The billionaires' crybaby club

Billionaires’ crybaby club: Someone get these whiners a bottle!

An epidemic of self-pity among the wealthy raises questions about the mental health of the top of the top 1 percent

By Joan WalshDoes being super-wealthy make you extra susceptible to self-pity today? That’s the only conclusion we can draw from an epidemic of self-pitying American billionaires decrying their persecution by “despots,” and the “Kristallnacht” of rising concern about income inequality, over just the last few months.

Charles Koch is the latest to fall victim to what funnier folks than me have labeled the WATB syndrome, with a whiny op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “Collectivists” in government, Koch writes – “those who stand for government control of the means of production and how people live their lives,” i.e. Democrats — “strive to discredit and intimidate opponents.” It gets worse: “They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.)”

I’m worried about Charles Koch. For one thing, with all his billions, he couldn’t find a better ghost writer? His silly op-ed, with its alarmist Marxist clichés and fusty Schopenhauer references, would have been dismissed as an April Fool’s joke if published just one day sooner. It came the same day as the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision, which only increased its ridiculousness.

But Koch’s self-pity and persecution complex is downright unhealthy. He clearly suffers from the same malady as Tom Perkins, who delusionally compared rising political concern about income inequality to “Kristallnacht” for the rich. Newspaper-destroying real estate mogul Sam Zell, who cosigned Perkins, is also a victim, complaining the super-rich “are getting pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so,” when in fact “the 1 percent work harder.”

Self-pity sufferer Ken Langone of Home Depot even warned Pope Francis that Catholic billionaires might stop contributing to the church because of the pope saying the “exclusionary” culture of the rich made some of them “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” Langone had earlier joined self-pitying mogul Leon Cooperman to admonish President Obama for “new lows in polarizing rhetoric…aimed at successful people in the business sector.”

Maybe we need a public health campaign to warn billionaires about the dangers of self-pity: stress, anxiety, depression, isolation and illness. The authors of “47 Steps to Stress Management” say that “the effect of self-pity on the body is similar to chronic anxiety.” A widely quoted 2003 study of self-pity in the Journal of Personality found:Paul Krugman slams the ‘parade of billionaires whining’ because people are criticizing them

Comment:  Many people have criticized the billionaire crybabies for whining about Nazism and evil when we try to raise tax rates to their historic levels. These postings are just the tip of the iceberg.

For more on the subject, see Rich People Are Sociopaths and Conservative Christian Persecution Fantasies.

Below:  Tom Perkins.

Are Southern death camps plausible?

I wrote about Harry Turtledove's SF series in which the South won the Civil War in Indians in Turtledove's Timeline-191. Now I've reached the end of the series.

In the last few books, the US/Confederate history closely parallels our actual history with Germany. The USA defeats the CSA in the "Great War" and imposes harsh conditions. The Depression ensues a decade later. Seething with resentment, the South rises under Jake Featherston, a Hitler-like Army sergeant. It launches a war against the USA while sending its Negroes to Auschwitz-like death camps.

It's far-fetched that this timeline would parallel our timeline so closely. Especially some 80 years after the divergence began--when you'd expect things to diverge more, not less.

But I didn't find the details--the demagogic leader and the death camps--far-fetched. I believe something like this could've happened in reality if we hadn't been vigilant.

War of words

A couple of Facebook friends disagreed with my assessment, leading to a debate. It began with this tweet of mine:

Reading Turtledove's "Southern Victory" series. The South wins the Civil War and eventually consigns blacks to death camps. Plausible?No. He's trying too hard to replicate Nazism and WW2.Did you actually read it through to the final book? I thought you didn't like the series that much.

I agree that the Nazi parallels are a little heavy-handed, but we're talking about two things. 1) The literary merits of the Nazi parallelism, and 2) the real-world possibility of the South's emulating the Nazi example. I'd say the second point is all too plausible.Turtledove was an Ottoman historian. He does about as well as I'd do writing Ottoman history. For starters, political parties were banned by the CSA constitution. There were never any free elections. It was always an elite oligarchy, closer to a military/plantation owner dictatorship.Well, I don't remember the first few books in this very long series. Turtledove could've changed the CSA constitution somewhere along the line in his alternate history.

If the South was an an elite oligarchy, I'd say that would make the death-camp scenario more likely, not less. I still haven't heard anything that makes the scenario implausible.Why would a South that, as outlined in the novels, was completely and utterly dependent on black labor start killing off that supply? Even the Nazis put groups other than Jews in work camps (where they were often worked to death). I don't see anything in Southern history that would indicate a predilection to anything like the Holocaust. A victorious CSA would almost certainly be a brutal, repressive dictatorship (and in many ways, it was from the end of Reconstruction until the 1960's) but there's a huge difference between that and a full-on genocidal massacre.Because cheap labor is readily available from the CSA's Mexican states? Because the USA and CSA developed automated farming machinery faster in this timeline? (Tanks in the Great War--i.e., World War I--being an example of the accelerated technology.)

I haven't been paying enough attention to say the books treated the labor issue well, but they definitely did address it. Turtledove didn't just ignore the issue.

Featherston's role is key

And the genocidal massacre happened because a Hitler-like demagogue made it happen. Not because it's a natural outgrowth of the South's racist history.

