The Nazis actually picked apart how it was that the systematic dehumanization of blacks in the US made it possible for people to be okay psychologically with straight-up murdering them if they got out of line, where without the symbols and separations that made them a “different kind,” that would have been an abhorrent and inhuman thing for ordinary men and women to do to each other.
Think about that. If you’re old enough to have known some family members born before 1930 or so, in the American South, they probably knew some murderers in their community. Like hung out with them socially. And it was okay because it was “lynching.” There was actually a big backlash when they tried to do “anti-lynching laws.” No murdering blacks if we feel like it? Fuck that I thought this was America!
Having the instructive example to draw on, and just speedrunning their way through a version of it applied to a population that before 1930 had been just a type of German citizen living in Germany like normal (albeit with some prejudices from certain people), was what enabled them to do the holocaust. Without the American example to draw from, who’s to say if they would have been able to make it into a thing that was flavored in a way that was acceptable to ordinary Germans.
Andrew Jackson wasn’t a founding father. He was 9 when then Declaration was signed. He was barely commissioned when America fought the Barbary pirates. This knowledge does not lessen or shake my belief in the Founding Fathers.
Knowing how hard some folks are determined to make any old white guy a villain is what shakes me. Like, people forgot how progressive Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams were. Most of the founders and the Sons of Liberty were anti-monarchists and all of them didn’t like the imperialist system that England put in place -which is why the genocide didn’t start until after the founders had died and the last one that could be considered a founder, James Monroe, didn’t support genocide either. In fact, he was so against the notion of colonialism that he founded the Monroe Doctrine, basically a policy that openly told Europe that if they tried to plant a flag in the Americas that the US would do everything in their power to fuck em up.
Look to the racists (the Federalists and later Whigs) in the south who took over government, such as Andrew Jackson, to commit genocide. Folks who know history are still mad at the authoritarian right now matter what time period. Know your history, know your politics, don’t be ignorant.
What a bunch of misleading nonsense.
- Alexander Hamilton, Enslaver? New Research Says Yes
- James Monroe Enslaved Hundreds. Their Descendants Still Live Next Door.
- How the Monroe Doctrine Turned into American Imperialism
Not to mention basically everybody from the south…
And don’t forget how IBM helped them organise the whole thing with their tabulating machines.