In an otherwise fascinating read about changes in Charleston, I found the following paragraph… to be inconsistent and misleading.
But it’s impossible to ignore for both white and Black Americans trying to grapple with the country’s original sin, whether they are descendants of enslaved people or those who enslaved them.
Americans could be descendants of neither people enslaved, nor people who enslaved others. In fact, as an example that never gets enough attention, why not teach Americans that they could be descendants of people who abolished and fought slavery at every turn?
The idea that a white student should feel shame about being white is perpetuating the mistake of hiding the role of whites in ending slavery. That crucial detail could change everything. Ask a classroom of white kids, which one of you had relatives who fought against slavery?
Why should any white student be condemned to always ignore the contributions of a huge number of whites who were anti-racist, who did the right things?
One of the big mistakes in teaching American history is typically to leave out the John Brown equation, let alone a Robert Gould Shaw, Silas Soule or President Grant.
Seriously, ask any American who he was. Or who was Robert Gould Shaw? What did the men of the 54th do that was so important in a Civil War about slavery?
There were many white men who fought and WON the Civil War, yet somehow being white means shutting down all discussion of these heroes instead of celebrating them. President Grant was one of the greatest military and political leaders in history. Tell white kids to look up to him when they read about slavery.
…no monies shall be used by any school district or school to provide instruction in, to teach, instruct, or train any administrator, teacher, staff member, or employee to adopt or believe, or to approve for use, make use of, or carry out standards, curricula, lesson plans, textbooks, instructional materials, or instructional practices that serve to inculcate any of the following concepts… (7) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race…
There’s a long and sordid history of racism that calls people lazy. It’s no secret. It’s well known and often getting racists into big trouble.
EEOC alleged that African-American employees were referred to as “lazy”…
The SC government has taken court decisions about being called lazy and cooked up censorship in schools. They seem to want to prevent someone from criticizing “meritocracy” (encoded racism), or to prevent someone from criticizing “hard work ethic” traits (encoded racism).
Their point seems to be if racists aren’t allowed to directly call some race lazy then those racists will write laws that protect the ability to say that racism is a meritocracy, and that racism is just proof of a hard work ethic.
See the problems? It’s basically a gag rule that prohibits calling out racists for being racist.
…racist policies were leading to racist ideas, and racist ideas were leading to ignorance and hate. I realized people were creating racist policies out of economic, political and cultural self-interest. And those racist policies were leading to racial inequalities, disparities and inequities.
Saying someone is superior is an inverse of saying someone is inferior. White supremacists are inherently racist. So if policies are written to protect superiority language, even prohibiting calling it racist… that’s still racist.
Racists play some long and complicated games, you have to admit. But maybe people getting more and more interested in the slavery history of America, let alone the genocide, will help push through the nonsense.
The KKK in 1921 had a new look. They started wearing white robes in a plane with the swastika, both symbols of hate. Bi-planes for example were used to firebomb Black neighborhoods in Tulsa, Oklahoma and to drop racist propaganda leaflets across America. Here you can see how and why the swastika was chosen, just like the Finnish Air Force.
Eric von Rosen had no Nazi associations at the time of his 1918 gift, he did subsequently become a leading figure in Sweden’s own national socialist movement in the 1930s. He was also a brother-in-law of senior German Nazi Herman Göring, and, according to Prof Teivainen, a personal friend of Hitler.
His noble gift, before Nazis and before Hitler, was somehow completely consistent with both him becoming a Nazi and personal friend of Hitler. In other words in 1918 he likely associated with the violent hate groups using swastikas that very soon after became the Nazis, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
When he gifted a plane to the nascent air force of Sweden’s newly independent neighbour in 1918 he had had a blue swastika painted on it. This Thulin Typ D was the first aircraft of the Finnish air force and subsequent planes all had his blue swastika symbol too, until 1945.
Of course historians describe how anti-Semitic Polish, Austrians, Germans, and Romanians referenced the swastika before (and after) WWI to symbolize hate. Consider the “volkisch” Runen, for an easy example of what Rosen might have been consorting with or around.
“Before Hitler Came”: Thule Society and Germanen Orden
Who is to say Rosen wasn’t pushing the swastika into Finland because it was anti-Semitic? Hitler brought fringe hate symbolism to the main political stage, yet he wasn’t alone in that putsch by any stretch. A pre-Nazi, pre-Hitler swastika used by Rosen still in fact easily qualifies, especially for a government asset, as intentional hate messaging. “Before Hitler” is basically tone-deaf.
Some suggest non-German antisemitism such as Romanian A.C. Cuza (1857-1947) copied use of the swastika from Heinrich Kraeger (1870-1945), when in fact it might have been copied from the anti-Semitic Swede Eric von Rosen (1879-1948).
