omg-ponies:

zombiekougra:

The reason hitler and nazism was ever able to rise to power was that every time hitler did something the us and other world powers were just like “come on hitler that’s not cool :/” instead of acting immediately we ended up with an entire world war that resulted in the deaths of millions of people, mainly Jewish people

So no sitting idly by while another fucking nazi group goes around saying shit like “are Jews people?” And “do we need a black race?” Is not the fucking answer. Sometimes you gotta punch a nazi in the fucking face so their wimp ass will be too afraid to show themselves in public for the foreseeable future

This is a very nice fantasy but it completely misrepresents what America really did during Hitler’s rise between the World Wars.

While Hitler was gaining support in Germany, Henry Ford and Father Coughlin were filling American media with antisemitism. While Hitler was coming to power, Ford was circulating English copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The KKK was having a Renaissance – not just in the South. All through the United States. Even in New York City (where in 1927, Donald Trump’s father Fred was arrested at a violent Klan rally – dressed in Klan robes). 

In Washington, Congress was passing the Johnson-Reed aiming at staunching the flow of immigration from Eastern European nations, effectively halting Jewish immigration to America. The Ivy League schools were instituting quotas and legacy admission systems to keep Jews out of their schools and preventing Jews from having access to white-collar jobs. You had organizations like the Immigration Restriction League, whose aim was keeping out those who they felt were racially inferior.

And let’s not forget about the Evian Conference and the St. Louis. FDR ignored the plight of the Jewish people. America’s response to Hitler’s rise was, at best, willful blindness, and at worst, parallel antipathy towards Jews.

Punch all the Nazis you want. I’ll be there, punching them too (like my grandfather did in World War II). But don’t forget that America deserves a good punch in the face for its own long and sordid love affair with antisemitism.