#Nazi | Political Leaders

[xtruss]

The Top-Secret World War II Mission That Killed Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., The Heir Apparent To The Political Dynasty

In August 1944, the Older Brother of Robert and John F. Kennedy Died While Piloting a Drone Aircraft over England, Leaving His Younger Siblings to Fulfill Their Father’s Dreams

— Meilan Solly, Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

L to R: John F. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. in London in 1937 Keystone / Getty Images

By all accounts, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.’s war should have been over.

As Allied forces advanced on the Western Front in the summer of 1944, the Navy lieutenant completed his 50th mission—twice the number required to fulfill a tour of duty abroad. Instead of returning home to the United States, however, he volunteered for a top-secret operation named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.

“I am going to do something different for the next three weeks,” Joe Jr. wrote in a letter to his parents. “It is secret and I am not allowed to say what it is, but it isn’t dangerous, so don’t worry.” Somewhat wary in his response to his eldest son, the lieutenant’s father, former Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., advised, “I can quite understand how you feel about staying there … but don’t force your luck too much.”

Three days after Joe Sr. wrote his reply, the hollowed-out aircraft carrying Joe Jr. and his co-pilot exploded over England, killing both men. The mission represented a fatal failure for Operation Aphrodite, which sought to transform battle-worn bombers into uncrewed, radio-controlled missiles—in essence, early drones.

The last known photograph of Joe Jr., taken on the day of his death, August 12, 1944. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Joe Jr. in uniform. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

On a more personal level, Joe Jr.’s death at age 29 dealt a staggering blow to his father’s grand dreams for the future. Groomed for the presidency since his birth, Joe Jr. had served as a delegate at the 1940 Democratic National Convention, with plans to run for Congress after the war. Upon hearing the news of his brother’s demise, John F. Kennedy, the family’s second-oldest son, reportedly remarked, “Now the burden falls on me.”

Previously “considered too ‘sloppy,’ fun-loving and physically unhealthy” for a career in politics, in the words of the London Times, John secured seats in the House of Representative and the Senate before narrowly winning the 1960 presidential election, becoming the first Irish Catholic commander in chief and the youngest person elected to the nation’s highest office to date.

“Just as I went into politics because Joe died,” John later said in an eerily prescient remark, “if anything happened to me tomorrow, my brother Bobby would run. … And if Bobby died, Teddy would take over for him.”

Born on July 25, 1915, Joe Jr. was the first child of Joe Sr., a wealthy businessman and prominent Massachusetts politician, and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the daughter of a Boston mayor. The oldest of nine, Joe Jr. bore “a certain forcefulness of character that marked him as a natural leader” even in his youth, wrote Rose in her memoir. His younger siblings looked up to him, and he, in turn, set a strong example for them by excelling in school and sports. Still, Rose recalled, Joe Jr. “got into his share of mischief,” particularly when partnered with John, who was two years his junior. In 1923, the brothers wrote a song about bedbugs and cooties and started a club with a steep entry fee: To be initiated into the organization, new members had to consent to getting stuck with pins.

L to R: Joe Jr., Kathleen Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy and John in Cohasset, Massachusetts, circa 1926 or 1927 © John F. Kennedy Library Foundation / Kennedy Family Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Both Joe Jr. and John attended Choate, a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut. There, Joe Jr. played football and edited the student yearbook. Before enrolling at Harvard University, his father’s alma mater, he spent the 1933 to 1934 school year studying under Jewish political scientist Harold Laski at the London School of Economics.

Joe Jr.’s time in Europe coincided with the rise of Adolf Hitler; when he visited Germany, he learned about the Nazis’ forced sterilization program—a policy he praised for doing “away with many of the disgusting specimens of men which inhabit this earth.” According to historian Kate Clifford Larson, Joe Jr. “held quite conservative views about the disabled,” a stance that was surprising given his close relationship with his younger sister Rosemary Kennedy, who had intellectual disabilities. Despite Joe Jr.’s similarly respectful attitude toward Laski, he also espoused antisemitic sentiment, claiming that Hitler had offered the “scattered, despondent and … divorced from hope” Germans a common enemy. “It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews,” Joe Jr. wrote to his father. “This dislike of Jews, however, was well founded.”

Joe Jr. graduated from Harvard in 1938, then joined his family in London, where his father was serving as the U.S. ambassador. In February 1939, the 23-year-old traveled to Madrid, arriving soon after a shelling by insurgents fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Not dispatched on official business, he was “just looking around,” Joe Sr. told the Associated Press, adding, “His mother will die when she hears he is in Madrid.”

The Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1931. Joe Jr. is in the back row at right. Richard Sears/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

The following year, Joe Jr. made headlines as a DNC delegate who pledged to vote for Postmaster General James Farley over incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt. Under pressure to switch his allegiance to the president, particularly as the son of an ambassador appointed by Roosevelt, he remained steadfast in his choice, believing that no commander in chief should be allowed to serve three terms. The burgeoning politician’s conduct at the convention won him the admiration of prominent attendees, one of whom told Joe Sr. that his son “seemed to gain the respect of everybody there,” adding, “I am sure he can have a political future if he wants one.”

Though Joe Jr. returned to Harvard for law school, he ultimately decided to enlist in the Navy as a pilot in June 1941 instead of finishing his degree. Prompted in part by his father’s staunch opposition to the U.S.’s entry into World War II—a scenario that seemed increasingly likely in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor—he defended his decision in a letter to Joe Sr.: “With your stand on the war, … people will wonder what the devil I am doing back at school with everyone else working for national defense.” John soon followed in his older brother’s footsteps, relying on his family connections to secure a position in the Naval Reserve, despite back issues that would normally have barred him from serving. When the U.S. finally joined the war in December 1941, both brothers were partway through naval training.

“Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. to Get Naval ‘Wings’ Today as Dad Looks On,” read a May 5, 1942, headline in the Boston Globe. The title telegraphed the family dynamics at play, underscoring the pressure placed on Joe Jr. by his father, whose presence and influence loomed large. Adding to the weight of Joe Sr.’s expectations was the surprising military success of John, who received a promotion to lieutenant and command of his own boat by the end of 1942. As his younger brother led a squadron patrolling for Japanese ships in the Solomon Islands, Joe Jr. was relegated to a naval air base in Virginia, where he launched lower-risk patrols in search of German U-boats.

Joe Jr. on the campus of Harvard University in 1938 Bettmann via Getty Images

On the night of August 1, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed into John’s boat, PT-109, knocking its crew into the water and ripping the starboard side clean off. Then 26 years old, Kennedy exhibited great bravery during the incident, leading the 11 surviving sailors to a nearby island before swimming, sometimes solo, to neighboring islands in search of food and aid.

The press, the Navy, and friends and family alike praised John as a hero. But while Joe Jr. was certainly glad that his younger brother had escaped death, he felt overshadowed and was eager to prove himself. “Colleagues commented later on his intense preoccupation with putting himself in harm’s way, and thus on the path to publicly recognized heroism,” wrote Edward J. Renehan Jr. in The Kennedys at War: 1937-1945. As fellow pilot Louis Papas later recalled, “There was never an occasion for a mission that meant extra hazard that Joe did not volunteer. He had everybody’s unlimited admiration and respect for his courage, zeal and willingness to undertake the most dangerous missions.”

Sent to Great Britain in September 1943, Joe Jr. spent the next several months flying patrols over the Atlantic, the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay, piloting PB4Y Liberator bombers on anti-submarine details. By May 1944, he’d flown the 25 missions required for reassignment to the U.S., losing his co-pilot and numerous colleagues to enemy anti-aircraft fire in the process. Though he had permission to return home, he opted to stay in the fight. As he told his parents in mid-June, “I now have 39 missions and will probably have 50 by the time I leave. It is far more than anyone else on the base, but it doesn’t prove a hell of a lot.”

John (left) and Joe Jr. in their naval uniforms Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In the summer of 1944, Joe Jr. volunteered first for Operation Cork, an air patrol connected to the Allied invasion of France, and then for Operation Aphrodite and its Navy counterpart, Operation Anvil. The top-secret project was aimed at taking down the Nazis’ steel-reinforced concrete bunkers in occupied France, from which the Germans were launching their devastating V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 ballistic missiles. Uncrewed, gyro-controlled jets packed with explosives, the projectiles offered a low-risk way of terrorizing the British from afar.

Commander James Doolittle, of the Army’s Eighth Air Force, suggested converting war-weary bombers into pilotless missiles. “Control and autopilot technology [were] sufficiently immature to make the … program incredibly risky, but the perceived benefits justified the potential costs,” wrote Roger Connor, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, in a 2014 blog post. Though the bombers were remote-controlled, they required a two-person crew to get the aircraft off the ground and ensure it stayed on course.