So you're saying a Hitler-like demagogue couldn't make Southerners turn against blacks because, what, Southerners are more decent and rational than the Germans under Hitler were? Sorry, I'm not buying that the Germans were uniquely "bad" and the same thing couldn't happen here.I just don't see any historical evidence to support the notion. For example, there were PLENTY of slave revolts, often very bloody. No one suggested exterminating all slaves or shipping them back to Africa. Germany had a LONG history of bloody anti-Semitism. Jews had been massacred for centuries in Europe and the Near East (by the Crusaders) for centuries. The Holocaust didn't just appear out of thin air, with no history behind it. The South would be highly highly dependent on slaves, especially in a scenario where they are desperately trying to industrialize in order to maintain the war effort. There's no plausible reason for a culture that lacked the traditional German deference to authority to suddenly decide to go along with eliminating their labor base, Mexican conscripts or no Mexican conscripts.In the books, the CSA ended slavery sometime after the Civil War. By the 1940s, the system was an apartheid-like version of Jim Crow repression, but not slavery.

The South had a long history of brutal repression and bloody slave revolts. True, these things didn't go back to the Middle Ages, but they did go back a couple of centuries. I think that's long enough to embed a genocidal mania in the South's culture.

Besides, Euro-Americans had a history of demonizing brown-skinned people (Indians) as pagans and devil-worshippers going back to 1492. That's the same idea as the German demonization of Jews or the English demonization of the Irish. So there's no great difference between the two European-based cultures.

"No one suggested exterminating all slaves or shipping them back to Africa." Yes, because they were productive "property" at the time. And because a monstrous demagogue like Hitler or Jake Featherston hadn't come along. But once Hitler gave us a historical template, the idea became conceivable everywhere.

The South didn't have the "traditional German deference to authority"? But Al characterized the Southern culture as "an elite oligarchy, closer to a military/plantation owner dictatorship." That sounds like exactly the kind of culture that would defer to a small ruling class and finally to a single demagogue.

The Trail of Tears started in the American South. The genocidal actions continued in the American West. If these subcultures didn't have a traditional deference to authority, then this deference wasn't necessary to trigger a racial purge. In short, it happened here once so it could happen here again.

Hitler got the Holocaust idea from past genocides, including that of the American Indian. The Southerners in Turtledove's books would've had these examples to inspire them. Heck, some of them undoubtedly participated in the near-extermination of Indians. So putting blacks in rez-like concentration camps doesn't seem far-fetched to me at all.

Genocide there but not here?

So you are arguing that Germany had unique traits that made genocide possible there but not here? Even though we committed similar acts of genocide that gave Hitler his inspiration for the Holocaust? Sorry, I'm still not buying it.

Did Armenia, Cambodia, and Rwanda happen to have the same mix of cultural traits as Nazi Germany? Something the American South lacked even though it launched the Trail of Tears? That seems implausible if not impossible. So again, no sale.No, Germany wasn't unique clearly, but there were cultural conditions that contributed to it. To pretend otherwise is to ignore history. The Trail of Tears was ethnic cleaning, not extermination. Hitler did not, in fact, get the idea for the Holocaust from Native American history; he got the idea for treating Eastern Europe (driving people off their land).

Also, in the books the South ends slavery after another war with the US in 1881. And it's done in a very unsatisfying magic wand kind of way, mostly off camera.Hitler referred to America and its Indians in Mein Kampf. At least one historian quoted him writing, "Neither Spain nor Britain should be models of the German expansion, but the Nordics of North America, who had ruthlessly pushed aside an inferior race to win for themselves soil and territory for the future." Stannard offers this quote:Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination--by starvation and uneven combat--of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.

--P. 202, Adolph Hitler by John TolandI'm not sure how much of an inspiration the American model was, but it was more than zero, since Hitler was aware of it and wrote about it.

So the South had enough of a genocidal culture to send Indians marching off through the snow to their probable deaths? But not to send them to concentration camps where only the guards knew what was really happening? The difference seems minor and inconsequential to me.

As you know, Americans attacked and killed Indians many times. It was a fundamental part of their worldview to eliminate the brown-skinned menace one way or another. It didn't require any deference to authority; Americans from all walks of life shared this goal.

Sending blacks to concentration camps similar to reservations is consistent with that. And again, only the South's leaders knew for sure what was happening. Which is consistent with the German model. The books do not require a genocidal rage on the part of every Southerner to work. They require only the Nazi-like command structure that Jake Featherston provided.

Besides, this is speculative fiction, so the case doesn't have to be airtight to be plausible. I think it's close enough to airtight that it hasn't bothered me. If we can give Star Trek and Doctor Who a pass, we can give this a pass too.

Conclusion

Like many critics, I've compared the American Holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust many times. I've also said this genocidal urge is still present in the American mindset. Invading Muslim countries, killing foreigners with drones, ignoring hunger and disease around the world, letting minorities suffer and die without government assistance, hoarding guns to protect us from "them"...all part of the same impulse.

Heck, we sent Japanese Americans to concentration camps in the same time frame as Featherston's purge. It's absolutely part of our DNA to "reduce the population," as Featherston put it, of troublesome minorities. All it would take is a Hitler-style demagogue to convert Bosque Redondo, Manzanar, or Guantanamo Bay into another Auschwitz.

P.S. I don't think I read the book in which the South ended slavery. I'm not claiming the whole series is 100% plausible, since I haven't read every book. But I am claiming the Nazi-style ending is plausible--plausible enough to enjoy the ride.

