doesn’t involve enough suffering for whitey. Not nearly enough.
Hart-Celler was the watershed. That’s when we took the hemlock. Just took a while to take, so to speak. Wasn’t implemented until ’68 and then you have to give it a generation or two to complete the wreckage. Now it almost doesn’t matter what we do, I’m sorry to say. Nothing pretty anyway.
John Dos Passos is an interesting case. His life and his concerns tend to conflict with current prevailing narratives about ‘privilege’ so we don’t hear too much about him anymore. He was enormously influential in his time, though, and perhaps if we can claim him as pseudo-latino we can right him at last. If he remains a rich white boy, though, there’s nothing to be done.
Manhattan Transfer, of course, could remain in print for purely historical reasons.
Weird how that's a verboten subject, but it's still totally cool to compare southerners to Nazis, even though they actually did go off to fight.
Maybe the German-Americans could just foresee the future, and were looking out for their fellow citizens.
The people who actually saved the Jews from extinction–Anglo-American White Males–have somehow been their Enemy #1 ever since. Such is gratitude.
Twenty bucks says that, if he makes it into the show, the actor who plays him will bear an uncanny resemblance to Stephen Miller.
I’ll put down a c-note on the fact that he won’t make it into the show in the first place, at least not as such.
We actually had an associate of Jewish Finnish extraction in my office in NYC. He was notable for his refusal to speak Hebrew in front of the goyim, at least in the office. In context, it actually came off somewhat principled.
That’s really breathtaking. What does the small banner in the foreground read please? NVM, I found it:
More, from ‘cultural critic’ Kristen Williams Backer —
Exactly. What's that motto? Out of many, many?
I like how she(?) posits as our essence whatever Nazis were opposed to. They hit the mark, apparently.
Sounds like a Jew saying, "prominent hooked noses, beady eyes, and rubbing our hands together as we plot our schemes have always been how we define ourselves."
That’s interesting.
Wikipedia claims there was a reconciliation after the slaughter of the Finnish Civil War, and Left vs Right ceased to be an issue.
Wikipedia claims there was a reconciliation after the slaughter of the Finnish Civil War, and Left vs Right ceased to be an issue.
When I was a kid, the CPUSA candidate for president of the USA was always this old Finn named Gus Hall. He didn’t seem too reconciled.
My guess was Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens.
I haven't got Lindbergh's speech in front of me but his statement was reasonable regarding the Jews. He said that they along with American Anglophiles had vested interests which both groups were entitled to but which were detrimental to America's interests.
As I recall, the comments were harmless, and actually common sense. He singled out three groups who had an interest in war: Anglophiles, Jews, and I can’t remember the third. About Jews, he said they had reason to desire war because they had good reason not to like Hitler. Naturally.
I understand why the America First movement told him to shut it, because they didn’t need bad PR. I also understand why the opposition went berserk, at least from a propaganda perspective. But why does history still care? Man, we have giant blond spots surrounding WWII and its build-up. Ones which shall certainly never be corrected.
They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.
The power of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the maintenance of a wartime emergency. The prestige of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the success of Great Britain to whom the president attached his political future at a time when most people thought that England and France would easily win the war.
The danger of the Roosevelt administration lies in its subterfuge. While its members have promised us peace, they have led us to war heedless of the platform upon which they were elected.In selecting these three groups as the major agitators for war, I have included only those whose support is essential to the war party. If any one of these groups--the British, the Jewish, or the administration--stops agitating for war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement."
He was massively influential (in the wrong direction, in my opinion, but he wrote some good stuff), but he went in the wrong direction politically. According to fashionable literary opinion, at least. That’s the only explanation I can find for blacking out books like Mid-Century while the USA Trilogy continues to be promoted.
Manhattan Transfer, of course, could remain in print for purely historical reasons.
“The United States defines itself through variety”
Exactly. What’s that motto? Out of many, many?
I like how she(?) posits as our essence whatever Nazis were opposed to. They hit the mark, apparently.
Sounds like a Jew saying, “prominent hooked noses, beady eyes, and rubbing our hands together as we plot our schemes have always been how we define ourselves.”
I haven't got Lindbergh's speech in front of me but his statement was reasonable regarding the Jews. He said that they along with American Anglophiles had vested interests which both groups were entitled to but which were detrimental to America's interests.