When Joe Jr. heard about the operation, he readily volunteered for it. According to an account by a fellow officer, the lieutenant, “regarded as an experienced Patrol Plane Commander and … an expert in radio control projects,” was tasked with piloting “a ‘drone’ Liberator bomber loaded with 21,170 pounds of high explosives into the air and [staying] with it until two ‘mother’ planes had achieved complete radio control over the ‘drone.’” After completing this transfer of control, Joe Jr. and co-pilot Wilford J. Willy were supposed to bail out over England, parachuting to safety as the plane continued on to the V-1 bunkers.

The motley group of Allied aircraft needed for the mission—among them a Mosquito carrying the president’s second-oldest son, Elliott Roosevelt, who was tasked with capturing the flight on film—took off from a Royal Air Force base shortly after 6 p.m. on August 12, 1944. Eighteen minutes into the mission, Joe Jr. shared a message over the radio: “Spade Flush,” the code phrase for the bomber to be handed off to the mother ship. At approximately 6:20 p.m., as Joe Jr. and Willy awaited the signal to bail out, two explosions rocked the plane, killing the pilots and nearly destroying the other aircraft in the formation. The pair’s bodies were never found.

The accident was “the biggest explosion I ever saw until the pictures of the atom bomb,” a pilot on board the mother ship said. No one on the ground was hurt, but debris from the wreck rained down on the English countryside, with one local witnessing an “enormous black pall of smoke resembling a huge octopus, the tentacles below indicating the earthward paths of burning fragments.” The cause of the disaster was never identified, but mechanical failure was a leading theory.

Operation Aphrodite continued through January 1945, with little success. In recognition of the pilots’ sacrifice, the government awarded Joe Jr. and Willy the Navy Cross, the second-highest military decoration. John, meanwhile, won the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest non-combat award for heroism, for his actions aboard PT-109.

Joe Jr. sitting in an aircraft during training in 1941 Bettmann via Getty Images

John and his wife, Jackie Kennedy, watch a boat race while on board the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., a destroyer named in Joe Jr.'s honor Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Kennedys deeply mourned Joe Jr.’s death. With no body to bury and scant details of his final moments (the mission remained classified until after the war), the family commemorated their eldest son with a privately published book titled As We Remember Joe. In the text, John—now the heir apparent—wrote:

It may be felt, perhaps, that Joe should not have pushed his luck so far and should have accepted his leave and come home. But two facts must be borne in mind. First, at the time of his death, he had completed probably more combat missions in heavy bombers than any other pilot of his rank in the Navy and therefore was preeminently qualified, and secondly, as he told a friend early in August, he considered the odds at least 50-50, and Joe never asked for any better odds than that.

Despite the grief he felt over Joe Jr.’s death, Joe Sr. remained resolute in his ambitions for his family. “We’ve got to carry on,” he told his wife. “We must take care of the living. There is a lot of work to be done.” According to legend, Joe Sr. called John into a meeting, where he announced that the younger son would take his brother’s place as the family’s representative on the national stage. “It was like being drafted,” the future president later said. “My father wanted his oldest son in politics. ‘Wanted’ isn’t the right word. He demanded it. You know my father.”

Joe Jr., for his part, had seemingly predicted how events would play out in the event of his death. In a letter written just before his enlistment in the Navy, he wryly commented, “It seems that Jack is perfectly capable to do everything, if by chance anything happened to me.”

— 12 August 2022

[pinkfey]

i often think about how liberals water down leftist terminology to make it more palatable for conservatives. “abolish the police” became “defund the police” and both historically and now “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free” is too “radical” of a statement because it leaves no room for their two-state solution.

[widgenstain]

One thing that annoys/confuses me about biopics is that for some reason we always need to look at "heroes". Came from nothing, gained influence, faced hardships, prevailed and was a hero in the end. Why not focus more on how people are heroes until they get actual power, which then more or less slowly corrupts them? This has happened way more often in real life, is more historically accurate with most biographies anyway and makes for a much more interesting narrative too imho.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Leader Maynard points to three theories commonly used to explain mass killings and war atrocities. But all three can be debunked.

The first explanation is what I call the Broken Brains hypothesis. This is the notion that the sadism of torturing innocents or committing genocide makes sense only if the perpetrators have abnormal brains, or even are psychopaths. Experts turned to the Broken Brains theory when trying to understand the Nazis. An array of psychiatrists closely examined and interviewed the Nuremberg war criminals. After one of the top Nazi perpetrators, Robert Ley, hanged himself while awaiting trial, his brain was preserved, shipped by air mail to the United States, and studied by neuropathologists, who found that he had brain damage, “a longstanding degenerative process of the frontal lobes.”