For more on alternate histories, see Saving Columbus in Infinity Ring and The Pirate Prince Carlomagno.

Hitler loved Manifest Destiny

I've seen claims that Hitler based his "final solution" on his knowledge of the American genocide of Indians. But I hadn't seen any hard evidence of it. This passage comes closer to explaining the connection than anything I've seen so far.

The Ugly Roots Of The GAP’s Manifest Destiny

By Leon DonnellyThe German Friedrich Ratzel in his book “Lebensraum,” 1901, wrote of an impersonal, Darwinist ‘survival of the fittest’ struggle for existence among human beings. In considering the near extinction of Native American Indigenous peoples by Euro-American conquerors he saw in this a model for German racial expansion, conquest and extermination in the eastern lands of Europe. Ratzel wanted Germany to emulate the American model of aggressive conquest of all indigenous peoples that stood in Germany’s path of acquiring ‘living space’ in the East for her ever expanding ‘pure white Germanic race’, and so recommended aggressive war of acquisition and conquest which “quickly and completely displace the inhabitants, for which North America, Southern Brazil, Tasmania, and New Zealand provide the best examples.” Then, following these models, settler colonies could quickly be founded with a German yeomanry farmer class protected by forts and military units. It was upon this basis that Adolf Hitler formed Germany’s policy of aggressive acquisition & conquest in the East of Europe & Russia. In Nazi propaganda film and newspaper photographs of the Nazi colonisation of Eastern Europe German wagons rolling East were shown in conscious echo of images derived from Hollywood Western films celebrating Manifest Destiny and the conquest of the American West.

Ratzel was praising of American historian Frederick Jackson Turner who formulated his “Frontier Thesis” of American History in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), which celebrated the irresistible march of white Anglo-Saxon civilisation across the North American continent as an evolutionary process, and highlighted Turner’s contrast of the “dynamic borders of American Westward expansion” with the static borders of densely populated Europe. I quote from Wikipedia on Turner: “He believed the spirit and success of the United States was directly tied to the country’s westward expansion. Turner expounded an evolutionary model; he had been influenced by work with geologists at Wisconsin. The West, not the East, was where distinctively American characteristics emerged. The forging of the unique and rugged American identity occurred at the juncture between the civilization of settlement and the savagery of wilderness. This produced a new type of citizen–one with the power to tame the wild and one upon whom the wild had conferred strength and individuality…As each generation of pioneers moved 50 to 100 miles west, they abandoned useless European practices, institutions and ideas, and instead found new solutions to new problems created by their new environment. Over multiple generations, the frontier produced characteristics of informality, violence, crudeness, democracy and initiative that the world recognized as “American.” According to Wikipedia by the time Turner died in 1932 60% of the leading History departments in the US were teaching American History courses in Frontier History along Turnerian lines.

Adolf Hitler himself saw in the American conquest of the West a model for Germany’s conquest of the East to achieve her divine right of “Lebensraum” there. In “Mein Kampf” Hitler sees the American expansion into the West as an expression of white Anglo-Saxon Germanic racial superiority. Hitler commends these American settlers for keeping their Germanic blood pure by not intermarrying with Native peoples, and drew from it his own version of Manifest Destiny where German blood has the divine right to conquer land inhabited by “untermensch,” who are not to be considered human beings by the Germanic conqueror but are to be mercilessly starved, slaughtered and for all intents and purposes made extinct for the purposes of “Lebensraum” for the “pure white race” of the Greater German Reich.

American National Socialists know what “Manifest Destiny” means. The Klu Klux Klan will know. And the Native Americans know what it means. Genocide. Genocide of the Native American people. In the year in which UN Special Reporteur on Indigenous Human Rights, James Anaya, has alerted the world to widespread Human Rights abuses against the Native Americans, presently & historically, the need to return to them stolen lands and to redress the traumatic historical effects of Manifest Destiny, this seems a curious & perverse slogan for Gap to offer the world.Comment:  For more on Manifest Destiny, see Bono Mack:  Pro-Indian = Anti-American and McNairy Apologizes for "Manifest Destiny" T-Shirt.

"Man’s most dangerous myth"

An excerpt from Steve Russell’s new book, Sequoyah Rising:The whole idea of “race” is, in Columbia professor Partha Chatterjee’s phrase describing nationalism, “a derivative discourse.” It is not only derived from European colonial discourse, but it has done and continues to do harm to Indian nations on a scale similar to that of smallpox and measles. Read Chatterjee’s words below (from her book, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World) and substitute “race” for “nationalism”:

Nationalism as an ideology is irrational, narrow, hateful and destructive. It is not an authentic product of any of the non-European civilizations which, in each particular case, it claims as its classical heritage. It is wholly a European export to the rest of the world. It is also one of Europe’s most pernicious exports.

Can “race” properly be considered, like nationalism, an ideology? According to the American Anthropological Association statement on race in 1998:

[Physical] variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields argue that “race” as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.… As they were constructing U.S. society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each “race,” linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians.… Ultimately, “race” as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere.

Anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s famous formulation of race as “man’s most dangerous myth” dates from 1942, when Adolf Hitler was engaged in a spectacular attempt to govern a modern nation by that myth. Before World War II, Hitler expressed admiration for the U.S.’s handling of race in Mein Kampf.Proving Hitler's regard for the US "final solution" is this quote:The settlement of the North American continent is just as little the consequence of any claim of right in any democratic or international sense; it was the consequence of a consciousness of right which was rooted solely in the conviction of the superiority and therefore of the right of the white race.Adolf Hitler, Speech to the Industrie-Klub of Düsseldorf, January 27, 1932Comment:  We hear echoes of Hitler constantly in online debates. "Western civilization was superior, the strong conquers the weak, it's inevitable, get over it." The people who say things like this are usually moderates or conservatives, not liberals. From now on, let's say these people agree with Hitler. "Might makes right" is the conservative/Nazi mantra.

Seriously, if you rewrote the Hitler quote in plain English, I wonder what percentage of conservatives would agree with it. A large majority, surely. It's part of their dogma that God made Americans exceptional, beyond the rules, free to do whatever they want. Including conquering and killing people.

For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American.

Below:  A typical "might makes right" conservative.

Southwest Indians renounced swastika

In Honoring Indians with Swastikas, I noted how Indians and non-Indians used swastikas in the early 20th century. You can imagine why both groups stopped using them, but here's a particular act I hadn't heard of before:

Western use of the swastika in the early 20th centuryShortly after the beginning of World War II, several Native American tribes (the Navajo, Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Hopi) published a decree stating that they would no longer use the swastika in their artwork. This was because the swastika had come to symbolize evil to the tourists who purchased their crafts. This decree was signed by representatives of these tribes. The decree states:Because the above ornament which has been a symbol of friendship among our forefathers for many centuries has been desecrated recently by another nation of peoples.

Therefore it is resolved that henceforth from this date on and forever more our tribes renounce the use of the emblem commonly known today as the swastika or fylfot on our blankets, baskets, art objects, sandpainting, and clothing.Comment:  As with their exemplary record of military service, this act shows the Indians' patriotic love of America. Compare this with, say, Southern whites who embrace the Confederate flag or any whites who embrace a stereotypical Indian mascot.

These symbols have more negative implications than the Indians' swastika, which didn't have any negative implications until Hitler appropriated it. Yet the whites are much less willing to give up their cherished symbols. Which people are thinking of the greater good and which people are thinking only about themselves?

For more on the subject, see Native Threads Accused of Nazism and Reclaiming the Swastika.

Below:  "Group of Dineh Artists Renouncing Use of the Swastika," c. February 28, 1940.

Honoring Indians with swastikas

My Native Threads Accused of Nazism reminds me of the long history of swastikas in the US. Here's a sampling of this history:

Western use of the swastika in the early 20th centuryAs a Native American symbol

Because this was a popular symbol with the Navajo people, the Arizona Department of Transportation marked its state highways with signs featuring a right-facing swastika superimposed on an arrowhead. In 1942, after the United States entered World War Two, the department replaced the signs.

The swastika's use by the Navajo and other tribes made it a popular symbol for the Southwestern United States. Until the 1930s, blankets, metalwork, and other Southwestern souvenirs were often made with swastikas.Use by the military

The 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army used a yellow swastika on a red background as a unit symbol until the 1930s, when it was switched to a thunderbird. The American Division wore the swastika patch while fighting against Germany in World War I.

The U.S. Army 12th Infantry Regiment coat of arms includes a number of historic symbols. A tepee with small, left facing swastikas represents the unit's campaigns in the Indian Wars of the late 19th century. The Regiment fought German forces during World War II, landing on D-Day at Utah Beach, through five European campaigns and received a Presidential Unit Citation for action during the Battle of the Bulge.Government use

Swastikas and the similar Greek key symbol appear in decorative features of a number of U.S. federal, state and local government buildings including schools and county courthouses.

Swastikas surround the exterior window iconography at the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington D.C. on Constitution Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets.

The Reno, Nevada Post Office features both left and right facing swastikas, along with other designs typical of "Zig Zag Moderne" style, later known as a variation of "Art Deco."

Place names

Swastika Park is the name of a housing subdivision in Miami, Florida, created in 1917. An upscale subdivision in Denver is named "Swastika Acres." Its name has been traced to the Denver Swastika Land Company, founded in 1908.

Commercial use

The K-R-I-T Motor Car Company, Detroit, Michigan built cars from 1909 to 1915 with a radiator badge that featured a right-facing white swastika on a blue background.

The Crane Valve Company manufactured steel valves in the 1920s and 30's in the U.S. with swastika markings, using a symbol with the arms pointed to the right.

Use in popular culture

In the 1936 H. P. Lovecraft novella, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a symbol of the Old Ones was described by a character as, "Something like what ye call a swastika nowadays."

Swastika quilt patterns were popular in America prior to World War II.

Use by non-political clubs and organizations

The Ladies' Home Journal sponsored a Girl's Club with swastika membership pins, swastika-decorated handkerchief and a magazine titled "The Swastika." Their version of the symbol was square with right facing arms. The club was formed around the 20th century to encourage young women to sell magazine subscriptions.

The 1939 Tennessee State University yearbook lists a "Swastika Club" among women's student organizations. The group focused on literature, scholarship and "clear and straight thinking."

Coins, tokens, and watch fobs

Collectors have identified more than 1,400 different swastika design coins, souvenir or merchant/trade tokens, and and watch fobs, distributed by mostly local retail and service businesses in the United States. The tokens that can be dated range from 1885 to 1939, with a few later exceptions.For more on the subject, see Nazis Tried to Subvert Indians and Reclaiming the Swastika.

