
American Nazis at Madison Square Garden, 1939 - wyndham
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/542499/marshall-curry-nazi-rally-madison-square-garden-1939/
======
baursak
I thought it was common knowledge that support for Nazis in America was
widespread all the way leading to American involvement in WW2.

Here's another sample: [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-
of-los...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los-
angeles-hitler-in-la-20171008-story.html)

 _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._

~~~
flachsechs
if every white american spent a week as another race, i don't think a single
one would be 'shocked' or 'flabbergasted' about any of this.

~~~
merpnderp
Did you just "white privilege" and undercover citizen trying to expose Nazi's
~80 years ago because he was shocked at how widespread support was? Your point
is that if he'd been black he wouldn't have been shocked by Nazi support?

~~~
okreallywtf
Do you disagree that being white, on average, causes one to be less exposed to
racism? I don't think that is a particularly radical concept.

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?

~~~
merpnderp
On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of
error, or is this now a political discussion?

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."

~~~
okreallywtf
Cool, thats about what I expected but I wanted to make sure before I put much
time into an argument. Good to see you aren't a hypocrite and provide sources
for your highly specific claims as well.

~~~
gspetr
1)Male Deaths:
[http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-04/business/fi-31566_1_w...](http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-04/business/fi-31566_1_workplace-
deaths)

2)Female sentences: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-
prison-s...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-
sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html)

3)Women get more degrees: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women-
surpass-men-in...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women-surpass-men-
in-college-degrees/)

4)Never married women earn more:
[http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/genevieve-
wood/what-pay-gap-young-women-out-earn-men-cities-gop-p/)

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?

~~~
okreallywtf
No actually I expected those were more than likely correct or at least
supportable, I was being snide because the parent poster was being an ass
about simple analogy.

>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.

~~~
merpnderp
Maybe you never talked to any relatives from that period, but I did. And to
claim they weren't aware of Nazi dangers in the US because of their race is
not only by definition racist, but insults their memories. You can't just piss
all over an entire race/gender of people and then whine about being insulted
back.

------
dalbasal
There are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a
child.

The first one is the “banality of evil” view. The nazis were nothing special.
One of many populist and racist parties. One of many hateful ideologies. The
only thing that stands them out is the results. They actually won power
through weirdness of politics in that time and place. They actually started a
massive war (lucky timing). They actually went on the massive genocidal
campaign implied by their rhetoric.

Normal people. Normal (if somewhat distasteful) party. Abnormal actions. It’s
kind of related to the “one damn thing after another” theory of history.

The other (more intuitive, and unavoidable) view is the pure evil view. Hitler
& Eichman were uniquely evil people. The SS were evil people. They had an evil
doctrine, evil symbols, evil political methods. Evil resulted. Watch out for
this sort of thing. Know the devil when you see her. Never Again!

Anyway, in 1939 I’m not sure nazism stood out as a unique evil different in
some way from domestic far right movements like the kkk. It’s historical
perspective that gives it the symbolic meaning that shocks us today.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Pure evil can in fact pass for normal, banal politics in certain times and
places. That's the problem. Normal, banal people learned not to think thoughts
like, "Are we the baddies? We've got _skulls_ on!" and, "But what would I
think if they were doing this to _me_?"

Remember, the late 1930s also had Stalinism, Japanese Imperialism, the
_British_ Empire sponsoring things like the Bengali Famine, and various
American imperial/colonial efforts as well.

There was a lot of evil to go around.

The proper advice is: know the Evil Impulse when it appears _in yourself_ ,
and _then_ you can have a good idea of how to spot it in others.

~~~
sremani
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them
from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts
through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece
of his own heart?”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Well, anyone with a measure of decency, of course.

------
kevmo
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored
man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to
look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

-Lyndon Johnson.

~~~
Spooky23
That's a spot-on quote that captures one of the fundamental tensions of US
History. Johnson is a enigmatic figure, as he grew up experiencing this, and
did great things to bring justice to people, yet had his own personal and
policy failings that stand in jarring contrast.