But as research continued, it became clear that Ley was an outlier, that the architects of the Holocaust likely did not have brain pathologies, and that the Nazis’ genocidal machine had so many people pulling various levers that most of them had to be neurologically normal. This was not a case of a few psychopaths, but rather of millions engaged in what Hannah Arendt famously called “the banality of evil.”

It’s possible that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is an undiagnosed psychopath, but that can’t explain the widespread barbarism throughout the war in Ukraine, especially as the Russian military fills with conscripts, ordinary Russians who have been forced into combat. There might be psychopaths within the world’s military ranks, and psychopaths might be overrepresented in positions of power. But Leader Maynard says researchers agree that those carrying out horrific violence do not, by and large, have different brains from the rest of us.

The second common explanation is what I call the Lord of the Flies hypothesis—the idea that we are all killers by nature, with an innate capacity for cruelty, and that we commit atrocities when we are on war-zone “islands” that are free from constraints and consequences. Once placed into a conflict, any of us could engage in torture.

Yet research from experts such as Rebecca Littman and Elizabeth Levy Paluck shows that most people have a hard time killing other people. Other scholars have argued that in many of the great battles of history, such as Gettysburg, an astonishing number of guns were left loaded and unused—because it’s so psychologically difficult for untrained killers to shoot human beings, even when their own life is at risk. If most people find it difficult to fire a gun at someone else, how could they electrocute them in a hole in the ground, as apparently occurred in the city of Kherson last month?

A third common explanation for mass killings and wartime atrocities is what I call the theory of Coerced Killers—the idea that evil emerges at gunpoint, that we are capable of atrocities when we feel we have no other choice. Some people do engage in horrific violence only in such circumstances, or because they fear retribution against themselves or their families. But the most rigorous analysis of historical mass violence suggests that these cases make up a tiny minority of the overall picture.

If these three explanations don’t explain mass killings generally—or help make sense of what’s happening in Ukraine—then what does? The answer, according to Leader Maynard’s extensive analysis of atrocities, is ideology. By this he does not necessarily mean the grand isms of 20th-century history, but instead simply a set of political beliefs about how the world works, or should work. Mass killings become more likely when a society engaged in warfare produces a coherent narrative about why extreme violence is desirable or at least justified for a grander strategic purpose. Ideology acts as a social glue, ensuring that the architects of the violence, the rank-and-file soldiers who carry it out, and the broader public all tolerate, or even applaud, atrocities.

Crucially, Leader Maynard finds evidence that perpetrators need not be “true believers” or hard-liners who buy into a regime’s ideological mythmaking. Instead, the existence of the ideology and its widespread acceptance in society can provide a sufficient justification for their violence.

  —  Do ‘Ordinary’ People Commit War Crimes?

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

.

[wisdom-and-such]

People and Leader

(1942)

Our time, I said in 1927, wishes to be rid of the teacher in every realm. It believes it can manage with the leader alone. That is understandable. In an hour in which an enormous amount depends upon the independence and superiority of the spirit, those "spiritual men' who, without knowing what they are doing, have made the spirit into a clever and obedient little dog that retrieves ideologies for the existing powers that fling words to him, have contributed to the discrediting of the spirit, and of its guiding function in life.

Other and deeper forces have co-operated in this. The result is not merely what took place even earlier at times that the official politics of states proclaimed their independence of the spirit. Inner movements and groupings of the life of peoples also declare themselves free from the spirit; indeed, they glimpse their guarantee of success in their independence of it. And they are not entirely wrong. Leading without teaching is successful: one attains something. Only this something that one attains is something entirely different from, and at times a direct caricature of, what one actually wanted to attain. What then? As long as the goal was a pure goal, longing and hope rules; but when in the "attainment" the goal is transformed what then? Certainly the people that has no leader is unfortunate: but thrice as unfortunate is the people whose leader has no teacher.'

— Martin Buber

[tahyirasavanna]

The Astrology of Adolf Hitler

There have been many theories concerning the use of magick and the Nazi Reich, and even a possible astrological advisor of Hitler’s inner circle guiding their plans. Certain buildings and complexes were built for the specific purpose of occult practices within the SS. And in like kind, today we will explore the astrology chart of Adolf Hitler and his energetic impact on the world. Adolf Hitler…

[creature-wizard]

Check your conspiracy theory. Does it sound anything like this?

There is an ancient global conspiracy plotting to create a one world government.

The one world government will be headed by a single leader.