Native Threads accused of Nazism

Recently I received an e-mail from Randy Bardwell, president of Native Threads, about an art-design controversy. Bardwell explained it on his Facebook page:Native Threads is being accused as racist because the winning art contest design [left] "looks similar" to a Nazi emblem [right]! Please educate the accuser on how the Eagle, the Feather and the four directions symbol are sacred to you! Don't let these bullies paint us as racist!

The e-mails leading to this controversy:From: pdb
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:29 PM
To: info@nativethreads.com
Subject: hate symbol

The art winner for December 2010 is an image that has been associated world wide with RACISM and HATE since before the 1930s.

First the NAZIs, now us??

Please answer and let me know why this image was selected to show native pride. Right now all I feel is ashamed. See links of the Nazi Eagle with Swastika.

Tell me just how similar they are!

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-50326165/stock-photo-nazi-eagle-badge-on-book.html

http://thirdreichruins.com/reichsadler.htm

http://www.manions.com/catpages/realize1.aspx~id~5905326

*****

From: info@nativethreads.com
To: pdb
Subject: RE: hate symbol
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:51:44 -0800

Thank you for your email.

The image was selected by vote by over 1200 Native Threads fans, customers and supporters, most of whom are Native Americans and Aboriginal Canadians. The image is not chosen by Native Threads staff.

In regards to the swastika comparison please find the following text from the following website...http://www.shannonthunderbird.com/symbols_and_meanings.htm

"Before it was evil, it was good, and it is the oldest cross/symbol/emblem in the world. The image can be found throughout Native history. The postcard shown above states: "May the four winds from the four corners of the heavens upon you gently blow." It is also not exactly the same symbol that Hitler and his Nazi Party used. Upon closer inspection, the true symbol is actually a reverse of the counterclockwise Nazi version. Sadly, what was a beautiful symbol that represented peace and the natural order of things (sun, winds, four directions) has been perverted for all time by one evil individual and a terrible time in human history."

Our Morningstar design which is represented in Mr. Valle's art entry can be viewed here...http://store.nativethreads.com/Mens-Morning-Star-T-Shirt-Royal-P45C2.aspx#

Hope this helps,

NT Staff

*****

From: pdb
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 1:52 PM
To: info@nativethreads.com
Subject: RE: hate symbol

Okay.

Whoever CHOSE it, it is being PRODUCED by Native Threads.

You sent a picture (morning star) that has ZERO to do with what I am referring to.

Yes, I know the symbol is ancient, and pre-dates Jesus Christ. I am pointing out the remarkable, noticeable, (knock-off?) similarities between the "artwork" chosen as a winner and the Nazi Party symbol. The WHOLE picture, not just the swastika.

I wonder if you are being intentionally dense? Since I credit you with empathy and intelligence, I will say that you were just too busy to LOOK at the provided links. Please take the time to check these images out.

The Third Reich in the 20th century was the largest public act of GENOCIDE. As a culture of peoples who experienced the same by those who wanted to eradicate us, I would think that some common decency, if not affinity, would prohibit the use of your winners' "art."

I am not talking of the swastika--in this "art," it has been replaced by the medicine wheel. That I find a different kind of sick!

I am speaking to the WHOLE DESIGN. The eagles spread wings, the circle clenched in his claws, the symbol inside the circle representing a SPECIFIC RACE, even the "wind" surrounding the eagle was done using boughs and design in the earlier versions of this "art."

Take the time to view the slideshow now, please. Were you able to pick out your winner?

*****

From: rbardwell@nativethreads.com
To: pdb
Subject: RE: hate symbol
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 08:51:58 -0800

Thanks for your email regarding our latest art contest winner. It was very enlightening to read how passionate you are about history.

We agree with you that this design shares some of the same elements. However, our agreement ends there.

Mr. Valle's artwork does not represent hate or racism, it represents on many levels what are meaningful to Native culture. Our Morningstar represents the four directions, the eagle represents purity and the feathers represent spirit.

Sure, you can draw conclusions about many things and paint them evil as much as you want, however we will not allow ourselves to stoop to that level and pervert our people's artwork with a Nazi slant. It's up to you how you choose to see this artwork. We don't care to change your mind about it or for you to continue to point out how you see it.

We have provided a forum for Native artists to get exposure, opportunity and positive feedback from our Native Threads community of customers. We have overwhelming support from Indian Country on this project and we will continue to run the contest as is and allow all artists a fair chance at growing their art career.

Thanks again for your passionate feedback and we wish you well,

Randy Bardwell
President
Native Threads

*****

From: pdb
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 11:29 PM
To: rbardwell@nativethreads.com
Subject: RE: hate symbol

Mr. Bardwell

It is nice to see a name attached to the reply given to address my concern. The stand you take is great for your company, the artists, and irresponsibility.

It is not MY opinion, MY view, nor MY slant.

It is what it is. Simply deciding a symbol stands for one thing does not mean it doesn't represent quite another--and has for eight decades--to over a million people in your country alone. Literally millions of holocaust survivors and their descendants see the same hate.

Does that not mean anything to you?

Talk about turning a blind eye.

I am sadly disappointed.

You have heard the last from me personally, Mr. Bardwell. Your lack of concern was very clear. Though you can be sure you have not heard the last on this issue.