Finland had denied citizenship to Jews until 1918 when it finally allowed “applications”, which apparently did not sit well with Rosen. Perhaps it was his offense at the Paris Peace Conference “Minority Treaty” negotiations, which drove a desire to make antisemitism into an official government symbol (Finland wasn’t asked to sign the treaty). Romania was the only slower country among European states to allow Jewish residents to become citizens (1923). And on that note, Romania’s overtly anti-Semitic National Christian Union (formerly the Christian National Democratic Party of 1919) adopted the swastika as its official symbol in 1922, eerily similar to Rosen’s timing and intentions: a “good luck talisman of victory for the endangered Aryan race”, which Hitler also said.
1922 Romanian LANC hate group text: “Good luck talisman, bringer of victory to the endangered peoples of Aryan origin”. Source: Internet Archive
The next time anyone tells you that Rosen naively thought a swastika was “good luck”, remind them that’s exactly what antisemitic propaganda was pushing so he was actually right on message for promoting Nazism (which he then supported). Seems pretty obvious how and why both Rosen/Finland and Cuza/Romania swastikas should be seen as related, which is why it’s so odd that anyone in Finland could be asleep at the wheel on this issue.
Dangerous racist hate groups using a swastika as their symbol since the 1800s? Threat clearly rising in 1918? What threa-zzzzzzz
In other words, Hitler’s work was a culmination not a beginning. He drew from rage and hate sentiments swirling around him far more than he ever came up with things whole cloth. His Nazi color scheme idea was taken from the Imperial German flag (1871–1918). That’s a notable period because 1871 also was when Germany abruptly became introduced to a sensationalized swastika.
German nationalist groups like the Reichshammerbund (a 1912 anti-Semitic group) and the Bavarian Freikorps (paramilitarists who wanted to overthrow the Weimar Republic in Germany) used the swastika to reflect their “newly discovered” identity as the master race.
The basis of the Nazi Swastika is this “X” decoration unearthed in 1871 by a German archaeologist. Source: Smithsonian
Even a 1912 Reichshammerbund swastika reference seems late, given it had spun out of a 1902 group (swastikas already being spread as “master race” anti-Semitic symbols by then). By 1916 the Germanenorden hate group published a newsletter with a swastika with a superimposed cross for its cover page, and then in 1918 spun out a violent anti-Semitic anti-revolution Thule-Gesellschaft (TG). TG leaflet of August 1918 lays bare the meaning of swastikas. Source: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
Led by Rudolf von Sebottendorff (1875-1945) TG drove heated political rhetoric and violence after the 1918 fall of the monarchy, a foundation for the National Socialist (Nazi) movement. The TG symbol was the anti-Semitic swastika with the WWI “Dolchstoßlegende” knife, and their greeting was “Sieg und Heil”. Eric von Rosen likely was observing if not involved in Rudolf von Sebottendorff’s extreme-right group, which is the most sensible explanation for why antisemitic swastikas were painted into Finland’s Air Force.
Thus, Hitler’s use of an 1871 color scheme along with an 1871 “racist luck” swastika in his “make Germany great again” propaganda flag, were referencing hateful symbolism that had been in place long before 1918.
It’s similar to how “America First” was a racist, nativist slogan of the late 1800s in America, then became a Presidential campaign in 1916 (to restart the KKK), and then became a Presidential campaign in 2016. Hitler’s swastika was from racist thinking generated from 1871, not some kind of invention or abrupt change. Rosen surely was not far removed from all this context given he would have grown up with the anti-Semitic use of the swastika and knew such prominent connotations just like Hitler.
To put it bluntly, as a Finnish artist explained in 2014, it’s no coincidence by 1918 that Rosen, Hitler and others were all spreading a swastika around as symbolic of hate. Rosen wasn’t really before Hitler at all; they used it at the same time for basically the same reasons, and they knew the swastika was anti-Semitic by 1918 just the same as by 1945.
The meaning of the sign as a symbol of anti-Semitism and therefore the Aryan, has an uninterrupted continuity from the 1880s to the Nazi-swastika. Famous orientalist and anti-Semite Emile Burnouf wrote to Schliemann as early as 1872: “the swastika should be regarded as a sign of the Aryan race. It should also be noted that the Jews have completely rejected it.”
Therefore in 1925 when Hitler wrote that his “good luck” swastika “always has been and always will be anti-Semitic”, he was drawing on at least fifty years before him of that being the case. Rosen knew what was going on in European circles, just like Gallen-Kallela in 1889 probably copied his symbolic swastikas from the antisemitic work of Zmigrodski. After all, Professor Muller of Copenhagen was at that time meeting with Zmigrodski to promote a racist discourse that a “swastika was the emblem of the supreme god of the Aryan race” — symbolized “luck” in selection, exclusion and opposition against “unclean” races.
Fast forward to today and Finland is slowly getting around to noticing they often still use the intentionally symbolic anti-Semitic swastika after long denying its undeniable symbolism.