The conspiracy intends to make everyone follow a religion it created.

The conspiracy is trying to destroy all true religion/spirituality.

The conspiracy deliberately stirs up conflict and starts wars.

The conspiracy deliberately does whatever it can to confuse, exhaust, and demoralize the people.

The conspiracy creates and/or manipulates art and entertainment to control and brainwash the masses.

The conspiracy uses mind-altering substances to manipulate and control people.

Progressive policies (EG, religious tolerance, equality) are part of the conspiracy.

Communism and collectivism are part of the conspiracy.

The conspiracy manipulates the economy to our detriment.

The conspiracy wants to do away with the gold standard.

The conspiracy wants to do away with the free market.

The conspiracy intends to tax the rich, which is bad because taxes are just legal theft.

Teaching people about the mistakes and atrocities committed by governments is part of the conspiracy.

The conspiracy creates new religions and spiritual movements to further their agendas.

All secret societies (EG, Freemasonry) are part of the conspiracy.

Presidents are manipulated puppets of the conspiracy.

The conspiracy manipulates anyone with a high political position.

The conspiracy grooms world leaders.

Agents of the conspiracy are planted everywhere, in all levels of society.

The conspiracy kills anyone who might expose their plans in ways that no one would suspect are actually murder.

The conspiracy follows/uses the Kabbalah.

Literally all of these were claimed in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, an antisemitic hoax used by the Okhrana to justify violence against Russian Jews. It was used by Nazi Germany to justify the Holocaust, and today it still serves as the blueprint for most conspiracy theories - even if modern conspiracy theorists try to hide it, downplay it, or rationalize it with another, equally absurd conspiracy theory.

[drowndrawn]

Lula compares Israel's attacks on Palestinians in Gaza to Hitler's killing of Jews

Brazilian president Lula (PT) stated this Sunday 18th that what is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, but a genocide, and compared Israel's action to that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler against the Jews.

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian people does not exist at any other historical moment. In fact, it exists. When Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he said.

Asked about the Brazilian government's decision to be the new donor to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, Lula criticized the leaders of the countries that decided to suspend contributions. “When I see the rich world announce that it is stopping contributing to the humanitarian issue for the Palestinians, I wonder how much political awareness these people have?”, he said. “And how big is the heart of solidarity of these people who cannot see that in the Gaza Strip there is not a war happening, but a genocide?”

The president also questioned: “Who will help rebuild those houses that were destroyed? Who will repay the lives of 30 thousand people who have already died? 170 thousand who are injured. Who will give back the lives of children who died without knowing why they were dying? Is this enough to disturb the humanitarian sense of the planet’s political leaders?”

“It is not a war between soldiers and soldiers. It is a war between a highly prepared Army and women and children. Look, if there was an error in that institution that collects the money, find out who made the mistake. But do not suspend humanitarian aid for the people who have been trying to build their state for decades”, concluded Lula.

I'm actually quite proud of having voted for him. He was bold, Brazilian's newspapers are roasting him for saying the TRUTH, but is this kind of boldness that we need right now.

[highlights-of-the-lowlife]

i desperately need people to understand how fascism started because i am seeing many on the left gleefully walk assbackwards into goosestepping.

fascism did not start out as a far right ideology even though that is the endpoint. in order to gain power, there was a deliberate false synthesis of left and right populist ideals in order to gain a wide base from people upset with the political status quo. this is why the nazis were called national socialists. because they stole rhetoric and language from socialist movements and twisted them to their own ends.

this is why average people supported the nazis. not because they were stupid or incredibly bigoted but because the nazi party promised we will provide just as soon as we deal with the Bad People. however once nazi control was assured, the entire left wing of the party were purged. Gregor Strasser who was the leader of the left wing was assassinated in the night of the long knives.

his whole political ideology was nazism but anti capitalist. pro trade union, anti banker, pro wealth redistrubution, pro socialised housing and medicine. all of which ended in them being slughtered when they were no longer necessary. these people existed and were the useful idiots that aided in hitler taking full power.

you need to pay attention to who is saying what and why. easy answers, scapegoating, portraying whoever the outgroup of the moment as being behind every ill in the world, surface level anticapitalism and anticolonialism, reactionary leanings in problem solving. anything to get you to point at a group and declare them they enemy.

this is why you need to learn history, pay attention to the sources you get your information from and what narrative they are trying to weave out of the situation.

