Gross. I'd never thought deeply about the intended purpose of the stars until I read this. Because (at least in the 1980s-90s) we were taught frequently about what happened to the people forced to wear the stars, and I guess it just ended up implying one led to the other until the Holocaust had happened. I do think it did get taught (to me anyway) kind of like first you elect some antisemites, then you make people wear the stars and limit their ability to do business and travel and then you limit them more and take their businesses and bar them from employment and bar their children from school, then you stick them in a ghetto, survei them, starve them, then send them to labor camps, then send them to death camps. Of course those things all happened but they didn't all happen everywhere and while there was definitely escalation involved, it wasn't a set progression from one step to the other in the way that I described. However since that kind of was the subconscious understanding I got I guess it led me to feel like the purpose of the stars was the whole culmination. Which shows itself to be incoherent as soon as it's examined. It's so much worse to realize the purpose was something our current president is attempting to do to multiple marginalized populations using new technology but old misdirection and the same sort of stochastic violence.
Yes, it's often taught as a kind of inevitable progression. When instead it was a good bit more chaotic, as the Nazis experimented with various means of escalating prejudice and atrocity.
I think there is room for improvement in how we teach the Holocaust but right now I feel like let's continue agreeing to teach it and revamp the K12 lesson plan in a few years? Rather than NOT teach it. Although if the current state of affairs is the result of our best pedagogical efforts...well. Realizing that atrocities don't require super-genius super-villains but just run of the mill insecure assholes is extremely timely.
What's interesting to me is how, in Denmark, the stars proved to be a method of passive resistance to the Nazis, with a large number of Danes, following the example of King Christian X, wearing them in solidarity with the Jewish population.
That's enough to have me question my dismissive response to performative acts like safety pins (which my wife and I wore on our jackets to show our support for the LGBTQ community following Tyrant-Wannabe Trump's FIRST ride on this merry-go-round! 🤦♂️) and vag hats.
It's striking to imagine how, during the peaceful, serene, and orderly life in this video of Germany from 1937, persecution of people deemed racially or genetically inferior was already underway.
I first read about that from, of all places, Stephen King's THE STAND. When Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph travel to Las Vegas to confront Randall Flagg, Stu thinks that Las Vegas looks a lot like he would imagine Nazi Germany was before the war—lots of hard-working people who kept their heads down and were perfectly lovely...if you were thought to be One of Them....
Gross. I'd never thought deeply about the intended purpose of the stars until I read this. Because (at least in the 1980s-90s) we were taught frequently about what happened to the people forced to wear the stars, and I guess it just ended up implying one led to the other until the Holocaust had happened. I do think it did get taught (to me anyway) kind of like first you elect some antisemites, then you make people wear the stars and limit their ability to do business and travel and then you limit them more and take their businesses and bar them from employment and bar their children from school, then you stick them in a ghetto, survei them, starve them, then send them to labor camps, then send them to death camps. Of course those things all happened but they didn't all happen everywhere and while there was definitely escalation involved, it wasn't a set progression from one step to the other in the way that I described. However since that kind of was the subconscious understanding I got I guess it led me to feel like the purpose of the stars was the whole culmination. Which shows itself to be incoherent as soon as it's examined. It's so much worse to realize the purpose was something our current president is attempting to do to multiple marginalized populations using new technology but old misdirection and the same sort of stochastic violence.
Yes, it's often taught as a kind of inevitable progression. When instead it was a good bit more chaotic, as the Nazis experimented with various means of escalating prejudice and atrocity.
I think there is room for improvement in how we teach the Holocaust but right now I feel like let's continue agreeing to teach it and revamp the K12 lesson plan in a few years? Rather than NOT teach it. Although if the current state of affairs is the result of our best pedagogical efforts...well. Realizing that atrocities don't require super-genius super-villains but just run of the mill insecure assholes is extremely timely.
It sounds like you got something of value out of Longerich’s bio of Goebbels after all, Noah.
What's interesting to me is how, in Denmark, the stars proved to be a method of passive resistance to the Nazis, with a large number of Danes, following the example of King Christian X, wearing them in solidarity with the Jewish population.
That's enough to have me question my dismissive response to performative acts like safety pins (which my wife and I wore on our jackets to show our support for the LGBTQ community following Tyrant-Wannabe Trump's FIRST ride on this merry-go-round! 🤦♂️) and vag hats.
It's striking to imagine how, during the peaceful, serene, and orderly life in this video of Germany from 1937, persecution of people deemed racially or genetically inferior was already underway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYZyT3Wpl1E
A timeline of the Holocaust for anyone interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Holocaust
This is an interesting doc that reveals how some Nazi and Soviet Union propaganda art was co-opted from a Polish artist named Stanislav Szukalski:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9316022/
I first read about that from, of all places, Stephen King's THE STAND. When Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph travel to Las Vegas to confront Randall Flagg, Stu thinks that Las Vegas looks a lot like he would imagine Nazi Germany was before the war—lots of hard-working people who kept their heads down and were perfectly lovely...if you were thought to be One of Them....