My friend whose family was beaten to death by gestapo

[tavernier]

in the WWII years (and they were not Jews, but Germans who didn’t go along with the Reich), told me that what scares her so much now is that even as a child, she remembers the anger and hatred that was stirred up amongst all the people. We had this conversation because my family was deported from Latvia by people who were also incited by anger and hateful speech.

If you think the hateful tweets don’t really make much difference, think again. It could be your father that gets beaten to death by the ppl who hang on to all of this hateful rhetoric.

No hyperbole here. Sadly it happened to millions.

[lpbk2713]

1. It can easily get out of control.

Hate feeds on itself.

[tavernier]

4. Yes. Quickly.

[Hekate]

17. Control? It is a means of control. The modern hatemongers are very frightening. nt

[mountain grammy]

29. Exactly!

[atreides1]

2. And it can happen here

People need to realize that he has followers who will go along with him...even to the point of committing genocide! Their reasons, don't matter...for some it, will be their religion, for others it's because their hate guides them...no matter what the reason, incidents like those you describe will occur!

It's happened many times and it can happen again!!!

[smirkymonkey]

3. I agree with you. It absolutely can happen again.

It might not be as systematic, but it can be just as horrifying and lethal.

[tavernier]

5. Her father was ordered to shoot his father

and when he wouldn’t, they bludgeoned him to death.

Most democrats believe in science, but I’m willing to accept the theory in this case, that pure evil exists and is fomented by anger and hatred.

[smirkymonkey]

7. God, that is so horrible! I can't imagine such cruelty although I know it has and does

exist. It is nice to believe that human nature is basically good, but naive to think that true evil does not exist among us. I am so sorry for your friend and her family. I will never understand that kind of hatred and cruelty as long as I live.

[tavernier]

8. She is almost 80 but looks 60

because she bikes and does yoga and eats properly, but this discussion brings her to her knees. Obviously.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. It has happened here-- not a nation gone insane like Germany in the 30s with...

a murderous leadership, but smaller demonstrations of hate and violence.

The public has been whipped up many times, but this is one that haunts me:

https://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/apr/010430.execution.html

The Last Public Execution in America

The United States has a long history of so-called "legal" public executions. The last one was carried out in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1936 when Rainey Bethea was hanged after his conviction for the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman.

Hundreds of reporters and photographers -- some from as far away as New York and Chicago -- were sent to Owensboro to cover what was then the country's first hanging conducted by a woman. At least 20,000 people descended on the town to witness the execution. Bethea walked toward the gallows shortly after sunrise and was pronounced dead at around 5:45 a.m. that same day.

In 1936, reporters blasted what they called the 'carnival in Owensboro.' Many scholars say Bethea's execution -- and the coverage it received -- led to a banning of public executions in America.

Some crowd,eh?

[jberryhill]

15. To be fair...

...it's not as if they had reality television or game shows back then.

[lunasun]

32. Rainey Bethea

[iluvtennis]

10. Folks we don't have to go back to far in American history, look at the 50s/60s when KKK

riled up people and they beat and killed black people. Example, Emmett Till (from Chicago) was a 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after a white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store

And right after slavery where ppl got riled up and just hung ppl because they were black.

Billie Holiday's song Strange Fruit [hanging from those trees] is about the post slavery hangings.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. or January, this year, sadly

[Demoiselle]

12. You're all probably too young to remember Eric Sevareidbut..

He was an American broadcast news correspondent who spent some time covering news in Germany during Hitler's rise.
In his autobiographical record of those times,("Not So Wild a Dream&quot he remarked that one of the things that struck him about Germany was how like it was to the America he grew up in. (The Midwest.)
One of our blessings, I think, is how very diverse we are as a nation. But ….we need to be watchful.

[Demoiselle]

13. ..Er, Eric Sevareid. The but was meant to start the next phrase. Sorry.

[lunatica]

22. You can edit your posts

Just click on edit on the bottom right of the post, where the reply link is.