[wilwheaton]

If our historical enemies—from the Nazis to the denizens of the Kremlin—sat down to enumerate the sources of American strength they wished to destroy—domestically and internationally, socially, economically, politically, and militarily—their list of targets would match perfectly with the Trump-MAGA agenda. That is why—as demented and disqualifying as Trump’s latest rant should be, as much as he should be the target of unceasing public opprobrium—the real problem is not the leader, but the movement. The greatest threat America faces today is from tens of millions of our own neighbors, friends, and family members who are willing to see the future of our country put in grave jeopardy for reasons of ignorance, anger, and greed. In other words, as outrageous as Trump’s comments were this past weekend, what is most shocking about them is that they have not and will not result in his immediate rejection by the members of his party. And, therefore, the goal in November must not be just to defeat Trump but to decisively defeat—and thereby begin to destroy—the entire MAGA GOP movement.

Trump Is Telling Us He’s an Enemy of the American People

[spacelazarwolf]

before yom hashoah ends, i want to remind folks that sephardi, maghrebi, and mizrahi jews were also deeply affected by the holocaust.

this is by no means inclusive of all communities who were affected by the holocaust and its aftermath, i do not have the emotional bandwidth for that, but hopefully this gives you some insight into jewish experiences outside of what's usually talked about.

the jews of morocco, algeria, tunisia, libya, and italy were all subjected to the racial laws of the vichy regime or fascist italy, which prevented them from attending educational institutions, holding public office, and owning businesses and sometimes property. moroccan jews were protected from some of the violence faced by other jews of the mediterranean and north africa because of the moroccan sultan mohammed ben youssef, who was vocally opposed to the anti jewish laws. he reportedly told the vichy government, "there are no jews in morocco. there are only moroccan subjects." he believed he had a god-given responsibility to protect moroccan jews. "moroccan jews are my subjects, and it is my duty to protect them against aggression."

unfortunately, other jewish communities did not receive that kind of protection. algerian jews faced a pogrom by the local arab population in constantine, killing 25 and destroying several jewish homes and businesses. 2000 algerian jews were sent to concentration camps in bedeau and djelfa, where many died from hunger, exhaustion, disease, or beatings. 5000 tunisian jews were forced into labor and detention camps where over 400 of them were killed. in libya, there was a violent pogrom which killed 500 jews out of a community of 4000. 2600 of the survivors were sent to the giado concentration camp, of which 526 died. in tunisia, there was a violent pogrom which killed over 130 jews (including 36 children), injured hundreds, and left 4000 homeless. italian jews faced pogroms, the jewish ghetto in rome was raided and over a thousand jews were detained and sent to concentration camps. a total of 7680 italian jews out of a population of nearly 45,000 were killed.

in greece, thousands of jews were deported to auschwitz. as many as 50% died en route, and only 10,000 out of over 75,000 survived, a nearly 90% death rate. their homes were looted and their property was stolen, and when the few survivors tried to return after the war (a difficult task as the greek foreign ministry attempted to delay or prevent their return to greece), most were unable to regain their property and possessions, forcing most to seek asylum in israel or other countries.

egyptian jews were not directly affected by the axis powers, but extremist organizations like young egypt and the muslim brotherhood sympathized with the nazis and even secured nazi funds to distribute thousands of antisemitic propaganda pamphlets. sporadic pogroms took place throughout the 40's, stoked by political leaders like mahmoud an-nukrashi pasha who said to the british ambassador, "all jews were potential zionists" and dr heykal pasha who said "if the u.n. decides to amputate a part of palestine in order to establish a jewish state, ... jewish blood will necessarily be shed elsewhere in the arab world ... to place in certain and serious danger a million jews." this political extremism prompted the 1948 cairo bombings that killed 70 jews and wounded 200, with many more being killed in the riots following, and eventually led to the expulsion of nearly all egyptian jews, whose money and posessions were all confiscated by the egyptian government.

similar political persecution was directed at iraqi jews, leading to the farhud, a pogrom which killed 180 jews and forced tens of thousands to flee. though there were many who did not support the nazi regime or agree with their views, there were just as many in arab countries who did, in no small part because of active effort by the nazis to gain sympathy from arab populations who already did not get along with their local jewish populations. this led to several other pogroms that took place in the 30's and 40's across lebanon, syria, and british mandate palestine, including a pogrom in jaffa which killed 9 jews and forced 12,000 jews to flee, and another in tiberias which killed 19 jews (including 11 children), most of whom were stabbed to death.

it's understandable that most of what the general public knows about the holocaust is the stories of ashkenazi jews from central and eastern europe, because they comprise the vast majority of the victims. hopefully, this encourages you to do further research into the ways other parts of the diaspora were also affected.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I know everything that can be said on this topic has been said to death and no one but Jews will ever acknowledge it but it is still absolutely infuriating how every brand of gentile from every part of the political spectrum has collaborated to turn the word "Nazi" into a generic word for "fascist" or "bad person" or "person I don't like." Nazism isn't just fucking fascism and it isn't a synonym for bad person. It's a specific ideology that is centered at its root around blaming Jews for every problem in the world and wanting to exterminate them.

