Indoctrinate the youth, make their brownshirts appealing, let a nation ignore the obvious.

[madfloridian]

From the movie Cabaret.

I was just reading trof's post about WWII in the the General Discussion forum. I thought as I read it that my children and others their age had never heard of the Holocaust, knew little about the advance of Germany through Europe. I think it stunned me to realize that. I mostly taught primary grades, so I went unaware of the lack of teaching of that era in middle and high school.

Trof's post:

What do you know about WWII. Really?

He was speaking of how much ignorance there was about the causes of this war.

The song above from the movie Cabaret gave me shivers more so than any war movie I saw. It is called Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Others than the brownshirted Hitler youth sang along mindlessly. A few of the older Germans in the scene looked sadly on. Just a few though.

It reminded me of Milton Mayer's book, They Thought They Were Free.

And none ever thought Hitler would lead them into war.

Why not?

-- They had never traveled abroad.
-- They didn't talk to foreigners or read the foreign press.
-- Before Hitler, most had no jobs. Now they did.
-- The targets of their hatred had been stigmatized well in advance of any action against them.
-- They really weren't asked to “do” anything --- just not to interfere.
-- The men who burned synagogues did not live in the cities of the synagogues.
-- Hitler was a father figure, right to the end. (He was “betrayed” by his subordinates.)

The more you read, the more your jaw drops. How many people did it require to take over a country? “A few hundred at the top, to plan and direct.... a few thousand to supervise and control.... a few score thousand specialists, eager to serve...a million to do the dirty work....”

[madfloridian]

1. Why we must know the ones teaching our children, and what they are teaching.

But of course such a thing could never happen here.

Wonder why I am passionate about turning over education to private companies? Those who own the schools set the agenda.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. My son was lucky to have a concentration camp survivor speak to his class last year

in hebrew school. This fellow:

Spoke for an hour, we parents were also allowed to attend.

So my son has some inkling of what happened, but so much less so than old farts like his dad. When I was a boy, so many including my next-door neighbors had the tattoos on their arms from the camps. We watched films of bodies stacked like cord wood. So we knew the horror.

But we didn't know the story of how the horror came to be - that was not taught. After visiting Germany after college and finding that the people didn't seem to be monsters, I made a little study of how it came to be. It struck me: it could certainly happen here. Or anywhere.

I suspect that there's nothing more important that we could do in our schools than reading They Thought They Were Free.

[madfloridian]

3. Right after the war I would sneak looks at my grandmother's Life Magazines. Graphic pictures...

of the camps. I never told anyone I looked at the pictures, but I would sit and cry. Even at that young age I wondered how the world never knew this was going on.. Or did they. I never figured it out.

Yes, it could happen here in other forms to other groups...the power of propaganda unchecked by anyone speaking the truth.

[madfloridian]

4. Powerful video.

I hope it gets a lot of views. This is not a popular post here nor a popular topic. But it is a true one, and those of us who remember are filled with grief. And we know it could happen again in another guise to other groups. All it takes is a media that lies and lets propaganda rule. Our media is not that far away from that now.

[madfloridian]

5. Why a reviewer reviewed the Mayer book in 2008, then again in 2011. Pertinent.

"I wrote about this book in 2008. Why showcase it again? Because the reports of "freedom" and "revolution" coming out of the Middle East are, in most American media, overly simplistic. (Is "the Jasmine Revolution" a re-run of the European revolutions of 1848? If so, expect less freedom soon --- remember: France was a monarchy again by 1852.) And while others see only peaceful protestors, I see men on horseback and camels, wielding clubs, and buses of Tea Party supporters streaming into Wisconsin to cheer on the Governor's bust-the-unions campaign. And I thought: time to look back and see how easy it to wake up one morning and find you're living in a dictatorship."

And my comments in 2011:

"We have seen lately how the Koch brothers operate and others of the "few hundred at the top" mentioned by the reviewer. The Dick Armies and their Freedom Works. As a former teacher I need to mention such "grassroots" groups as the Parents' Revolution, which is no revolution at all... but a group founded by the head of the Green Dot charter schools.

I feel that the corporate world has controlled our media to the extent that even good Democrats who care a lot have to be careful what they say if they want to go on the air or be otherwise heard. What a dangerous situation.

Maybe that is one of the reasons we are having such a bad case of "bipartisanship." Perhaps it is not worth the effort to speak out strongly....and perhaps it is just easier to go along"


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x625326

[DhhD]

6. And now we have another one, an Anointed King running the South (this South is not the South

of Germany). A King running on bringing the government to a shut down with a rise from Church support. As in a theologists wanting the Supreme Court to make it a Public/Federal Law, to allow prayer to be the, First Step, to take over city government meetings. Second Step, election of Deacons who have been attending city government meetings getting prepared to take over in city business and governance. The blending of Church and State; if you do not blend in or your name is not written in The Book of Life, check out the genocide written about in the Bible. Anyone, not Aryan/Angelic can be sent to Hell/Holocaust, early as in the Second Solution, to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. The redevelopment of a new Ghetto (cut off or out of society) in America began 30 years ago. Removing social services net to the poor, elderly, veterans and children and the middle class workers that can no longer afford to give money to the Church, is the rise of the Second Ermine Society of the Tomorrow Belongs to Us Theology. King Cruz wants support to just come take everything to the Chruch of the Hexagram/not the Star of David.

This is my opinion.
DhhD

[madfloridian]

7. We should never discount the power of people like Cruz.

Nor should we fail to speak out about those who like him would remove the social services to the poor and elderly and veterans and children as you said.

I do not think we take them seriously enough.

[fasttense]

9. Along those lines more Communist and Socialist were execute

for protesting against the Nazis then religious people protesting against Nazis.

According to statistics held by the Nazis, the most common form of opposition came from those ideologically opposed to the Nazis. The primary targets for the Gestapo in this case were communists and socialists. Of the 32,500 death sentences ordered for political reasons, 20,000 of the victims were communists. For December 1941, for example, statistics held by the Central Office of the SS Reich Security Service show that 405 people were arrested for being communist or Marxist. This compares with just 12 people arrested from the Protestant church who opposed the Nazi Regime.http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/opposition_nazi_germany.htm

Goes to show you what cowards good little Christians really are. They can stand up to pregnant women and doctors but hardly never Nazis and their ilk.

[madfloridian]

8. Kick because of young people being "indoctrinated" by the likes of Fox News..

and the right wing radio bullies who keep this part of Florida in the palm of their hands.

This is going on right now in our country.

Our schools are falling down on the job of teaching history, social studies, and civics. We can not learn from our past mistakes if we don't know what they were.