This is what Lindbergh said about the Jews in his Sept. 11, 1941, speech:
“It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
This is what he said about the British:
It is obvious and perfectly understandable that Great Britain wants the United States in the war on her side. England is now in a desperate position. Her population is not large enough and her armies are not strong enough to invade the continent of Europe and win the war she declared against Germany.
Her geographical position is such that she cannot win the war by the use of aviation alone, regardless of how many planes we send her. Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.
As you all know, we were left with the debts of the last European war; and unless we are more cautious in the future than we have been in the past, we will be left with the debts of the present case. If it were not for her hope that she can make us responsible for the war financially, as well as militarily, I believe England would have negotiated a peace in Europe many months ago, and be better off for doing so.
England has devoted, and will continue to devote every effort to get us into the war. We know that she spent huge sums of money in this country during the last war in order to involve us. Englishmen have written books about the cleverness of its use.
We know that England is spending great sums of money for propaganda in America during the present war. If we were Englishmen, we would do the same. But our interest is first in America; and as Americans, it is essential for us to realize the effort that British interests are making to draw us into their war.
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.”
I understand why the America First movement told him to shut it, because they didn't need bad PR. I also understand why the opposition went berserk, at least from a propaganda perspective. But why does history still care? Man, we have giant blond spots surrounding WWII and its build-up. Ones which shall certainly never be corrected.
The third group was the Roosevelt administration. In his 9-11-41 speech Lindbergh said this:
“The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. Its members have used the war emergency to obtain a third presidential term for the first time in American history.
They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.
The power of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the maintenance of a wartime emergency. The prestige of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the success of Great Britain to whom the president attached his political future at a time when most people thought that England and France would easily win the war.
The danger of the Roosevelt administration lies in its subterfuge. While its members have promised us peace, they have led us to war heedless of the platform upon which they were elected.
In selecting these three groups as the major agitators for war, I have included only those whose support is essential to the war party. If any one of these groups–the British, the Jewish, or the administration–stops agitating for war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement.”
Steve
Is there any evidence of significant opposition among any ethnicity to what is now billed as the most evil bit of legislation ever to have been approved by Congress? It passed the Senate 90-2-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act.
The very term “isolationist” is a loaded and deceitful term. It’s used to smear people who believe that a reasonable amount of autarky is a worthwhile goal – as if they were practicers of an American form of Juche and wanted to turn the country into something like North Korea. It is also used to defame people who think we ought to stick to the guidance laid out by founding fathers such as George Washington and John Adams – i.e. that we should mind our own business, not everybody elses.
It is a calumny.
So, voting for the candidate of your choice is…………………………disloyalty. They were traitors because they voted for Wendell Wilkie and Thomas Dewey. Were Wendell Wilkie and Thomas Dewey traitors too?
My Dad voted for Thomas Dewey in 1944. Of course he had to use an absentee ballot because he was in England at the time, in the 8th Air Force, flying combat missions over German occupied Europe.
I guess he was “disloyal” too – maybe even a traitor. But then again, he was one of those “nazi” southerners.
Good thing we were “fighting for democracy” so that we had the right to vote for President-for-Life FDR, ……………..and nobody else.
Sincerely, fuck you Halvorson.
The Bond family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_Bond,_1st_Baronet
The World is not Enough.
Bernard Cornwell did something similar with Richard Sharpe. After Sean Bean was cast to play him on TV, Cornwell revised Sharpe's background. Previously a Londoner, Sharpe is now described as having spent much of his teens in Yorkshire.
I thought it silly how quickly the water rose while the guys were undergoing an attempted hanging. It’s not like someone knocked DOWN a dam. The valley would only fill up as fast as the river at the bottom’s flow rate once everything was closed off at the bottom. Maybe I was taking the movie too seriously.
