It's certainly not common knowledge, and most school history books don't include it (at least when I was in school). They do cover the Jim Crow laws and the KKK but don't make a connection between those and Nazi ideology.
Even less common is knowledge of how much the Nazis themselves were inspired by American style racist laws and organizations:
http://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-j...
EDIT: wording
>In 1936, William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he stated,
> > A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. ... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions.
This clique of U.S. industrialists (the old fascists) were the leaders in banking, oil, coal, chemical, steel, press: JP Morgan, Hunt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Du Pont, Hearst.
To think we fought Nazis because of their ideology is a mistake - the US, the UK, and many other countries weren't that different, in many respects, ideologically. In practice, the Nazis took horrific ideas and industrialized them.
In a way, we have Nazi military imperialism to thank for the fact that many horrible ideas are unacceptable today - otherwise there might never have been a backlash against them.
Without the moral baggage of WW2 and the unfortunate implementation history of eugenics programs in the 20th century, it may be easier for people to accept that encouraging the gradual improvement of the gene pool would actually be a positive thing for human civilization.
The one and only semi-acceptable eugenics practice in the modern West is the termination of pregnancies of Trisomy-21 fetuses. Any hint of extending that acceptance any further, and you're instantly a Nazi.
Moreover, genes are not binary in the sense that there are "good" or "bad" traits. It depends on the time and place like sickle cell anemia, which gives you immunity to malaria, but has the obvious downside of making you anemic.
And there are those naturally immune to diseases like smallpox or even AIDS [0], even diseases we have no knowledge of right now.
I once had a fellow coworker who hinted at the fact that he was pro-eugenics (semi-jokingly) as he was a varsity athlete from a good college in good health. I had to remind him that just a bit over 100 years ago the US signed the Chinese Exclusion Act and that Hitler would not have considered him to be anything close to a true Aryan.
So one person's improvement might be another's worsening. And we've seen our opinions evolve over time.
As a consequence there's a serious ethical concern. As flawed human beings I don't think any of us can say with certainty how we should manipulate the gene pool. Allowing Nature to do it herself has worked reasonably well thus far, if you consider the evolution of Homo Sapiens to be a positive outcome.
I don't wish to come across as callous, but wouldn't homosexuality self-eliminate itself from the gene pool nowadays because there is no societal pressure anymore on homosexuals to maintain appearance of heterosexual couples?
Of course, if I'm correct in my assumptions, it's fascinating why homosexuality exists.
That slope isn't anywhere near as slippery as you're trying to make it out to be.
The gradual improvement of the gene pool will likely happen anyway, as parents choose to use new technologies to improve their future children in various ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevention_of_Tay%E2%80%93Sach...
Were rich jews re-distributing a large portion of their wealth to other jews, too, so they are better off?
I just don't understand how he made the connection "those guys do so much better than us economically -> they must be communists!"
After the war, prominent Nazis were hired by the US government.
One funny is story is how the US put a trade embargo on Japan (leading to them launching Pearl Harbour attack) while at the same time allowing US companies trade oil and other resources with the Reich. The Nazi blitzkrieg ran on US oil... Greatest generation indeed.
Black Like Me, first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by white journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under Racial Segregation. Griffin was a native of Dallas, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line.
It's short and fascinating.
I am white, ~25% Filipino also, but light skinned so historically I have been taken as a white male. I'm not shocked or flabbergasted at all by this because I am an American and part of our laws that we hold very dear allows us to publicly espouse views that are repugnant.
I heard the speaker saying terrible things about Jews, which no thinking person would ever support. I did not hear him inciting or suggesting attacks against them though, which would be illegal. At one point someone tried to rush the stage, though we don't know his motivations. That person was beaten, which should have resulted in the arrests of everyone involved.
Other than that, he can say or think whatever he wants to say or think. When he raises his hand or asks another to do so against a fellow human being is where the line is crossed.
The person who rushed the stage was Isadore Greenbaum. All he did was shout "Down with Hitler!" and knock down a microphone[1]. He was the only one arrested and was further charged with disorderly conduct[1]. None of his assailants were charged or arrested.
