“There’s certainly a raw and visceral shock to seeing swastikas displayed in American streets,” Hart tells TIME. “But this is a topic I’d been working on for quite a while at that point, and while it wasn’t something I expected, it was a trend I’d been observing. I wasn’t terribly shocked but there’s still a visceral reaction when you see that kind of symbolism displayed in the 21st century.”
Hart, who came to the topic via research on the eugenics movement and the history of Nazi sympathy in Britain, says he realized early on that there was a lot more to the American side of that story than most textbooks acknowledged. Some of the big names might get mentioned briefly — the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, or the highly public German American Bund organization — but in general, he says, the American narrative of the years leading up to World War II has elided the role of those who supported the wrong side. And yet, American exchange students went to Germany and returned with glowing reviews, while none other than Charles Lindbergh denounced Jewish people for pushing the U.S. toward unnecessary war. In its various expressions, the pro-Nazi stance during those years was mostly focused not on creating an active military alliance with Germany or bringing the U.S. under Nazi control (something Hitler himself thought wouldn’t be possible) but rather on keeping the U.S. out of war in Europe.
So why was that past overlooked for so long?
In part, Hart theorizes, it’s because the American story of World War II is such a powerful national narrative. The United States, that narrative says, helped save the world. Rocked by Pearl Harbor, Americans stepped up to turn the tide for the Allies and thus solidified their nation’s place as a global superpower. That narrative doesn’t have much room for the relatively small, but significant, number of Americans who were rooting for the other side.
“It’s always been uncomfortable in this country to talk about isolationism, though the ideas are still out there,” he says, “It’s part of the American mythology. We want to remember ourselves as always having been on the right side in this war.”
It was also possible for those who had participated in Nazi-sympathetic groups to later cloak their beliefs in the Cold War’s anti-communist push — a dynamic that had in fact driven some of them to fascism in the first place, as it seemed “tougher on communism than democracy is,” as Hart puts it. (One survey he cites found that in 1938, more Americans thought that communism was worse than fascism than vice versa.) Such people could truthfully insist that they’d always been anti-communist without revealing that they’d been fascists, and their fellow Americans were still so worried about communism that they might not press the matter.
“[S]he’s chosen to go town to town, voter to voter — building specific plans to address the issues that Montanans are actually worried about (health care, Social Security, agricultural security) rather than the ones they’re told they should worry about during election cycles (guns, Muslims). She also fits the magic Montana formula for a Democrat to win statewide: appealing to the “Base Plus Plus,” or “Progressives + Independents + Moderate Republicans.” She talks about compromise like it’s all she’s ever known. She’s slightly awkward in a way that feels authentic, while also exuding a sort of radical competence.
…“Gianforte’s an unusual candidate, in that the more people he meets, the less chance he has of winning the election,” Matt McKenna, a veteran Democratic political consultant based in Bozeman, told me. “He’s such a flagrant, unlikable asshole, you have to keep him buttoned up and expose him to as few voters as possible.”
When she was 10, a white boy pushed Auntie Rosa,
and she pushed him back. Auntie Rosa’s grandmother told her, “You need
to be quiet, you need to stop being so vocal.” She was told, as black
people, we’re not allowed to do those things to whites. Her grandmother
was concerned that she’d get hurt, that she could even get lynched. But
Auntie Rosa told her grandmother, “Let them try to lynch me.” She was
that bold, even when she was young.
Sometimes I
struggle with social media because it seems there’s always somebody
belittling Auntie Rosa. I recently saw someone post that my aunt wasn’t
really black. Or people say that she was strategically placed on the bus
in Montgomery because she was lighter skinned. It’s amazing to me that
they would think that. Yes our family ancestry is part African American,
part white, and part Native American. Auntie Rosa considered herself
black and was treated as black. We have a lot of work to do in this
country regarding colorism, but whether you’re light or dark — and this
is still true today — you are black in America and you’re going to be
treated accordingly.
People also think that her not giving up her seat
was all a planned, staged thing for the media. Maybe you’ve seen that
famous picture of my aunt getting arrested and the man fingerprinting
her — well, that’s not even from December 1, 1955. It’s from the second
time she was arrested. (Yes, she got arrested more than once.) By the
time that photograph was taken, word had gotten out across the country
that Montgomery had started a bus boycott. So that’s when the media
showed up to take a picture.
My aunt wasn’t even paying attention that day she
got on the bus. She had been avoiding that driver’s bus for 12 years. He
would stop at her stop and she wouldn’t get on. That particular day she
wasn’t paying attention because she was thinking of Emmett Till, who
had been murdered that summer. She already paid her money when she
realized it was that driver, but then she figured she’d go ahead and sit
down. She didn’t stand up when the driver demanded that she stand up
because she kept thinking of him being killed. She was that angry. Keep
in mind, it was legal for bus drivers back then to carry handguns — my
aunt could have been shot and killed on that bus.