Much of the institutional racial and policy oddities in this country stem from
this form of control, which was used to make and keep slavery an institution
and keep the lower classes in check. One of the rallying cries of the draft
riots (that is uncomfortably close to the modern Trump-ist white nationalist
rallying cry) is that slaves were valued more ($1,000 for a slave) than the
Irish ($300 to avoid war service) and were on the rise, and that rise would
drag down wages when freed slaves flooded New York labor markets.

~~~
gspetr
This is not an apples to apples comparison. The slaves were already in the US.
Illegal immigrants are not.

I don't see much arguments from the right that it's the blacks and not illegal
immigrants who are driving down wages, given the fact that black unemployment
has gone WAAAAY up since the 50s. Black teenagers had a better employment rate
than white teenagers back in the day.

~~~
Spooky23
Sorry, but you’re dead wrong on this. The US and its predecessor colonies
imported slaves by the shipload well into the 19th century.

You can literally go back to the original Virginia colony, where the
landowners didn’t like the high costs and turnover (due to malaria and AWOL)
of indentured servants from England. So they started importing African slaves,
who didn’t need to be paid, didn’t have a term contract, and often were
resistant to malaria.

They started having problems with slaves escaping and joining up with frontier
communities of former or escaped indentured servants. That's where the racial
supremacy stuff started -- to keep people at odds and under control.

The illegal immigrant issue isn't the same, but isn't totally different
either. There's a demand for cheap labor without normal labor protections, and
demand for life outside of third world countries.

~~~
gspetr
> African slaves, who didn’t need to be paid, didn’t have a term contract, and
> often were resistant to malaria.

You still needed to pay someone to guard them and feed them. According to
Larry Elder only 5% of whites in the US today can trace their lineage to slave
owners. Majority of whites migrated into the country after the slavery.

And even with regards to whites owning slaves, most only owned 1 or 2 because
they were expensive, plantation owners were the ones who owned majority of
slaves.

------
apo
A couple of points of context.

The rally was organized by the "German American Bund," an organization that
Nazi Germany had distanced itself from before the Madison Square Garden rally:

 _On March 1, 1938 the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German
nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be
used by the organization. This was done both to appease the U.S. and to
distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of
embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund)

This was not a mass movement by any stretch, but seemed instead to be centered
around a group of German-American immigrants.

The video depicts a Pledge of Allegiance ceremony that lacks the phrase "under
God" because it was added in 1942:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_\(United_States\)#Addition_of_.22under_God.22)

~~~
UncleSlacky
Correction: "under God" was added in 1954, at the instigation of the Knights
of Columbus. The Bellamy salute was retired in 1942, though.

------
rdtsc
And if you heard Chomsky he describes how growing up there were beer parties
in US when Paris fell to the Nazis.

Those things was quickly swept under the rug later, and not talked about much.
Also the involvement of American companies in supporting the Nazi effort
including Ford and IBM and probably others.

I grew up hearing about Nazis. For the Soviet Union it was _the_ big war, a
war of survival basically. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war. One
drove them all the way to Berlin. Got wounded by them. I also heard stories
from teachers about the horrible atrocities they've experienced. One jarring
one was how their Jewish childhood friend was raped, dismembered and buried in
the backyard by German soldiers. They watched through the fence in the back of
the garden hiding in the bushes.

That is why it is grating to hear everyone use "Nazis" like a joke. "You are
such a Nazi", "Everyone who doesn't agree with my political views is a Nazi".
"The store clerk is a fascist cause they made me wait too long", etc.

------
Mizza
Another weird moment in history:

Nazis attend the Nation of Islam summit, 1961 -
[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAAL...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAALfQ/Ss8iDFtDQYQDYTxngXc3uLVd4cz_rKBowCLcB/s1600/George_Lincoln_Rockwell_nation_of_islam.jpg)

Black nationalists and white nationalists coming together. Bizarre stuff.

~~~
sdenton4
Moar context: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x-
met...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dpwamv/when-malcolm-x-met-the-
nazis-0000620-v22n4)

Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a
highly-placed anti-semite, which made alliance with the nazis possible.

~~~
jff
> Apparently the Nation of Islam was in favor of racial separation, and had a
> highly-placed anti-semite

I'd be pretty surprised if the Nation of Islam had only one highly-placed
anti-semite.

