Few things infuriate me more than the “we can’t judge historical figures based on what we think now” canard, particularly in relation to racism and anti-Semitism — both of which people around the world and in the United States have been fighting for centuries.
Let’s take our old friend Henry Ford, for example, the only American mentioned fondly by Hitler in “Mein Kampf.” (Granted, mentioned only twice).
In 1920, thousands of Jewish Americans and others were so repulsed by Ford’s anti-Semitism (particularly the publication of a version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Ford’s newspaper) that the Anti-Defamation League released a pamphlet condemning it.
Not only that, 100 “eminent Americans” signed on to “The Perils of Racial Prejudice” to condemn the release of “The International Jew” (which was how the Protocols were repackaged). books.google.com/books/about/Th…
Among those eminent Americans were W.E.B. Du Bois, William Jennings Bryan, and even WOODROW WILSON, a giant racist, who STILL thought that Ford had gone too dang far.
Like the entire argument certain people made against someone being able to have an abortion in cases like this one was “well how would we be able to punish her rapist” and it turns out they just … don’t
Funnily enough the 1945 Nazi film “Kolberg” (a fictionalized account of the Napoleonic Wars) actually did use frontline Nazi troops because Joseph Goebbels was an evil moron
Again, they were doing this during like, the Invasion of Normandy.
These dorks pulled 5,000 troops out of the Eastern Front to appear in a film that got released two weeks before the city that it premiered in was liberated by the Allies
My oldhead uncle lied about his age to enlist in the Korean War and his obituary described his entire experience of the 1960s and 1970s — during which time he lived in San Francisco — as follows.
1.) people ask "can i have some police reform"
2.) powerful people are like "no but here's some shit wrapped in kente cloth and a white lady is here to yell at you about something"
3.) now people are mad about the shit wrapped in kente cloth and there's no police reform