Notices by Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online)

The MAGA stains on American democracy will never be rinsed out in my lifetime.

For however long I have--20 years, 30 years, a week, or a day--we will always be the country that did those things.

I don't know how many can really accept this.

Whitman's thesis: that the Nuremberg Laws (on citizenship and blood purity) in Germany drew from and were modeled on America races laws of the 1930s. Citing the Jim Crow laws in the U.S. south, one prominent Nazi lawyer, Roland Friesler, said:

"This jurisprudence would suit us perfectly, with a single exception...the Jews are not reckoned among the coloreds."

2/n

Teaching James Whitman's book, Hitler's American Model, in my "War and Holocaust" class today.

In 1934, at a meeting of Nazi lawyers who were convened to translate Hitler's racial ideology into law, there was a lengthy discussion of American law. The most virulent racists at this meeting were the most vocal champions of the American model. This was during America's "Jim Crow" era (legal segregation), while lynchings and other acts of racial terror were soaring.

1/n

Cutten derided social security as a “degrading” tool for “parasitic paupers” and condemned modern medicine and philanthropy. Bemoaning the rise of multi-culturalism in the 1920s, Cutten said, “what this melting pot has accomplished is to permit persons of different races and intellectuality to marry and deteriorate our stock at an alarming rate.”

5/n

Nazi eugenics drew heavily on the work of American theorists, including George Cutten, who served as the president of my current institution from 1922-42.

Cutten, whose anti-immigration rhetoric is cited at the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island, said that Americans had made the word democracy into a fetish. "The rule [in government]," according to Cutten, "must be aristocracy.”

4/n

Although Nazi Germany would end up declaring war on America, in the 1930s, the Americans were not seen as ideological enemies, but rather as a source of inspiration.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler cited the U.S. approvingly as the only great power to have made real "progress" on the question of race.

3/n

To be clear, when Trump threatens to revoke Ilhan Omar’s citizenship and when he asserts his authority to end birthright citizenship, he is seeking to take America back to the “blood purity” laws of yesteryear. This is the same program that the Nazis drew upon when they were formulating the Nuremberg laws. By purging/negating one group of citizens, he reinscribes the citizenship and asserts the supremacy of those who remain.

This is why we call them
fascists.

This is a book (224 pps.) more Americans should look to if they want to understand where we are in 2026 and how we got here.

/end

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hitlers-american-model?srsltid=AU7gw4XhmiXQFyOJxlGtRLXGDKdjU7rWxXZGUDQ61edux2WrxtctsVW9

In Whitman's words:

"The proposition that the Nazis drew inspiration from American race law in creating their own program of racial persecution is sure to seem distressing...But in the end it should really come as no great surprise to attentive readers of...history."

6/n

@hstone519 @bmacDonald94

Trump all in on preferred acronyms.

Trump rally in Syracuse. En route.

Salt City loves democracy.

RE: https://sfba.social/@skykiss/117267439897859271

You can do this in 1-2 mins. via vote.org.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@WarnerCrocker/117407560086573333

Sec Rubio was in Europe this week, lecturing diplomats there that only America has the moral clarity and vision to lead Western Civilization. But what civilization is this? The more we swing toward barbarism the more this sick clique will insist on our supremacy.

@WarnerCrocker

America has descended to the level of Al Qaeda and Isis. They had their beheading videos and now we have this. We may not all be responsible for this, but all of us are morally compromised and contaminated by the things being done in our name.

Don’t get it twisted.

RE: https://mastodon.world/@maddad/117354936396461454

When Trump says he loves the uneducated, this is what he means. GOP have gutted ed spending and support specifically for the purpose of stymying learning and crippling critical discourse.

@LittleRedhead @bmacDonald94

The moth is *chef’s kiss.*

Of course he does.

If this was the only thing you knew about AI, it would already be enough to blow the lid off the game.

AI facilitates a form of hyper-capitalism that is not consistent with democratic equality.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-artificial-intelligence-guardrails-china-midterms-congress-9df0ebb4c1b0619aa0f88057b5a1092d

When you give a shit about democracy and pluralism, you say "Let's have that conversation. Lots of different perspectives to sort through."

When you're a wannabe dictator, you say what Trump has here: "Critics should keep their mouths shut."