Anyway, to me that was one of the best Coen brothers’ movies. I haven’t often seen movies that romanticize the Great Depression period in America. They picked all those great songs from the period for the soundtrack too. It’s one of the best soundtrack albums out there. How can you not like the Soggy Bottom Boy’s Man of Constant Sorrow:
The Wikipedia article on Philip Roth quotes this passage – “The cry ‘Watch out for the goyim!’ at times seems more the expression of an unconscious wish than of a warning: Oh that they were out there, so that we could be together here! A rumor of persecution, a taste of exile, might even bring with it the old world of feelings and habits—something to replace the new world of social accessibility and moral indifference, the world which tempts all our promiscuous instincts, and where one cannot always figure out what a Jew is that a Christian is not.” From an article of his in Commentary.
I’ve always been underwhelmed by Roth’s novels. OTOH, the short story Goodbye, Columbus hit the nail on the head for me. I somehow came to be dating a popsie several glorious times from Teaneck New Jersey whose father was closer to her than need be. A perfect match to the heroine of that story. As Roth and I are but one year apart in age, it may have been the same goddess. My best friend, Bob Charles (R.I.P.) was a friend of Roth’s at the U of Chicago and attended one of Roth’s weddings.
Interviewer: "When Portnoy complains about his parents and their fear, his sister says, “if you had been in Europe, you might have died”. What was your experience of anti-Semitism when you were a child?"
Roth: "I'll tell you how I found out about anti-Semitism. I was born in March 1933. I was born the month Hitler came to power. He lived as a scourge until I was 12. Those first twelve years of my life, there was Hitler to remind everybody of anti-Semitism. He was the great murderous impresario of anti- Semitism. In addition, during the 1930s and 1940s, anti-Semitism flourished in America as well, in the forms of bias, discrimination, exclusion, and derision. The violence was minimal but the hatred was there and it wasn't invisible."
Me: born in March 1934. This is exactly as I remember it. The general hatred of jews in the 1940s and 50s was palpable although not much of a physical risk. I had a relative who lived in Yorkville (around East 85th street), a German neighborhood in Manhattan, who carried a baseball bat when he went outdoors. After WW II, the hatred ebbed away. Alas, the hatred has grown back in some quarters, justified by grotesque conspiracy theories. My theory is that the hatred comes before the conspiracy theories. One hatred, many conspiracy theories.
Well, Jews defending the Nazi regime is a little embarrassing.
The pre-Arnold, if you will.
I understand why the America First movement told him to shut it, because they didn't need bad PR. I also understand why the opposition went berserk, at least from a propaganda perspective. But why does history still care? Man, we have giant blond spots surrounding WWII and its build-up. Ones which shall certainly never be corrected.
That’s as may be, but Chas Lindbergh was clearly guilty of noticing.
Are you familiar with the Jason Isbell written Drive By Truckers song TVA?
Anyway, to me that was one of the best Coen brothers' movies. I haven't often seen movies that romanticize the Great Depression period in America. They picked all those great songs from the period for the soundtrack too. It's one of the best soundtrack albums out there. How can you not like the Soggy Bottom Boy's Man of Constant Sorrow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meCZ5hWNRFU
Stephen Root is a fantastic character actor; he ties that scene together perfectly. I see at IMDb that he is a workoholic…228 Actor credits and counting.
I've always been underwhelmed by Roth's novels. OTOH, the short story Goodbye, Columbus hit the nail on the head for me. I somehow came to be dating a popsie several glorious times from Teaneck New Jersey whose father was closer to her than need be. A perfect match to the heroine of that story. As Roth and I are but one year apart in age, it may have been the same goddess. My best friend, Bob Charles (R.I.P.) was a friend of Roth's at the U of Chicago and attended one of Roth's weddings.
from an interview in Le Monde with Philip Roth –
Interviewer: “When Portnoy complains about his parents and their fear, his sister says, “if you had been in Europe, you might have died”. What was your experience of anti-Semitism when you were a child?”
Roth: “I’ll tell you how I found out about anti-Semitism. I was born in March 1933. I was born the month Hitler came to power. He lived as a scourge until I was 12. Those first twelve years of my life, there was Hitler to remind everybody of anti-Semitism. He was the great murderous impresario of anti- Semitism. In addition, during the 1930s and 1940s, anti-Semitism flourished in America as well, in the forms of bias, discrimination, exclusion, and derision. The violence was minimal but the hatred was there and it wasn’t invisible.”