In related news from 2022, Finland has an antisemitism problem:
On her recent visit to Finland, the EU’s antisemitism watchdog Katharina von Schnurbein pointed out that neither the authorities nor the general public in Finland is fully aware of lingering anti-Semitic sentiments. Her claim was based on a survey according to which one in two Europeans sees antisemitism as a problem in their home country. That number was just 17% among Finns. […] Antisemitism or denying the Holocaust are not listed as criminal acts in Finland.
What swastika? Where? They do Nazi the swastika.
Or maybe they really don’t like Jews in Finland, given their acceptance of widespread antisemitism. In related news from 2023:
Jewish politician in Finland allegedly assaulted and hit with antisemitic slurs.
Allegedly this antisemitic assailant was easily caught and arrested because he was wearing… swastikas. So it kind of makes sense for their air force to stop using them.
For those still trying to argue that a swastika somehow was a generic “luck” symbol of early 1900s instead of racism… I have many reasons why that’s just plain wrong (pun not intended).
Here are two excellent ones. First, by 1920 the ill-fated Latvian Air Force had proven without a doubt the swastika was very bad luck.
Latvia made the mistake of using a racist bad luck swastika for their Air Force symbol.
Second, show me any other GIANT luck symbol, anything of the kind, being painted on planes in the same manner. There’s no such universally symbolic charm. Paint was expensive and mystical symbols of luck had no need for such expense or even big exposure. Racism, however, does love an expensive and huge symbol. Burning crosses was too obvious and dangerous, and instead the racist late-1800s swastika became “popular” among the early-1900s racists.
An old story from NPR came to mind when I was hacking some AI systems meant to read facial expressions.
Darwin hypothesized making faces probably had some survival advantage… [and then neuroscientists Adam Anderson and Joshua Susskind from the University of Toronto were able to prove] fear expression opens up, speeds up and increases sensory information about the environment. In contrast, an expression of disgust – a scrunched up face – does just the opposite. Disgust shuts our sensory information, the researchers found. You see and smell less.
…ideas of license and obligation translate into the micro-reality of facial expression.
Some of it is common sense stuff, such as politicians try hard to make their face look excited if their constituents value someone being easily excited.
…the more a particular country’s culture values excitement, the more its political leaders show enthusiastic smiles. On the other hand, when the specific culture emphasizes calm, those leaders show more reserved smiles.
Of 19 different types of smile, only six occur when we’re having a good time. The rest happen when we’re in pain, embarrassed, uncomfortable, horrified or even miserable. A smile may mean contempt, anger or incredulity, that we’re lying or that we’ve lost. […] “When bonobo chimpanzees are afraid they’ll expose their teeth and draw their lips back so that their gums are exposed,” says Zanna Clay, a primatologist at the University of Birmingham. The ‘silent bared teeth display’ looks so much like a smile it’s often featured on birthday cards, but in chimpanzees it’s a gesture of submission, used by low-status individuals to appease more dominant members of the group.
Every woman I know seems to have a story about being told to smile. Mine involves my eighth-grade gym teacher, who decided when I was 13 that I wasn’t smiling enough in his class. Twice a week he would walk down the line of us, taking attendance, and stop in front of me. “Smile!” he’d say. “I like it when you smile!” The first few times I smiled at him involuntarily, then, furious at myself, rearranged my face into a scowl. Later, I came to expect it. I would clench my teeth as his sneakers squeaked closer, steeling my face to stay rigid and calm. Smile! You know I like it when you smile! He’d stand over me, waiting with his clipboard, until I finally gave in.
Meanwhile, Russians apparently treat smiling as a sign of stupidity, Chinese look upon smiling as anger or even guilt.
The bottom line is the more that emerging “intelligence” systems are expected to detect emotions, the more I suspect actual intelligence will defeat such horribly primitive, yet expensive and powerful, intentions. Facial expression training is like bringing a knife to an AI fight, where the knife wins.
Teslas that have “veered” fatally into the trees have been a nonstop problem lately (no pun intended). Here’s another one:
A man died and a woman was injured after crashing their Tesla into a tree in a south Houston neighborhood, police said.
The crash happened around 11 p.m. in the 6600 block of Del Rio…
The car burst into fire and the passenger was saved by neighbors who were fortunate enough to not be killed by a Tesla on the loose near them.
A quick check of the accident scene suggests “Autopilot” may have been involved.
Perhaps steering or suspension parts failed catastrophically, as the Tesla is not known for its quality or handling. That’s what the investigation points towards, with images of the car “veered” into a tree along a straight and flat road. It could be that alone.
Source: ABC 13Source: Houston Chronicle
The trees clearly prevented the Tesla from crashing into at least one home at 11pm, threatening local residents like a cruise missile (e.g. NY).
And on that note it’s hard not to question whether the driver had depended at all on centrally designed and controlled automation systems, which couldn’t handle such a very simple test. The circumstances are very similar to so many other (e.g. NC) recent “veered driverless” Tesla crashes.