Take care.Comment:  I can see both sides in this debate. Yes, I think the designs are vaguely similar. And I'm not overly impressed with the winning design. But I don't think the designs are close enough that the winner screams "Nazism." And I certainly don't think artist Phil Valle or Native Threads is trying to send a subliminal pro-Nazi message.

I guess I agree with the commenter who wrote:I can see the similarities, but I would not expect the meaning to be the same. In truth I would not have connected them if you had not posted this picture. I would not worry about it if that was not your intention.Another point is that PDB's response seems like a gross overreaction to what was undoubtedly a coincidence. It might warrant a passing comment, but not a full-blown assault. PDB should've asked Native Threads about the design first rather than assuming it was a Nazi hate symbol.

For more on the subject, see Nazis Tried to Subvert Indians and Reclaiming the Swastika.

Nazis tried to subvert Indians

Native Americans in World War II

By Thomas D. MorganBecause the Choctaw language had befuddled German code-breakers in World War I, the German government feared the likelihood of Indian communications specialists as World War II loomed. During the 1930s, Nazi agents posing as anthropologists and writers on reservations tried to subvert some Indian tribes and learn their language. Pan-Nazi agitators from the German-American Bund tried to persuade Indians not to register for the draft. Third Reich Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels predicted Indians would revolt rather than fight Germany because the Swastika was similar to an Indian mystical bird symbol depicting good luck.

Goebbels went so far as to declare the Sioux to be "Aryans," but the Indians knew that as a Mongoloid race, they would be enslaved by the Nazis. Fascist attempts to convert Indians to their cause not only met with failure, but it may have encouraged Indians to register for the draft in the large numbers they did. About 20 percent of the Indian population, 80,000 men and women, marched off to fight in the armed forces and at the home front against Adolph Hitler, a man they called, "he who smells his moustache." Benito Mussolini fared little better, as the Indians called him "Gourd Chin."Comment:  The nicknames for Hitler and Mussolini must've been in a particular Native language. There's no way Indians from different tribes would agree on a single nickname.

For more on the subject, see Hitler = Greatest Threat Since Indians?, Reclaiming the Swastika, and Adolf Hitler:  A True American.

Bosque Redondo = model for Auschwitz

In response to my posting on Kit Carson, correspondent DMarks found the following:

Why is the Bosque Redondo Memorial called the Site of Conscience?Tourists passing along N. M. State Highway 60/84 whiz by a sign demarcating Billy the Kid's grave. Little do they realize that a recently erected sign announcing a newly declared New Mexico state monument marks the location of the greatest holocaust ever wrought on a single site upon American soil and upon American conscience: a prison camp which held thousands of Americans against their will without trial by jury, never having been accused of a crime, and in which thousands died of starvation, exposure to the elements, contaminated drinking water, venereal disease, and rotten food, and from having been worked to death--buried, nameless, faceless, without record, in mass graves.How bad was it?"Hweeldi," meaning in the Navajo tongue "the place of suffering," was a forced labor prison camp which was subsequently studied by Nazis in order to perfect their death camps for Jews. It served as a prototype for Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and other sites of mass murder of the Third Reich.Comment:  As I said, I debated someone on whether Bosque Redondo qualified as a concentration camp. Answer: Yes, it does.

The posting above reads like a newspaper article copied from somewhere. There's no source for the claim that the Nazis used Bosque Redondo as a model for Auschwitz and the other death camps.

I've heard that Hitler modeled the whole Holocaust on the genocide of American Indians. These claims seem plausible to me, but I'm not sure they're true.

For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American and America's Concentration Camps.

Hitler = greatest threat since Indians?

Here's a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "The Great Arsenal of Democracy" speech delivered December 29, 1940:We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism. We face this new crisis, this new threat to the security of our nation, with the same courage and realism. Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.Comment:  Let's look at what FDR was saying here:

1) American civilization began with Jamestown and Plymouth Rock--i.e., when white Anglo-Saxon Protestants came from England to settle the Atlantic coast. FDR didn't think the Spanish who explored and colonized the South, or the French who explored and colonized the Great Lakes area. And of course he didn't think about the millions of Native people who'd been here for 10,000 years or more. To him, American civilization = British civilization.

2) What exactly was the previous danger faced by the English colonizers? Who weren't Americans, by the way, and wouldn't be for another 169 years. The harsh climate? Maybe, although calling that a "danger" is a stretch. The colonizers could've rectified any setbacks caused by cold winters and failed crops with more people and supplies. These problems were technical in nature and spending enough time and money would've resolved them. (Which is what did happen, in fact, as more and more ships arrived.)

No, the real danger these colonies faced were the "savage" Indians. You know, the people who owned and occupied the land the foreigners wanted to appropriate. The people who welcomed the strangers and kept them alive until they realized the strangers were planning to take over their fields and streams.

The implication is pretty clear. Hitler was the greatest threat to Euro-Americans since the "merciless Indian savages." The Nazis were the barbarians of the 20th century and FDR wanted us to be equally resolute against their evil.

Alternate version of the speech

Here's what FDR could've said instead. What a Native leader might've said in his place:Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now. The Native inhabitants of this land faced an unprecedented assault by covetous Europeans bent on world domination. Now we face the same threat from their like-minded descendants. Sure of their biological and cultural superiority, Anglo-Saxons are once again on the march. Once again they're trying to establish an empire of the so-called master race.For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A Good American.

Below:  Three milestones of Western imperialism.