Me: born in March 1934. This is exactly as I remember it. The general hatred of jews in the 1940s and 50s was palpable although not much of a physical risk. I had a relative who lived in Yorkville (around East 85th street), a German neighborhood in Manhattan, who carried a baseball bat when he went outdoors. After WW II, the hatred ebbed away. Alas, the hatred has grown back in some quarters, justified by grotesque conspiracy theories. My theory is that the hatred comes before the conspiracy theories. One hatred, many conspiracy theories.
And I should have noted that before Isbell joined Drive By Truckers, the band cut a song titled ‘Uncle Frank’ that focused on the small guy being forced out of his home to make way for a dam, which created great wealth for bankers and investors and gave him nothing.
Each song tells key truth.
One of the growing myths about American history is that white Southerners in the late 1930s were in sympathy with Hitler, when that’s the opposite of the truth.
I hadn’t heard that. The young often lack context, and make errors derived from knowing something as history (and garbled history) rather than a current affairs. The world of 1940 is one few people alive today knew palpably, but some of us have known the people who made that world and what their concerns and priorities were during the years we knew them. A taxonomy which lumps early 20th century white Southerners with their very localized horizons and concerns in with German revanchists addled by bastardized eugenicist claptrap is bizarre, but don’t expect juvenile SJWs to make sense of that.
Another thing they do is lie, and make things up to try to harm people they consider their enemies.
A taxonomy which lumps early 20th century white Southerners with their very localized horizons and concerns in with German revanchists addled by bastardized eugenicist claptrap is bizarre, but don’t expect juvenile SJWs to make sense of that.
Philip Roth is indeed juvenile, but hardly young.
One enlisted in the army in 1941 months before Pearl Harbor fully expecting war with Nazi Germany. He was in the 28th Infantry Division during the Huertgen Forest and was in the siege of Bastogne.
My father had a safe job in the states but volunteered to go to Europe in 1944. He was in Patton's Third Army during the final push in 1945.
So the SJWs think white Southerners (Tennesseans included) were in sympathy with Hitler. Do tell.
Those hired to disrupt forums like this by groups such as the SPLC and the ADL and Soros’ Open Society are good at getting things off track. This thread is an example.
It should have been about what such people do not want aired to the point that people pick up on it: the Elites of this nation are so filled with contempt for non-Elite whites that they will fabricate history worse than even Stalin did to justify their dirty deeds.
There is no USA without the white South. None. Because no white South means no Washington, no Jefferson, no Madison, no Patrick Henry, no Francis Marion, no Daniel Morgan or his cousin Daniel Boone, etc.
What does it say about a nation when its Elites are driven by hatred of the people who were necessary to its birth and survival in all ways, not just military?
It says the nation’s Elites are monsters who will be happy to destroy everything to get a little richer and more powerful, and will rewrite ‘history’ to its exact opposite in order to pull it off.
Such a nation is on a suicide course of some type. Its best end result – if it cannot stop the madness and turn it back – will be what happened to the USSR: collapse before the Elites can oversee epic levels of horror inflicted on those they rule and most hate.
You are correct. Once upon a time almost all Jewish children went away to summer camp. Catholics kept their kids home.
The service academy nominations are allocated by member of Congress, but ROTC and OCS are not.
The military of today isn’t the sea of toxic white masculinity it was even 10 years ago. The population it recruits from is only 50-50 white/non-white. While there are limiters such as IQ and criminal records, we cannot expect the loyalty from the military that was previously expected. The Special Forces may be different.
Wikipedia claims there was a reconciliation after the slaughter of the Finnish Civil War, and Left vs Right ceased to be an issue.
Well, Yes there was a sort of reconciliation.
Before the Civil War The Social Democrats (full name in Finnish: Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen puolue) represented all the left and was usually the largest party in parliament – sometimes with absolute majority.
After the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917 and Finnish Declaration of Independence party was divided between “revolutionary wing” and “moderates”. “Revolutionary wing” was larger and had the support of most Social Democratic MPs. They wanted to make a revolution (with the help of Lenin and his Bolsheviks). After the “Reds” (i.e. revolutionary Social Democrats) lost their attempt of revolution (i.e. Finnish Civil War of 1918) most of the revolutionary leadership and many ordinary “Reds” fled the country and went to e.g. Soviet Russia, USA and Canada. In Soviet Russia and later Soviet Union they (e.g. Edvard Gylling, Kustaa Rovio) practically ruled Soviet Karelia until the purges of Stalin in the 30s. Most famous of those refugees was Otto Ville Kuusinen, who managed to survive Stalin and was member of Soviet CP politburo and secreteriat and famous Marxist theoretician. The Social Democratic refugees in Moscow founded The Finnish Communist Party in 1918. Also those that had fled to USA and Canada mostly symphatized with them.
