A movement with a distorted sense of individual rights that would seek to hamper vaccination in the midst of a global health crisis is reactionary to the core and hostile to human life itself. The dangerous rise of the anti-vax far-right is a symptom of a sickness in this society that we will still be confronting well after the last wave of the pandemic has finally receded.
Basically, it comes down to ignorance. This stuff isn’t taught in the schools in the west, and most people can’t even define what capitalism, socialism, communism, or fascism actually are. This is why communists implore people to read theory and history. Education is the first step towards actually acting effectively in one’s own interest.
I went to school in the west! In the US, we take US History (over and over again!) We definitely covered WWII and definitely learned about Fascism. But, yeah, it seems better education could solve alot of problems.
US history taught in schools is probably whitewashing all the genocide they commit and making it look as if they’re the heroes, so it’s no surprise no one knows what fascism is even though the US is exactly that and served as inspiration for literally the nazi Germany.
So, you are right that we were not taught that we were Fascist - and you are right, alot of US History is whitewashed here. We were actually taught that Italy was Hitler’s inspiration. I am not knowledgeable enough to debate this though, just telling you what we were taught here. But still, we were taught Hitler HATED socialism!
the curriculum in the US differs (sometimes wildly) state to state, and even county to county. Hell, it changed year to year for me. 5th-grade history was a pure Americanist power trip, 8th grade was nothing but Americanist propaganda with a lil tinge of ‘maybe the US isn’t always the hero’, then all three years of high school history I had to do changed the rhetoric. I remember being taught in 10th-grade history that Hitler was a socialist who simply believed that Marx and the Bolsheviks were bastardizations of socialism, and that why - per the lesson - he went to war with the Soviets. and why, again per the lesson, Stalin and Hitler signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This can explain a lot for those who don’t understand why Americans don’t understand fascism on a fundamental level, and think anything with government control is socialism.
simply put, school boards themselves don’t agree on nor understand what these things are, and because there isn’t a national curriculum, it’s ultimately up to states to decide what things students learn. Though, it’s really up to colleges to decide what they want high school graduates to know before starting college, hence is a big reason the American education system is very quiz oriented.
Very interesting - I’m very sheltered, I guess. In Eastern MA, where I went to school, we still had all the American propaganda, but definitely seemed to get a better understanding of fascism, compared to others it sounds.
I’d say the south gets the worst lessons of fascism, I grew up in Texas. Everyone from the south I know learned more or less what I did about Hitler’s motivations, but I guess it would make total sense that the people who inspired both Hitler and Mussolini would skew history a bit.
Hitler hated communism, not socialism. The two are not the same. Hitler very much loved socialism.
Google “misnomer”
he definitely hated communist…but are you sure he would be inline with socialism? I’ve actually read his book…and I don’t think so, but I do appreciate conversation. Nazism is an extension of Fascism (Hitler was mentored by Mussolini, although that eventually went south)…so, I feel as if Socialism would be negative to an extreme Nationalist as well.
That’s actually completely right. You can’t understand WWII without reading about the prior century, especially the history of colonialism.
The chief reason WWII happened was because Japan and Germany looked around and saw a US-Anglo global hegemony forming. The British had pretty aggressively expanded their empire world-wide, killing millions along the way, and were using that as economic leverage to bully everyone else. In the US, well, they did the same thing, but throughout the North American continent, and were beginning to expand globally as well.
Both Japan and Germany, who previously hadn’t done much colonial expansion, realized they could sit home doing nothing and become feudal states to a US/British alliance, or try carving out their own empires by invading their weaker neighbors like the British and Americans had done. And, of course, they took that chance, which ultimately failed since they started way too late in the game. The US had an entire well established continent of resources, and the British controlled global trade and the world’s largest navy.
Ironically, the modern EU, now dominated by Germany, is pretty close to Hitler’s original vision of Europe, albeit without quite as much bloodshed or ethnic “purity”. It’s a continent-spanning political system where almost all of Europe is economically and militarily unified under German leadership. It’s the kind of system Hitler would have made if he hadn’t been such a stupid asshole.