This is such an odd, and oddly persistent, urban legend. (Hitler didn't design the Beetle.)
The earliest designs for what would become the Beetle date from before the Nazi rise to power, and were dusted off and —by actual car designers—when Hitler was like "I'd like to get a cheap car with certain broad specs into production."
But then the war happened, and as a result the Beetle didn't go into mass production until the late 1940s. There weren't a zillion of them zipping around Berlin during the Nazi era—more like a hundred, tops.
So yeah, Volkswagen originated as a Nazi company, and the postwar Beetle was largely (though not fully) based on Nazi-era plans. But it wasn't designed by Hitler, and it wasn't really even a Nazi-era car.

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More from @studentactivism

1 Oct
Thursday night: Biden, congressional leadership, and progressive Dems stand unified against Manchin and Sinema, raising hopes for joint passage of reconciliation and infrastructure bills.

New York Times front page, Friday morning:
I'm reading the first article now. It's even worse and stupider than the headline.

"Short of support amid a liberal revolt." "A humiliating blow to Mr. Biden and Democrats."
How do you characterize a situation where the president, the leaders of the House and Senate, the squad, and 95+% of House and Senate Dems are all in lockstep against two Senators?

Why, "the distance between the party’s left flank and a few centrists," of course.
Read 5 tweets
30 Sep
A woman just won a ruling that British police violated her human rights by allowing a cop to engage in an ongoing sexual relationship with her while working undercover in her activist community. theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/s…
The tribunal found that the officer in question pursued sexual relationships with a long list of women while spying on their activist circles, and that if the Metropolitan Police wasn't aware of it, it was only because they chose not to be.
The ruling came down on the same day that an officer in the same police department was sentenced to life in prison for using his authority and badge to abduct, rape, and murder a woman he took from a London street this spring. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/c…
Read 6 tweets
21 Sep
Teachers are supposed to get federal student loan forgiveness. But they have to apply to get it, and when they do, @usedgov frequently turns them down with no justification. politico.com/news/2021/09/2…
"The disclosure suggests further bureaucratic problems with the management of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which has come under fire from Democrats in recent years for rejecting more than 98 percent of all borrowers who applied."
"[The Department of Education has] blocked thousands of people who clearly work in public service—including educators—from pursuing [student debt forgiveness via] PSLF, often due to paperwork hurdles and other trivial administrative errors." protectborrowers.org/pheaa-ecf-deni…
Read 17 tweets
21 Sep
RIP to the thrill and joy of not knowing whether someone believes in reproductive autonomy when you're contemplating having sex with them?
I get feeling like it's unfair to be rejected because you don't check someone's boxes, but nobody has an obligation to like, or to consider liking, anyone for any reason. That's not how liking people works.
And that's before we even get to the straightforwardly practical relationship between having sex with someone and wanting their sexual ethics and values to be compatible with yours.
Read 5 tweets
18 Sep
Overturning Obergefell would allow de-recognition of same-sex marriages. Overturning Lawrence would open the door to the return of sodomy laws.
For a long time I thought some of these victories were pretty much safe, just because their outcomes are now broadly popular. But an antidemocratic political movement doesn't have to care about popularity in the same way that a party that has to win free and fair elections does.
Sodomy laws were almost entirely unenforced for quite a while before the Lawrence decision. But if we've learned one thing from the last five years, it's that norms, precedent, and tradition mean nothing to the modern Republican Party.
Read 11 tweets
15 Sep
I know several people in their twenties and thirties who have decided not to have kids because the future looks so bleak. It breaks my heart.
Since some folks are misinterpreting, I want to be clear: The people I'm talking about aren't making an ethical decision to reduce their impact on the planet through population reduction. They're foregoing having kids because they're scared of what the world is turning into.
We could debate whether population restriction is going to solve the planet's problems (it mostly wouldn't, and would cause all sorts of other trouble, is my answer), but this isn't that.
Read 5 tweets

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