Those Social Democrats that stayed in Finland, however, were quick to realize the new situation and began work within the parliamentary system. Already in 1919 Social Democrats were again largest party in the parliament and staunchly anti-Communist Social Democrat Väinö Tanner became Finnish Prime minister in 1926
Gus Hall had nothing to reconcile as he was in no way involved in the Finnish Civil War – he was a small child in Minnesota at the time and for Finns in Finland Gus Hall was always just some random American. The very leftist Finnish-Americans of the Midwest mostly don’t come from Civil War refugees, they come from a big migration wave that started in the 1860s and actually dried up around the 1910s.
The Finnish Reds from the Civil War who ended up in America mostly became a pro-Western, anti-Soviet group for the Cold War. Finnish Reds fled to Russia first and those that later fled to America were those who decided to flee again. A Red Finn that entered America fleeing for his life was most likely fleeing Red Russia, not White Finland.
World War II actually brought some reconciliation. In 1944 a law was passed that pardoned all exiled Reds that had participated in pro-Finnish activity in America, led by this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskari_Tokoi
who became the first Finnish Head of Senate (“Prime Minister”) but later sided with the Reds and was sentenced to death. His time in Red Russia was brief as he angered the Russians by working with the British expedition (who were supporting Whites in Russia but Reds in Finland).
Tokoi and the other Reds from America that were pardoned at the end of World War II and treated as honored guests were deeply unpopular with pro-Soviet communists who tended to believe that the Americans were using them to develop an anti-Soviet, pro-American Left.
Aside from that, if you have to a book about America throwing a brief Nazi hissy-fit, I understand that a writer named Roth would be most concerned with what would happen to Jews. But it couldn't even get that right. I wasn't scared for any of them. It was just like, well, that stuff happened.
I too read The Plot Against America, and it is also the only Roth novel I have ever read.
When I reached the end my main reaction was, “Man, this guy has a chip on his shoulder against gentiles!”
Hard to be farther from the truth. The US – Canada border is the longest basically undefended border between any two countries. It is also not unusual for there to be immigrants back and forth such as my great-great-grand parents from Canada settling in Michigan. The War of 1812 aside, there has seldom been major confrontations along the border and no real history of raiding back and forth outside of the war – which is historically where such national animosities arise.
https://peacethroughvictory.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/propaganda-collection-1/liberators-kultur-terror-anti-americanism-1944-nazi-propaganda-poster/
The Nazis despised the Klan as a symbol of American decadence.
I seem to recall a scene in American History X where nazi Edward Norton dismisses the Klan as toothless idiots.
The young often lack context, and make errors derived from knowing something as history (and garbled history) rather than a current affairs.
Another thing they do is lie, and make things up to try to harm people they consider their enemies.
A taxonomy which lumps early 20th century white Southerners with their very localized horizons and concerns in with German revanchists addled by bastardized eugenicist claptrap is bizarre, but don’t expect juvenile SJWs to make sense of that.
Philip Roth is indeed juvenile, but hardly young.
> P.S. Communists in the U.S. opposed FDR’s hard line against the Nazis from August 23, 1939 to June 22, 1941.
Most iSteve readers seem to know the significance of these two dates. The fraction of American voters who could interpret them after a little coaching (“Soviet-Nazi Nonaggression Pact? Invasion of Russia?”) is probably in the low single digits.
In my own immediate family, it’s 1/5. Going out to living aunts, cousins, nephews, etc., I’d estimate 7 Yes and 28 No. Post-Boomer, it’d be all No’s.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding even American Nazis tend to look down on the Klan. The Neonazis look upon themselves as defenders or advocates of European/Nordic high culture whereas they view the Klansmen as a bunch of provincial, ignorant clowns.
I seem to recall a scene in American History X where nazi Edward Norton dismisses the Klan as toothless idiots.