[mountain grammy]

30. I remember Eric Sevareid

He was a fine reporter. My mother said she remembered listening to him on the radio during WWII reporting with Ed Murrow.

[herding cats]

14. The hate is aleady helping to embolden groups like Atomwaffen Division

One if their members is the murderer of Blaze Bernstein.

Samuel Lincoln Woodward, the teenager who was recently charged with the brutal murder of the 19-year-old Jewish student Blaze Bernstein, was an avowed member of a growing American Nazi organization — a group that has quickly shot to the forefront of the white supremacist movement with its dark promises of violence and an impending race war.

<>

What Is Atomwaffen Division?

Atomwaffen Division is an American Nazi group that was formed around 2015, growing out of an international fascist website called Iron March. Over the past months it has expanded, drawing members from the boom of the “alt-right,” the online white identity subculture that has spread into the mainstream over the past years.

But while benefiting from the spread of white identity politics online, the organization derides the softer strains of the “alt-right” as weak and ineffective. AWD, as the group is known, wants to spark an all-out race war — and is training members in violent combat in cells across the country.

Even within the racist and ant-Semitic “alt-right,” this group represents the most hardcore and explicitly violent fringe. White nationalist Richard Spencer, who infamously led a roomful of supporters in a celebratory Nazi salute after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, pales in comparison. Spencer, while advocating the creation of a white-only ethnostate, does not call openly for violence. With AWD, gone are the intentionally offensive memes of Pepe frogs. Even Andrew Anglin, the editor of what the Southern Poverty Law Center previously called the internet’s top hate site, appears tame alongside this group.

AWD makes it clear on its website that the group is not interested in what it calls “keyboard warriors” — instead it wants the true “radicals.”

Read more: https://forward.com/news/393099/what-is-atomwaffen-division-the-nazi-group-tied-to-the-murder-of-blaze-bern/

[raven mad]

16. My next-door neighbor and best buddy's grandfolks didn't make it through

Baden-Baden. Their kids did, hence neighbor & friend.

[dhol82]

27. Do you mean Bergen-Belsen?

Baden-Baden is a spa town.

[HeiressofBickworth]

18. The US was half way there

when Japanese people were rounded up and put in concentration camps in WWII. I have always wondered what would have happened to those people if the war in the Pacific had gone badly. Would they have been blamed -- accused of sabotage? Hatred of Japanese was already at a high pitch. How much more fanning the fires of hatred would it have taken to incite violence?

[pansypoo53219]

20. i know it was bad, but what if it saved some from worse.

[HeiressofBickworth]

24. Are you suggesting

that the involuntary incarceration, loss of homes, jobs/income, property and businesses was the same as "protective custody". How about no persecution or tolerance of directed hate instead?

[lunasun]

33. ok then why not round up Germans in the US?

[Mariana]

41. They were harder to identify, for one.

Most descendants of Germans are white Americans that look like any other kind of white Americans.

[KT2000]

19. why did an older man

answer his door in the evening with his gun drawn and the red light on the chest of a postal worker trying to deliver a package from Amazon.
My bet is he is addicted to hate media. The shit is already happening. Our behavior is already changing to avoid the haters, whether it is where we go and what we say.

[pansypoo53219]

21. hate media is killing amerika.

[certainot]

23. the hate starts at the local rw radio station and there is NO pushback

worse than that, we let 88 + universities endorse 260 limbaugh stations

limbaugh took credit today for being the reason the memo was released at 12 ET, thats when his show starts.

that's the same when the GOP announced palin was the choice for mccain. limbagh withheld support for mccain unti he finally chose palin over pawlenty and lieberman. that was fri before the GOP convention. without limbaugh's 'blessing' it would be a disaster.

[llmart]

34. Limbaugh was the start of the hatefulness as far as I'm concerned.

He was spewing his hatred long before Faux News came into being. People were sucking that crap up like crazy as if he was so smart. I couldn't believe the people who were getting hooked on listening to him.

