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February 2019
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In 1939, 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for a Nazi rally. Somebody just made a mini documentary about it. It’s called “A Night At The Garden”. (1) You can check it out at @anightatthegarden. (Only 7 minutes Long!) From the images here, you can see that it was billed as a “Pro American” rally. (2) I imagine they had a very specific idea about who they considered to be “American”. They don’t have images of Hitler and swastikas. Instead, they have American flags and a giant George Washington. (3) They want to convince you that being a Nazi is about the most American thing you can do. Thankfully, many Americans did not agree. (4) But also, many did. Always remember, the Germans were not especially predisposed in their nature to hatred, violence, and genocide. It was, rather their economic, political, and socio-cultural conditions that were easy for someone like Hitler to exploit. That means that this can happen anywhere some or all of those conditions exist. Poverty, ignorance, fear for the future, anger over the present, and a predisposition to dislike minorities make a population easy pickings for any aspiring fascist dictator. It can happen anywhere. It can happen here.
On #ThisDayinHistory 1945, a series of Allied firebombing raids begins against the German city of Dresden, reducing the “Florence of the Elbe” to rubble and flames, and killing as many as 135,000 people. It was the single most destructive bombing of the war—including Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and all the more horrendous because little, if anything, was accomplished strategically, since the Germans were already on the verge of surrender. More than 3,400 tons of explosives were dropped on the city by 800 American and British aircraft. The firestorm created by the two days of bombing set the city burning for many more days, littering the streets with charred corpses, including many children. Eight square miles of the city was ruined, and the total body count was between 35,000 and 135,000 (an approximation is all that was possible given that the city was filled with many refugees from farther east). The hospitals that were left standing could not handle the numbers of injured and burned, and mass burials became necessary. Among the American POWs who were in Dresden during the raid was novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who conveyed his experience in his classic antiwar novel Slaughterhouse Five. #Dresden #WWII #History
#NeverAgain means anytime anywhere to anyone. For the full story, check out the article through the link in bio. #Uyghur #Uighur #CCP #China #EastTurkestan #Xinjiang #ConcentrationCamp #EthnicCleansing #XiJinping
Being a #monk is hard work! If just a few minutes of hand copying texts can cause hand cramps, imagine doing it for hours every day! That’s what #monks did in the #scriptoria, or writing rooms, inside #medieval #monasteries. But it served an important purpose. At a time when literacy was in serious decline and books were hard to come by, monks played an important role in preserving not only religious but also #secular knowledge, like that of Classical #Greece and #Rome! Thank Medieval Monks!
Let studying be your #SecretFire against the shadow.
Patience in response to ignorance, even unjustifiable ignorance, is truly powerful. Even if you feel a person is blameworthy for their ignorance, even if you feel their injustice and arrogance makes them undeserving of your time, patient teaching is still the only way for them to learn and grow and change. . . Here, Dr King breaks it down simply for an audience of people who have been blind to the obvious and blatant realities of deep racial disparity that was built into the fabric of our society. He puts it so simply, because it really is that simple, but he gets straight to the point. He makes it clear. . . Patience is not passivity. Patience is not surrender. Patience is true strength. . . #Bootstraps #RacialInequality #MLK #PatientPedagogy
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” -MLK . . . Don’t just think of MLK as a famous American hero loved by the nation. It’s only now that he has a national holiday (and some people still don’t like him). It’s important to remember how disliked he was by so many Americans, and how unpopular his views were in his time. And this was not very long ago. Not at all. Those who are vilified and demonized today for standing up for what is right may be the heroes of tomorrow. Depends how it all goes down. Just don’t forget to broaden your perspective. Sit back to look at the whole timeline. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. #MLKDay #DrKing #KeepDreaming #KeepFighting

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