It is an ethnic thing. 'Southern culture' was formed primarily by the marriage of Scots-Irish with Celtic fringe Anglo-Norman country squire. Each of those groups came to this continent with it ground into their marrow bones to be ready, to be honored, to fight for the land on which they live.
The WASP is a very different creature, and the Yankee WASP made the Southerner the nation's first villain. That has never really changed. It has gone mostly dormant for stretches, but now it is once again raging.
The USA as it is now is suicidal, and thus it is a given that its Elites and their sacred cow pets want to remake history to further damn the South.
I say that if they really believe what they claim about the white South, they should offer to pay all white Southerns $500,000 to leave the USA permanently, so their places can be taken by more Numinous Negroes and 'moderate' Mohammedans.
So you were the small brained non humans that raped and killed vietnamese women and chidren along with australians and britshits and new zealand?
And yet in Gone With the Wind, the “Scotch-Irish” MacIntoshes are proslavery but antiwar holdouts, who promptly take the Loyalty Oath to get their reimbursement. There were slaveowners who were against secession; the Elsie Dinsmore series also depicts that attitude.
The Nazis originally disseminated both book and movie versions of GWTW, expecting it would make the name “Yankee” hated; instead, it encouraged occupied countries to defy their oppressors. The Nazis promptly banned GWTW, while Goebbels secretly studied the film in an effort to duplicate its phenomenal success. The result was Kolberg, a Technicolor epic that was rarely seen during the war and provoked laughter when it was finally screened after it. It didn’t help that instead of Scarlett, a tough cookie despite that 17-inch waist, the heroine was a wimpy, whining blonde played by an actress mostly famous for her dishonored-and-drowned screen suicides.
My impression is that it wasn’t just the progressive upper midwest. My grandfather had Scottish roots through the South, but grew up in the lower midwest (north Ohio river valley) and lived his adult life in the upper midwest. He was quite angry when my dad had joined the military (before the US had become involved in WW2, but after the war had started.) My grandfather had lost a brother in the first world war, and almost lost a leg himself while in France. As a result, he was very anti-war, but I had never heard about any of this until recently.
The thing was, the progressives might organize and go to the anti-war rallies, but a lot of conservatives were on the same page. Smedley Butler was accused by some of being a commie sympathizer, but in truth, he was just talking to any group that would listen to him. He was the most highly decorated marine in US history up to that point. I suspect that we don’t hear about conservative resistance to involvement in WW2 because the 1960’s made that sort of thing unpalatable or un-American. That’s probably why my conservative father (now in his late nineties) never mentioned it until recently. Of course, hard left progressives were back and forth on US involvement before Pearl Harbor, per Soviet directives.
So, voting for the candidate of your choice is…………………………disloyalty. They were traitors because they voted for Wendell Wilkie and Thomas Dewey. Were Wendell Wilkie and Thomas Dewey traitors too?
My Dad voted for Thomas Dewey in 1944. Of course he had to use an absentee ballot because he was in England at the time, in the 8th Air Force, flying combat missions over German occupied Europe.
I guess he was “disloyal” too – maybe even a traitor. But then again, he was one of those “nazi” southerners.
Good thing we were “fighting for democracy” so that we had the right to vote for President-for-Life FDR, ……………..and nobody else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_Bond,_1st_Baronet
The World is not Enough.
Yeah, but in the book On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the connection to Sir Thomas Bond is only offered as a bit of speculation by a genealogist. Plus, Bond responds by noting that his father was a Scot .On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which was published in 1963, roughly one year after the casting of Connery, marks the intro of the Scottish Bond retcon.
Bernard Cornwell did something similar with Richard Sharpe. After Sean Bean was cast to play him on TV, Cornwell revised Sharpe’s background. Previously a Londoner, Sharpe is now described as having spent much of his teens in Yorkshire.
I knew “the people who made that world,” and the way Tennesseans lived it. My father and uncles all were in WW II.
One enlisted in the army in 1941 months before Pearl Harbor fully expecting war with Nazi Germany. He was in the 28th Infantry Division during the Huertgen Forest and was in the siege of Bastogne.
My father had a safe job in the states but volunteered to go to Europe in 1944. He was in Patton’s Third Army during the final push in 1945.
