this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
271 points (89.7% liked)

News

23284 readers
3528 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A brilliant film emerged from these skirmishes – but its core insight still takes work to unpack. For generations, a persistent myth that black families were irreparably broken by sloth and hedonism had been perpetuated by US culture. Congress's landmark 1965 Moynihan Report, for example, blamed persistent racial inequality not on stymied economic opportunity but on the "tangle of pathologies" within the black family. Later, politicians circulated stereotypes of checked-out "crackheads" and lazy "welfare queens" to tar black women as incubators of thugs, delinquents, and "superpredators". American History X made the bold move of shifting the spotlight away from the maligned black family and on to the sphere of the white family, where it illuminated a domestic scene that was a fertile ground for incubating racist ideas.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Bye@lemmy.world 95 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yeah my favorite is people who say things like “I’m the 1940s USA/Canada/aus/etc fought fascism, what happened”?

No, they fought GERMANY. tons of those soldiers came back home and became John Birchers or klansmen or Christofascist evangelicals any other kind of fascist.

Shooting nazis does not an anti fascist make, perplexingly.

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

Also, the US was VERY hesitant to enter the European war. There was a lot of support for the Nazis in the US. From some high ranking people. Like the first director of the OSS and the Dulles brothers (instrumental in forming the CIA and NATO). They wanted a separate peace with Germany, and to enter the European war against the Soviets. But luckily FDR was unmovable in his support of the Soviets against the Nazis.

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The latter point is not particularly surprising. Many people fight in wars because they have no choice or out of patriotism, or a combination of those plus other factors.

Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism. Some people might have the badly mistaken view that a certain skin color is better or worse at certain jobs, for example, but that doesn't mean that they would endorse genocide.

[–] GrapesOfAss@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some skin colors ARE worse at certain jobs

Like, I'm white, I could never play Mike Tyson in a movie

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Counterpoint: that would be hilarious

Edit: without blackface only

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Just get the voice right and people will suspend disbelief.

Also, talk about toads. A lot.

[–] Feirdro@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

And a lot of guys just want to kill someone. They’ll listen to anyone who says someone’s a bad guy who can be morally murdered.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Another important point is that there are varying degrees of racism.

No, not really. You could, if you really wanted to, distinguish between two different "wings" or "traditions" of white supremacist ideology (which, of course, is the only "racism" there actually is) - the eliminationist and the exploitative.

They are not mutually exclusive - the Nazis, for instance, followed both policies when they exploited Slavic people for labor with the full understanding that all Slavic people would be eliminated as soon as their labor was no longer needed by the (so-called) "master race".

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What an astonishingly reductive and inaccurate statement.

Here's but a small token of FDR's statements on the matter.

https://youtu.be/qrNDwyj4u1w?si=c-ZuF7_UOWJQH0wz

Anti-fascist rhetoric was clear and popular, even in nations that would be arguably considered fascist themselves today, like Segregation Era America and the British Empire.

Tons of those soldiers might have continued being a racist after being drafted to fight Nazis, but just as many learned exactly what path they were following and changed course.

FDR's political coalition even pretty much directly evolved into the Civil Rights Movement.

The simple reality is that 20th century politics was never simple but progressive thought thoroughly won out over ideologies of hate and actively worked to undo the centuries of damage done by colonial era white supremacist thought.

It was hardly a perfect process, and it's one that continues to this day, but to pretend it was simply just nations butting heads to the common man is dangerously revisionist.

The allied nations fought fascism. They knew what it was, could describe it better than many do today, and the leadership was clear in their opposition, even if often confusingly hypocritical, and often beset by internal opposition. That not every person in 1940 was completely on board with it is simply the human condition.

[–] vivadanang@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Mostly agree but in my own experience it's not WW2 vets that went Birch/KKK etc., but their kids.

[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your experience is wrong. KKK and others existed just fine before and during WWII.

[–] vivadanang@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's high water mark was the 20s for sure, but when we talk about the outwardly visible racists, goddamn the baby boom represents

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

As opposed to their parents who protested Ruby Bridges?

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

My grandma wrote letters to American GIs deployed in Europe during the second world war. She kept the letters she got back.

There were letters outright praising Hitler and hoping the allied powers would take up the fight against the Reds.