No, generic racist Republicans are not "Nazis." No, TERFs are not "Nazis." No, your crappy corrupt European leader is not a "Nazi." No, cops are not "Nazis." You know why they aren't Nazis? Because their entire ideology and behavior, as harmful as it may be to certain groups, is not centered around hating JEWS.

Nazism is an ideology centered around hating JEWS. Other people and groups may be caught in the crossfire, but ultimately, a Nazi's goal is to exterminate Jews, and you cannot just ignore that! I read a 12 paragraph essay yesterday written by a gentile analyzing the reasons people in Nazi Germany flocked to Nazism, and antisemitism wasn't mentioned as a motivation even once! They thought it was all because of gender norms and sexual repression! Oh my god!

The comfort with which gentiles have near universally divorced Nazism from antisemitism in colloquial speech is a direct precursor to the separation of Nazism from antisemitism in academic discourse. It's a direct predecessor to the rise of institutionalized antisemitism that we are seeing happen in real time now, because you have all gotten so used to appropriating Jewish trauma and Jewish oppression to the extent that you have convinced yourselves it isn't even uniquely real. That antisemitism doesn't exist as a specific bigotry that stands on it's own, that antisemitism is always some kind of footnote tied to some other, more important form of oppression. Do you think that Jews don't see what is happening here, that we don't see the deliberate generalization of Jew hatred and appropriation of the language we can use to refer to it? Jewish trauma becomes everyone's trauma, Jewish oppression becomes everyone's oppression, and soon enough the world at large has stolen the language of Jewish oppression right out of our mouths, until huge swaths of people can say "Jews are the new Nazis" and not see anything absurd about that at all.

Because you won't. Fucking. Acknowledge. What Nazism actually is. You won't fucking acknowledge that any ideology is specifically targeted at JEWS, and not YOU. Stop it!! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out. Nazism cannot be divorced from antisemitism and the insistence that it not only can be but MUST be by gentiles just shows how deeply ignorant and biased against Jews most of you really are.

[communistkenobi]

it’s so funny when people are aghast at others reading like Mao or Stalin or Lenin or etc. like regardless of how you feel about them as political leaders or historical figures it’s like oh yes okay lemme see what my alternatives are for political theory and philosophy….. hmm Emile Durkheim, a founding father of sociology, wrote a lot about the division of labour in society and… he’s a huge phrenologist…. ok well how about we choose someone more contemporary…. alright what about Carl Schmitt, famous political theorist who wrote a lot of really smart things about violence and the state…. he was the guy who said everything can be boiled down to the friend/enemy distinction, that sounds neat right? hm. well I guess his position in the Nazi government is kinda hard to look past. Louis Althusser? He’s a Marxist! Ever heard of the ideological state apparatus? Oh wait he strangled his wife to death? Well nevermind. What about canonical western philosopher Martin Heidegger? He wrote about ah fuck

[utilitymonstermash]

In California due to prison over crowding and a policy called realignment, many sentences are now served in county jail. Recently I came across this very funny jail memoir in The Newsweek.

On race:

I knew that I had to join the Peckerwoods, a notorious white supremacist gang. But I am by birth half-Jewish. I have a Jewish last name too, so I was fearful.

My plan was to pretend I was German since my last name is Yiddish, so pretty similar sounding. It's probably not politically correct to say this, but I also don't look like a stereotypical Jewish person, at least in the eyes of neo-Nazis.

I also think my image played into it. They saw a crackhead from Skid Row who weighed 130 pounds and just didn't connect that with a Jewish guy. So I got away with it. They believed I was just a German-American. They had no suspicion whatsoever.

For about three or four weeks, I played along. But I soon realized there was no need to. I never heard anything really racist or antisemitic.

There was another man named Lou. He was probably 50 years old, and every day, he would get a different meal than everyone else—a special meal in a blue box—and people lined up to buy it.

I was curious. I looked in the garbage and saw there was Hebrew lettering on this blue box so I knew Lou was probably Jewish. I asked Lou if he was, and he said yes, that's why he gets the kosher meal.