So the SJWs think white Southerners (Tennesseans included) were in sympathy with Hitler. Do tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65rXTiElofshttp://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
I can’t put my hand on the academic article but – as Eric Zemmour has pointed out – a swath of the progressive activists in France in the 1930s switched very happily to working with the Nazi sponsored Vichy regime, at least for a time.
One has to imagine, from a certain angle, how exciting and inevitable the Nazis might have appeared at the time to those of a certain shall we say ‘bossy’ stripe.
Don’t you just know that if the Nazi’s were to take over America today the SPLC, AntiFa, BLM and the usual suspects would be wetting their pants with excitement and eagerly engaging with them.
In a day and age when there is no heaven or hell as John Lennon was so kind to tell us in – thanks John, now get back on board your yellow submarine – the problem of evil hasn’t gone away.
Hence the need to find a Social Justice substitute for the devil.
And since it’s always easier to exorcise two evils with one smear, with the Nazis and the South/Klan being the nearest thing to Monstrous Evul that everybody in the campus racism workshop can agree on, the conflation of the two is a foregone conclusion.
IOW let not common sense or history tear apart what the Southern Propaganda & Liars Center has joined together.
Besides Oprah Winfrey, Our FirstBlackFemalePresidentInWaiting, has already told us those old down home racists just need to die.
As for the Nazis, aside from those in Operation Paperclip, they have already been executed at Nuremburg.
But Antifa and
BigBlack Lies Matters want blood and they want it now.So under the guise of the Patriot/National Defense Authorization Act and the War on Terrorism, look for a Artificial Intelligence drone extermination pogram in Dixie’s future.
A reality show in the vein of the witch hunt for Montag in Fahrenheit 451, only this time with a lot of people trying to escape in wheelchairs as well as the usual collateral civilian casualties.
cheers
I seem to recall a scene in American History X where nazi Edward Norton dismisses the Klan as toothless idiots.
American History X is simply incoherent, it’s a leftist fantasizing without any pretense to realism. The deleted scenes suffice to clarify what the director wanted, and there is nothing in the final cut of the movie that contradicts this. In one a homeless bag lady is okay with being physically threatened and possibly losing her property, but is dumbstruck and brought to tears at the sound of the n-word. Another is a brainless comedy sketch in which we are invited to laugh at two people who are about to be physically assaulted because those people thought bad thoughts. The opening sequence asks us to sympathize with a car thief who interrupts consensual sex to steal a working class family car. It also asks us to believe in a clearly made-up execution method that depends on the participation of the victim. This is the kind of thoughtless gibberish that comes from unmitigated self-righteousness.
It was a skeevy, manipulative trick.
Bernard Cornwell did something similar with Richard Sharpe. After Sean Bean was cast to play him on TV, Cornwell revised Sharpe's background. Previously a Londoner, Sharpe is now described as having spent much of his teens in Yorkshire.
There is also the fact that Fleming tolerated but did not want Connery (per Connery’s South Bank Show interview).
And a future Exterminator.
Yep. He thought that Connery was too crude to play Bond.
A super book. I read the original edition. It is disappointing that it is not currently in print nor is a Kindle version available.
The edition you recommend is $100 and scarce, and the much cheaper hardcover is probably the earlier edition. My library’s MelCat doesn’t have it and I doubt it’s at SatanBooks.
I agree. It may as well of been pure SPLC propaganda. The makers of the film also used the intellectually dishonest trick of giving Edward Norton’s neo-nazi character several monologues in which he says what are actually perfectly reasonable and true things, about immigration, police power, etc. A lot of viewers were probably nodding along in agreement thinking: well, that sounds reasonable. Then Norton rips off his shirt to reveal a big swastika chest-tattoo – as if to say to the audience: And you were agreeing with me too, weren’t you, you Nazi! See, any belief that your country actually belongs to you makes you like this guy!
It was a skeevy, manipulative trick.
And what the hell was with the, what would you call it, putting black people through groceries? Surely this was an action sequence designed by people who have never witnessed any actual violence. "You wanna be black in a SoCal supermart that would actually be staffed by mestizos or Vietnamese? You will bathe in corn. I have nothing but beans for you. BEANS!"
It was a skeevy, manipulative trick.
