Lily Rothman explains some of the forgotten history of Nazi support in the United States. It’s some interesting information, and has a strong anti-populist bent to it, but it’s well worth reading and considering.
“We want to remember ourselves as always having been on the right side in this war”
Now for the criticism.
The article presents the US Naziism as isolationism, and the establishment as anti-isolationist, or interventionist.
This completely overlooks the other aspect of American fascism: racism. The rise of US fascism was connected with the 1920s rise of the KKK. A major “isolationist” political trend in the US was xenophobia, which was expressed as a long-lived anti-immigrant movement that targeted Asians, Mexicans, Jews, and Southern and Eastern Europeans.
Even today, there are so many memes that compare the rise of Trump with the rise of Nazis in Germany in the 1930s, but completely ignore the fact that fascism had also taken hold in America.
America had ghettos. America had roundups of workers. America had a Red Scare. America had concentration camps.
The meme makers, who I assume are liberals, don’t want to remember that.
The fascists, however, do remember all that, and I think they want to bring it all back.
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