The articles Kirk links to are interesting, but they (especially the NPR one) don't get into WHY the Nazis were popular in America. There was certainly pull based on heritage, but one also has to recognize that there was a lot of overlap between the political thoughts and programs of the American left/progressives and the National Socialists of Germany. Using the government to control business and the economy, central decision making, subsuming the individual to the party and state, and using eugenics to eliminate lesser races, mongrel whites, and the feebleminded were popular with both German Nazis and American progressives. Planned Parenthood would like you to not remember Margaret Sanger was a forceful advocate for eugenics in the US, especially with regards to the black population. Today's progressives, to the extent that they pay any attention to history, would also like you not to remember that President Wilson, the great socialist, also kicked blacks out of Federal civil service and used the law to suppress free speech. Although now they're probably less embarrassed than inspired by that last part.
It wasn't until Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin that Nazis became the bad guys to the American left. Suddenly they transformed from fellow socialists to "right wing reactionaries", a convenient little fiction that has been maintained until this day. When you're standing far enough to the left, everything else is "right wing."
It wasn't until Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin that Nazis became the bad guys to the American left. Suddenly they transformed from fellow socialists to "right wing reactionaries", a convenient little fiction that has been maintained until this day. When you're standing far enough to the left, everything else is "right wing."