And defaming the perfectly reasonable fears of rescue service personnel about fiddling with admission requirements. Because only a Nazi would doubt that a woman has as much upper body strength as a man. There’s a documentary, think it’s called Burn, that shows what happens when your fire department’s priority is diversity.
And what the hell was with the, what would you call it, putting black people through groceries? Surely this was an action sequence designed by people who have never witnessed any actual violence. “You wanna be black in a SoCal supermart that would actually be staffed by mestizos or Vietnamese? You will bathe in corn. I have nothing but beans for you. BEANS!”
this is such an incomplete picture of what really happened. and no i’m not going to take the time and effort to copy and paste and write a history book here to educate you.
why even bother writing 2 paragraphs that are vague and don’t teach anyone anything about history?
clickbait much?
Something is wrong with Unz's commenting code.
Most Reds were not Jewish – the population in Finland of Jews was extremely small – perhaps less than 2000 in 1917 – and, Finnish Jews kept a very low profile during the Wars. Most Reds were just poor Finns who had been poor for hundreds of years under Swedish and Russian domination. These, Finns, unfortunately, were the ones who emigrated and went to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan – all shitbag leftist states.
Wikipedia claims there was a reconciliation after the slaughter of the Finnish Civil War, and Left vs Right ceased to be an issue.
Left versus Right is still going on. We always kept a lot of weapons in our homes to fight any leftist insurgents in the 60’s…before we left for the USA. I was raised to hate leftists, and still do. And, I still have weapons 🙂 – ya never know!
That sentence alone will earn him the next literature Nobel. Roth – “the Cassandra of our times!” as the committee will say – might even have a shot at the prize for peace and stuff.
During the campaign, Roosevelt was the isolationist. Wilkie was the hawk.
Is there any evidence of significant opposition among any ethnicity to what is now billed as the most evil bit of legislation ever to have been approved by Congress? It passed the Senate 90-2-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act.
Despite what Wikipedia says, another source gives the vote as 78-1-17, with James Reed of Missouri being the only nay.
Wasn’t the Klan anti-German in WWI? It was certainly anti-Catholic, and then as now most Germans are Catholics. The Klan’s support for prohibition would also have rubbed Germans the wrong way.
It wasn't refounded until 1915 and it was from 1915 to 1919 a small federation of secret fraternal lodges. It amended its by-laws to reconstitute itself as a public organization and grew to enormous size very rapidly, then evaporated almost as rapidly. (Most Germans are Catholic in the Hapsburg territories, Bavaria, Swabia. and on the left bank of the Rhine; in the rest of Germany Lutheran is the mode).
Wasn’t the Klan anti-German in WWI? It was certainly anti-Catholic, and then as now most Germans are Catholics. T
It wasn’t refounded until 1915 and it was from 1915 to 1919 a small federation of secret fraternal lodges. It amended its by-laws to reconstitute itself as a public organization and grew to enormous size very rapidly, then evaporated almost as rapidly. (Most Germans are Catholic in the Hapsburg territories, Bavaria, Swabia. and on the left bank of the Rhine; in the rest of Germany Lutheran is the mode).
Twenty bucks says that, if he makes it into the show, the actor who plays him will bear an uncanny resemblance to Stephen Miller.
Just as the highly closeted former mayor of NYC in Shortbus somehow looked and acted more like John Lindsay than like Ed Koch.
why even bother writing 2 paragraphs that are vague and don't teach anyone anything about history?
clickbait much?
This comment was not written by the usual wren, me.
Something is wrong with Unz’s commenting code.
That Southern restaurants would openly serve German POWs but shun African American soldiers is one of those things that truly boggles the mind. I suppose this is all part of the uh Original Sin that’s led us into our current state of affairs…
Some of these rubrics were discretionary restriction of custom. Others were incorporated into commercial law in the states in question. We can check period statutes, but I’ll wager the law in all these places would have required separate seating or required limiting colored custom to take-out. There were actually annual guidebooks published at that time which directed black customers to establishments which served blacks (either exclusively or in separate seating).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMwddHeeP44
That character resembles neither Koch nor Lindsay.
He looks like Lindsay might have in his eighties. But though Lindsay may have lived until 2000, I can’t find any pictures of him after about 1975.