The German obsession with Winnetou

Fetishizing Native Americans

In Germany, Wild for Winnetou

By Michael KimmelmanFor decades, Germans have been obsessed with a Native American named Winnetou. Only strange thing is: he's a fictional character from books written by a German who only went to America in the last years of his life. What does this obsession say about German identity?What the Germans do:At powwows—there are dozens every year—thousands of Germans with an American Indian fetish drink firewater, wear turquoise jewelry and run around Baden-Württemberg or Schleswig-Holstein dressed as Comanches and Apaches. There are clubs, magazines, trading cards, school curriculums, stupendously popular German-made Wild West films and outdoor theaters, including one high in the sandstone cliffs above the tiny medieval fortress town of Rathen, in Saxony, where cowboys fight Indians on horseback. A fake Wild West village, Eldorado, recently shot up on the outskirts of Templin, the city where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, grew up.Right. So being an Indian in Germany is all about emulating the fierce warriors of the Plains. (Including the Southern Plains where the Apache occasionally roamed.) And nothing about learning the rich diversity and complexity of the hemisphere's thousands of Indian cultures.“May framed a popular image of North America, with Indians as a dying race, tragically killed off by fate and by the spread of a new empire,” he said. The doctor ushered me toward a painting that shows Indians ambushing an oncoming train, trains having signified Manifest Destiny. In May’s books Winnetou’s loyal sidekick, Old Shatterhand, was a German émigré, a schoolteacher who went West, became a crack shot, had a deadly right jab and, not coincidentally, got work as a surveyor for a railroad company.Is that what the doctor told you, Kimmelman? Actually, Winnetou is the sidekick to Old Shatterhand, not the other way around. In the first Winnetou book, at least.

An explanation for the Germans' fascination with Winnetou and other (Plains) Indians:Dr. Zeilinger wouldn’t go so far as to say that May demonized the United States, which clearly he didn’t, although Hans Ottomeyer, the director of the museum, who wandered by to listen in on the conversation at that point, said: “May taught Germans that America was a wild place. There were natives and intruders, and he taught us to be suspicious of intruders, half of whom are good, half are very bad.” Like all German men, Mr. Ottomeyer, who’s 61, lapsed unbidden into recollections of reading May’s books as a boy. Children read him less today, he added. “The West used to be on the border of the imagination,” he said. “Now it’s a place they see every day, full of conflict and catastrophe.”

You might say that May has become a Rorschach of German identity. German “natural sympathy” for American Indians is rooted in ancient times, Dr. Zeilinger explained. The Roman historian Tacitus described German tribes as uncorrupted, primitive, fierce and at one with nature, a people on the edge of a corrupt and voracious empire. May tapped into that primordial Germanness and also into what became, by the mid-19th century, a growing interest in America and the wider world.Comment:  I read Winnetou, the first book in the series. It glorifies Old Shatterhand, the German hero and protagonist, more than Winnetou. Its message is that progress is inevitable, Indians have degenerated into wretches, and only a few "noble savages" are left.

Some readers may misinterpret this as a positive message, but really it's negative. Winnetou the good Indian is the exception, not the rule. By partnering with Old Shatterhand and eventually adopting Christianity, Winnetou proves that the white man's ways are best.

In Winnetou, the main villains are a tribe of "bad" Indians. So the story is about how a good white man triumphs over bad Indians with a good Indian's help. In other words, an early version of the Lone Ranger legend.

The Hitler connection

Like other Germans, Hitler loved the Winnetou books too. It sort of make sense that he'd associate Aryan Germans with "uncorrupted, primitive, fierce" Indians like Winnetou. And the rest of the Western world with "a corrupt and voracious empire" intruding on his pure German state. In his mind, Jews were undoubtedly the worst example of how civilization made people decadent and degenerate.

You have to twist things a bit to see how Hitler interpreted the books. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou both represent good Christian Aryans. The bad cowboys and Indians both represent decadent Jews and other Europeans. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou inevitably dealt defeat and death to the bad guys.

If Americans defeated the real Indians and Old Shatterhand defeated the fictional Indians, that gave Hitler a template. As a good Christian Aryan, he'd defeat the "bad Indians" (Jews and other Europeans) threatening his sanctified Germany. Hence Karl Mays' books helped Hitler envision conquest and genocide.

For more on the subject, see The Winnetou Films and Germans Think They Own Native Culture.

Reclaiming the swastika

Graphic artist Ryan Red Corn posted this image on Facebook and wrote:POLL: if this was on a t-shirt, would you wear it?

I trust the message of this image is obvious to Newspaper Rock readers. The swastika belongs to "skins" (Indians), not skinheads (Nazis).

Poll results

Some of the many answers (edited slightly to increase readability):Yes because it challenges what people know (and want to believe) about this symbol.

This symbol was used on Navajo Rugs long before Hitler was born.

YES!!YES!!!YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... in [a] heart beat. I would rep this so hard...

I don't think I could wear it Ryan, I know that Indians had it first, but just what the Nazis turned the symbol into and all the hate that it resonated, nah, I wouldn't wear it.

I get it, but I'd still like it better if it just said SKIN. I'd sport it, I've seen Natives reclaiming it all over the place lately. Don't be scared to offend, it's an educational piece. It's woven in our baskets from hundreds of years ago.

I support reclaiming the swastika for its pre-20th century meanings, but nope, don't like getting beat up.