------
peterwwillis
(This is a tangent unrelated to the topic)

Three years after this rally, Pearl Harbor happens, which results in the US
entering into the already-running World War II.

Virtually all people of Japanese ancestry are forcibly relocated from the West
Coast and incarcerated in internment camps - around 115,000 people, 62% of
which were US citizens.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans)

At the same time, "the government examined the cases of German nationals
individually, and detained relatively few [11,000 out of the 1.2 Million born
in Germany and 5 Million with two German parents]. To a much lesser extent,
some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process
and also detained."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans)

Of the 695,000 ethnic Italians in the US at the time, only 1,881 nationals
were detained.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_American...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_Americans)

The justification of rounding up all ethnic Japanese into camps was "we're at
war, we will do anything to protect our country". But that same logic was
never applied to the Germans or Italians, even though their countries were
bigger threats than Japan.

A government commission found the treatment of ethnic Japanese to have been
racially motivated, and actually paid reparations to those that were interned.
But even so, this practice was never made illegal.

I find this especially interesting since a certain US President seems to have
some strong feelings toward certain ethnicities and religions. In the event we
went to war with a country with such an ethnicity, we would probably see these
camps again, because no law has made it illegal, and there is legal and
military precedence for it. It's also a near-certainty that no Supreme Court
will go against a President during wartime.

------
ringaroundthetx
I would like to point out that the raised hands / sig heil was normal American
reverence to the flag, and had nothing exceptional to do with the event
depicted.

It was an inspiration to the Nazi Germany sig heil just like a few other
aspects of American culture.

The ritual around the pledge of allegiance was subsequently changed to
simultaneously be distinctive from fascists and communists.

~~~
louithethrid
If you squint at the Reichskriegflagge- you can see the Coca-Cola Colours.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
is that intended to be an absurdity in relationships?

------
neves
Wow, the swastika besides a giant George Washington is a really impressive
image. Sure you can use the words freedom and justice for anything.

Who is the guy talking in the lectern? The one who is despised as a demon by
the "jewish controlled media"?

------
aezell
When the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited at the beginning, there is no
"under God." I knew that it had been added in 1954 but it's interesting to
hear it so clearly missing here given that the event occurred in 1939.

------
duxup
That's kinda a freakish alt history look there with George and nazi activity.

------
forgottenpass
_it seems amazing that it isn’t a stock part of every high school history
class. This story was likely nudged out of the canon, in part because it’s
scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to
forget._

Everyone is outraged that the 5 things they're passionate about aren't taught
(enough) in school. The problem is that they're never same 5 things as the
next guy.

Everything that follows the word "likely" is this guy crafting a narrative
that fits his world view and appetite for rage much better than the more
realistic answers: teacher's priorities pulled in a million directions at once
and schools somehow have to fit as much as possible into an education program
bounded by funding, timing, and classroom sizes.

~~~
coldtea
That's a quite novel way of whitewashing the kind of whitewashing of official
school (and even academic) history that countries usually do and has been
studied and documented by historians and activists time and again.

No, topics like the Native American concentration camps or the history of the
Japanese Americans in WWII, the gory details of the US racial and labour
history, and other such things were not historically kept away from school
books for decades on end because "too many things to teach, too little
teaching time".

The same reason the Japanese don't keep their WWII doings in China out of
their books because they have so much other stuff to cover.

------
sebtoast
There seems to be some kind of issue with the video between 2:08 and 2:10. You
can see the flags going back and forth as if someone rewind the footage. Maybe
it's an editing error?

------
deanCommie
It's all fun and games until 6 million jews die.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

------
dreta
I’m sick and tired of articles like that popping-up on this site. This is not
Twitter. Why is irrelevant political content not flagged immediately.

~~~
dang
The mandate of this site is intellectual curiosity. Take a look at the first
paragraph of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

I'd say this video footage easily qualifies as gratifying intellectual
curiosity (it did mine, anyhow), despite the provocativeness of the material.
Had the discussion gone haywire we'd have downweighted the thread, but it
isn't too bad.

Actually we've downweighted it a bit, but before that we turned off an
automatic software penalty that applied. Balancing act.