1. http://www.historynet.com/made-in-america-americans-in-suppo...
i'm not really talking about white people at all, because obviously there are some who would be and wouldn't be shocked at widespread racism by white people.
this is a subtle point that you are missing, which is ironic because you are 25% asian, i imagine you have seen quite a bit of anti-asian racism (it's just a joke bro! don't you love being the butt of jokes? who doesn't love that!) from white people because they have no idea you have asian family.
and i'll just pre-empt your next point: i'm not saying only white poeple can be racist, that's obviously not the case if you've ever been overseas, and anti-white racism also happens a lot in america.
i'll generalize my point for you, so that you may understand:
no person of a minority race would be shocked that the majority race harbors a not-insignificant subpopulation with vehement racist views against other races. if every single majority race were to spend a week as a minority, that would likely dispel any notions they had of the contrary.
^ this works for all races.
To be honest I'm a little surprised that a Jewish person would be that naive either, particularly a lawyer that helped found the ADL.
I also think that being a male, on average, causes one to be less directly exposed to cat-calling and other everyday-sexism. Do you take offense at my suggestion of male privilege?
And "male privilege" is dumb. Measure it - show me your science. Otherwise I'll think about how many men die on the job versus women, how women receive more lenient sentences for the same crime, or how women now receive the majority of degrees, and a women who never has kids or marries, will make significantly more money over her life than a similar man, and I think "Weird, it's like biology strangely enough, affects our culture in all sorts of crazy ways that having nothing to do with some nut job conspiracy theory about male patriarchy."
2)Female sentences: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-s...
3)Women get more degrees: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women-surpass-men-in...
4)Never married women earn more: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/...
Everything above is (somewhat) common knowledge. Notice how I picked mostly progressive liberal publications as initial sources, to avoid right-wing partisanship bias.
I don't want to come across as condescending, but were you honestly questioning the parent poster's assertions?
>On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of error, or is this now a political discussion?
Is he fucking serious? We're talking about Nazi's, of course its political. If someone is seriously going to demand laboratory tests on catcalling, that screams totally out of touch mens-rights "activist" to me. Not only that, I was making an analogy and he had to dredge up whataboutisms that have nothing to do with the conversation occurring. Before this becomes an issue of why I'm not talking about men being catcalled, anecdotally speaking I don't know if I've ever known any men (even the most handsome people I know) to get yelled at by passing cars, told to smile more at professional conferences etc. I'm not saying it never happens because I'm sure it does but its an issue that disproportionately affects women just like nazi's are an issue that disproportionately affects minorities.
Claiming that its white-privilegey to say that minorities might be more aware of nazi/neo-nazi roots in America is needlessly defensive (and he had to be the one to say white-privilege, which is like Popeye spinach for angry white men I'm convinced). Yes, minorities are going to be more aware of nazi's in America because they are targeted by them.
I'll try to put a think-tank of the worlds best minds together to study these revolutionary claims I'm making.
the reason it's so widespread is it's so easy to do. all you have to do is come up with a bunch of stuff you dislike, and then accuse me of being/doing that stuff.
and there's nothing i can really do about it, because these ideas exist only in your head, not mine.
Here's another sample: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los...
What Lewis did not anticipate is that local authorities would prove indifferent to — or supportive of — the Nazis and fascists.
Within weeks of going undercover, Lewis’ network of spies discovered a plot to wrest control of armories in San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego — part of a larger plan to take over local governments and carry out a mass execution of Jews. Lewis immediately informed L.A. Police Chief James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis of the Nazi scheme to seize weapons and, as Lewis warned in a memo later, to “foster a fascist form of government in the United States.”
Lewis was shocked when Davis interrupted him to defend Hitler. The police chief, he noted in the memo, told him: “Germans could not compete economically with the Jews in Germany and had been forced to take the action they did.” The greatest danger the city faced, Davis insisted, was not from Nazis but from communists living in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. As far as Davis was concerned, every communist was a Jew and every Jew a communist.