I said: "I'm Jewish too, actually." He didn't really care. I said I had told the shot caller—a kind of gang leader—and all the guys that I was German when I came in, and now I'm thinking about getting the kosher meal.

I asked what he thought the consequences would be of revealing that I was Jewish. He said: "Oh, well, they're not going to care that you're Jewish, but they are going to care that you lied. So, I would just go talk to the shot caller privately and work this out."

I expected a very violent repercussion for lying. There are violent repercussions for everything, from not washing your hands after using the bathroom to getting caught sharing food with another race.

I talked to the shot caller. He was pretty angry that I lied, but at the same time, he said: "Listen, I'm half Armenian. I'm not even fully white. We don't really care. These are just the rules and we have to follow them.

"As the shot caller, if it gets out that I'm not enforcing these rules, I'll get stabbed on the yard.

"You lied. You got to come clean to all the boys, and it's not a big deal. Just when you get the kosher meal, make sure that white guys get preference over buying it. If no one white wants to buy the meal, then you can sell it to the other races."

On managerialism:

Violence is highly organized in the California prison system. I was in county jail, but it's just as bad as prison, if not worse.

If you get into an altercation with someone, you're not allowed to fight them. You have to go to your shot caller, and he has to go to his shot caller, and the shot callers must decide whether you're allowed to fight in a very controlled environment.

[...]

I had to fight people for breaking very stupid rules, such as sharing food with a Black person—a rule that I think is ridiculous. To be honest, my shot caller thought it was ridiculous too. He told me personally that he shared food with Black people all the time; he just had to keep it secret.

[...]

It's Kafkaesque; there's some kind of bureaucratic overwatch going on and you don't even know if it exists or not, but you just have to follow these dumb rules.

A shot caller is your gang leader in jail. This is not the leader of the entire gang but the leader in your pod, meaning your dorm.

Every gang has a shot caller, and then that jail has a head shot caller, and then the whole prison system has a single shot caller somewhere at the top that is this Wizard of Oz-type overlord who no one ever really sees but somehow enforces the rules.

On yarmulke:

I'm not a practicing Jew; I never was, and no one in my family really is. But when you get the kosher meal, they also give you a yarmulke for some reason.

When the other inmates saw the yarmulke, they were mesmerized by this magical Jewish hat. The people who ran the world wore these hats, they thought, and now they were around one in a jail cell.

The Mexican shot caller would request to wear it when he gambled to bring him financial luck. This started sort of a buzz in the jail, and eventually, lots of people were requesting to wear it. Even neo-Nazis requested to wear it when they were gambling.

I asked them to treat it with respect, not because I am religious, but I thought: "My ancestors were religious. Don't be disrespectful."

The amount of respect they had for this yarmulke was actually disturbing; the fact that a Nazi with swastika tattoos would be so polite about a Jewish yarmulke.

On tolerance towards the Jews:

Once it came out that I was Jewish, I experienced zero antisemitic hate. It was more of a fascination. A lot of these people had never met a Jewish person. They pictured Jewish people as owning banks and companies and potentially even the jail.

So when they saw this Skid Row homeless addict who was Jewish, a lot of light bulbs went off about their preconceived ideas. Immediately, they asked: "What are you doing here? Can't you make a phone call? Don't you know a lawyer?"

I said: "No, I'm Jewish. My dad was a heroin addict carpenter. Not all Jews are what you think they are."

It opened up a lot of playful conversations with these people. They were fascinated with the concept that Jews were lawyers, so I started getting a lot of requests to consult people on their cases.

I had to tell them: "Listen, I'm a carpenter crackhead homeless guy. I'm not a lawyer."

They didn't care; they wanted to go over their cases with me. There was almost some soft antisemitism, but it mostly was playful and fanciful obsession and inquiry. They thought I had mystical powers.

[...]

I have stayed in touch with some of the people in jail. Not all white people were Nazis. In fact, a small minority identified as neo-Nazis; most just identified as Peckerwoods. I've kept in touch with both.

On demographics as destiny:

I talked to Lou about it, and he said that there used to be some problems for Jews, but in the end, the white gangs have such low numbers that they don't really care. They needed people.

[antigonick]

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. […] But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition [and syncretism]. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. […]

Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. [… For the Nazis], the rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. […]

No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups [or other minorities]. [...]

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. [...]

[B]y a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. [...] The Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality).

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. [...] For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. [...] There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.

—Umberto Eco, in "Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”