Once
word of mouth spread about what happened to my aunt, it helped people
have a little bit more courage than before. You have to understand, my
aunt was a known person in the community. She became the recording
secretary for the NAACP almost 15 years before she refused to give up
her seat on that bus. Everyone knew her based off of her writing down
stories like Recy Taylor’s: Oh, she was the lady who held my hand
when my uncle got beat up. She got my kid involved in a youth program to
read books. She was the one who came and tried to get me to register to
vote. They were shocked that something could happen to nice Mrs.
Parks. Before then, many black people were like, “Oh well, that person
should have not got arrested. They should have just gotten off the bus. ”
She
wrote in one of her journals about her feelings of hurt after she got
arrested. She worked in the department store where she was a seamstress
for the next five weeks after that and then they let her go. During that
time, her black coworkers didn’t speak to her — that whole five weeks.
She would say good morning and they wouldn’t say anything. It was very
disheartening. They looked at her like she was stirring up trouble for
them. My aunt explained to me that it was because Jim Crow was telling
them, “This is the best life you’re going to have, and you can get
killed if you resist.”
People also don’t know that my aunt went through a
lot of financial hardships after what happened. She had health issues
and developed ulcers and couldn’t afford the medication. She didn’t get
real, stable work until 1957 when her brother, my Grandfather McCauley,
convinced her to move to Detroit. She sacrificed her privacy, her job,
her marriage, her health. She never talked about that with people,
though. She just didn’t want to burden people or make them feel sorry
for her.
It still breaks my heart to remember my aunt
telling me how many times it took for her to get registered to vote.
Back then, they made black folks take a literacy test knowing that many
couldn’t read or write. It was a trickle down effect of the lack of
education for black people. But Auntie Rosa, she knew all the answers
backwards and forwards, but year after year they denied her. And
finally it was a white woman in the office who said, just let her
register to vote. My aunt had been persistent, showing up. “I’m here to
take the test so I can get registered to vote.” And then I think about
how, as soon as I turned 18, all I had to do is go sign a card.
Yes,
I’m glad that Oprah spoke up about Recy Taylor and about my aunt. I
know people might still try to belittle my Auntie Rosa by saying, “Oh
she was just a little seamstress.” But that “little seamstress” is proof
you can be anything out here and still make changes in your community.
My aunt felt passionate about civil rights — it was a passion she felt
in her soul, and we all have to tap into that. Whether it’s working with
children or with the elderly, or voting rights or women’s rights —
working at a homeless shelter or women’s shelter or getting trained to
volunteer on a suicide hotline on the weekends. We can all do a little
thing and the ripple effect of it can go a long way.
instead of printing it off just use this blank thing that way you dont have to scan it or anything
so fill that out by pasting it in any art program and whatnot
then save it and upload it to that site
and itll give you an option to download it
so do that and then install it BAM
I JUST GOT THIS ON MY TABLET IT’S SO COOL OH MY GOD
for some reason it refused to recognize the third page of my letters but they were all pretty unnecessary mathematic things anyway so I’m not too worried. still something to keep in mind though, I hope it doesn’t happen for you!
paintfont.com would be a good place to go to quickly make a custom font for your comic!
ehh
It looks just as horrible in real life..even worse with the letter attached…
I’ll try this later.
you can also use alternative alphabets
Welp. Guess I know what font I’m gonna be using for comics from now on. B)
Welp. Looks like I have to do this now. So I can use this for Tengri’s asks.
For some reason there is no apostrophe in my set, but it still looks cool.
A terrifying New York Times article today announced that the Trump administration is considering “narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth,” a measure that would essentially eliminate any and all recognition of transgender and nonbinary people and, therefore, their civil rights.
The memo from the Department of Health and Human Services claims officials need a clearer definition of gender. Their proposed definition “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.
Let me be perfectly clear: Being transgender is not something you can believe or not believe in, support or not support. It’s a reality. Trans people exist. Always have, always will. What this will do is make it infinitely *more* difficult than it already is to be trans in America. Violence, poverty, inaccessible healthcare, and a slew of other already-persistent problems will worsen. New generations of trans kids will be silenced in ways that date back decades, if not longer.
We cannot under any circumstances allow this to happen. Vote. Protest. Cis folks, donate to trans-led organizations and trans individuals’ GoFundMe pages for medical care. Talk to your transphobic (or trans-ignorant) friends and family about what a policy like this would mean. And if you’re trans and need support today, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860.
Trans friends: I see you and I love you. We will not let them erase you. We will fight this with you.
“This post is about the idea that not wanting bigoted tropes to be replicated in fiction is about political correctness, censorship, or some unfathomable agenda.
You want to write a character with a different race, sexual orientation, religion, gender ID than yours? Okay. But before you set that character loose into the world, do some basic research. Do some basic work in understanding what obstacles that community faces, what narratives are most offensive to them? Are you replicating tropes that are used to dehumanize and erase members of that community?”
Trump assumes every transaction in the world — between people, businesses, nation-states, even between two different agencies of the same government — has a winner and a loser, a scammer and a sucker. He believes if you’re not ripping someone off, you’re getting ripped off.
rip tumblr 