[certainot]

36. unfortunately they put him on 600 stations, many major, so no one could escape it

[Tumbulu]

37. And still most people don't understand this

and waste all of our time blathering on about "free speech" .....

Thanks for bringing it up!

[Pacifist Patriot]

25. "Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me."

That phrase has got to go down in history as one of the worst aphorisms ever. Words do indeed wield incredible power. Anyone who does not believe this has not paid attention.

[Honeycombe8]

26. I agree. That's why it's important to protest and speak out in the face of hatred & hostility

toward others, whoever they may be.

Voting is critical, but speaking out and protesting is very important, too. If we don't, then silence is tacit approval. They have to know that there are many who will not go along with them.

I've thought about this a few times, how things must have been somewhat similar at the beginning of the Nazi takeover. Could it have been nipped in the bud at the beginning, if enough people had protested or yelled from the rooftops? Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, since I think Hitler took steps to remove the FREE PRESS (enemy of the people).

We have history to show us what could happen. So we have to stop that kind of thing in its tracks.

[Sophia4]

28. Right!

[summer_in_TX]

31. The Rwanda genocide comes to mind too.

Talk radio stations in their country spent years fomenting hatred and associating the Tutsi tribe with cockroaches and everything evil – much like Limbaugh and others in RW talk media do about "Libtards" and "feminazis."

We are very much at risk of a violent explosion of rage, even civil war. We will be very fortunate to come through this without that.

A hell of a lot of careful dissecting and proof, an intentional effort to influence their influencers, along with cult deprogramming expertise may, just may, help us come through without it.

[Hekate]

35. That is always in the back of my mind somewhere. And part of the USA certainly is well-armed...

...with something more than machetes.

[colsohlibgal]

38. Time To Fight

We are close to the brink and don’t think we are unique among historic dominant nation states.

We have weathered much in our 240+ history but in this techno age we must fight harder for truth and justice.

Their is a surging minority of resentful bigoted hate mongers and with Orange Hitler they feel emboldened. Good decent fair caring people with the gene for empathy need to rebuff these evil hate filled minions.

Like many I want Drumpf gone but if that happens we must brace for aftershock.

[GatoGordo]

39. It still happens. Daily. All over the world

The "Gestapo" isn't dead. They call themselves something else these days. And they don't make any bones about where their loyalty lies. It NEVER lies in some sort of constitution that protects all. Always some despot, or some nationalistic movement.

example

Venezuela is struggling right now with all of this. Their "Gestapo" is called the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB).

NB: the lack of the word VENEZUELA in their titles

These are not professional law enforcement types whose duty it is to protect public safety. Their sole purpose is to "protect the Revolution". They have been recruited from the ranks of Chavistas, often poor and living in barrios/favelas. They are given a paycheck, a uniform and a gun. They take orders not from professional officers, but party hacks whose only loyalty is to The Revolution.

These goons are called to action frequently by "tweets" from their masters in the Chavista movement, to set upon hungry protesters. They are expected to suit up at a moments notice and report for "duty" when there is the least hint of opposition to Chavismo.

And the Brown Shirts? Oh, they are still around too.

[world wide wally]

40. Hate sucks

(That is all)

[DFW]

42. A friend of mine just turned 70, and his father WAS beaten to death

His family escaped being sent to the death camps (they were/are Transylvanian Jews, Hungarian native language), but his father was the victim of an "interrogation" because Ceauşescu's Securitaţe was ordered to find some smugglers of airplane parts in their district, even though it was a rural area, most of which didn't yet have electricity or running water. After finding no airplane parts, despite beating my friend's father almost to death, the ethnic Romanian police expelled the undesirable Hungarian-speaking Jews to Germany. My friend's father died of his injuries within months of the expulsion. His crime was being of the wrong ethnicity. How familiar is THAT story?