Traditional Indians might get it, but nobody else would. Sometimes I hate giving a dissertation on a t-shirt.

How much are they?

Naaaaaaaaaaa...wouldn't want to misidentified as a Nazi.

I'd say no. I'll probably get my ass shot down for this, but: the dominant culture has no idea the symbol was used in either Native America or Asia long before the NAZIs, and the NAZIs are in recent memory. Education is awesome, but I think I'd get a fist in my face before anyone asked me what I was wearing--exacerbated by the fact that I don't look like a Plains Indian, which I think is the only kind of Native non-Natives are aware of....

It is a Nazi symbol now...I don't think we can take it back....

No Ryan, I would not wear that. Hitler totally ruined the meaning of that symbol, regardless of who used it first.I think the nays took this poll by a 3-2 or 2-1 margin.

Swastika lore

For those who don't know it, a brief history of the swastika:Archaeological record

The symbol has an ancient history, appearing on artifacts from Indo-European cultures such as the Indo-Aryans, Persians, Hittites, Slavs, Celts and Greeks, among others. The earliest consistent use of swastika motifs in the archaeological record date to the Neolithic.

Native American traditions

The swastika shape was used by some Native Americans. It has been found in excavations of Mississippian-era sites in the Ohio valley. It was widely used by many southwestern tribes, most notably the Navajo.

As the symbol of Nazism

The use of the swastika was associated by Nazi theorists with their conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people. Following the Nordicist version of the Aryan invasion theory, the Nazis claimed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the swastika sprang, were the prototypical white invaders. It was also widely believed that the Indian caste system had originated as a means to avoid racial mixing.Rob's reply

I posted this response to Red Corn's poll:I'd say no.

If you want to tell people that the swastika is an ancient Native symbol, I think you need a more informative design. Most people won't get the message from this.An informative design would be something like Native art containing a swastika on the left, perhaps with a check mark under it. And Hitler brandishing a swastika on the right with a line drawn through him. Message: Native swastikas good, Nazi swastikas bad.

If Red Corn thinks a t-shirt is enough to reclaim the swastika, I'd have to disagree. You might be able to reclaim it with a massive PR campaign lasting decades--i.e., long enough to overcome the taint of Nazism. But would it be worth the expense and effort? Probably not.

I'd say continue using the swastika on Navajo rugs and other Native art. When used it in this manner, the art gives it context. It informs viewers that it's a Native symbol, not a Nazi symbol.

But don't wear a single swastika with an oblique message and expect people to get it. Even after you explain yourself, they may not believe you. They'll probably think you're pretending to honor the Native symbol so you can parade your Nazism in public.

For more on the subject, see Swastikas = Mascots at UND.

Below:  "Basketball team on Home 1 Steps, 1909. This photograph is part of a series of glass plate negatives used by the Chilocco Indian School print shop in publishing the Indian School Journal."

Spaniards = Nazis

In a lecture delivered to Williams College in October 1997, John Mohawk explained how the Spaniards who conquered the Americas were similar to Nazis:

How the Conquest of Indigenous Peoples Parallels the Conquest of NatureIn the late sixteenth-century the Dutch artist Theodor De Bry did a series of illustrations based on the reports of Bartholomé de Las Casas, a priest who was offended by the torture. Las Casas wrote thirty pages describing what was happening on the islands. I have to tell you it’s gut-wrenching stuff. Read his descriptions; then read the chapters in Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners and tell me there is a difference between the psychology of those Germans and those Spaniards. The same thing is going on, only the Spanish are a little more artistic. The Germans tended to torture people more at arm’s length, whereas the Spanish were up close and personal about it. And it went on and on for twenty-five years, but it’s essentially an unknown story. You won’t find it in any American history textbook.

The King of Spain was embarrassed by all the reports about the cruelty of the conquistadors. He wasn’t happy that they were getting out of hand and escaping the crown’s control over them, so in 1550 he called for a debate. Juan Gines de Sepulveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas, two priests who were also lawyers, stepped forward to make the arguments. Sepulveda took the point of view of the conquerers. He’s called the father of modern racism because of that. He concocted every excuse he could think of to explain why it was all right for the Spanish to do what they were doing to the Indians, and of course he started off with what the Indians were not—they were not Christian and they were not civilized; therefore, the Spanish were justified in treating them as they did.

Sepulveda would have used pretty much the same language and the same reasoning to explain why the Spanish were justified in doing what they did to the parrots, to the trees, to the fish, to every living organism on those islands: they were all biologically inferior beings lacking the consciousness and culture of Spaniards. They didn’t have any rights and therefore could be enslaved and subjected to whatever the Spanish felt like subjecting them to—and the Spanish didn’t need to have a bad conscience.
Comment:  For more on the subject, see Those Evil Europeans.

The wisdom of Albert Speer

White guilt

In California, genocide is never too far from homeAlbert Speer, architect of the Third Reich, perhaps said it best. “Let me remind you only of the witch-hunts of the middle ages, the horrors of the French revolution, or the genocide of the American Indians,” he wrote from prison in 1953. “In such periods there are always only a very few who do not succumb. But when it is all over, everyone, horrified, asks ‘for heaven’s sake, how could I?’”

Our ability to put atrocities out of mind knows no bounds.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American and Those Evil Europeans.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and us

An interesting discussion of who's committed genocide and who hasn't. Of course, we know which group America falls into.

The genocide loophole

Claims of the 'greater good' too often let mass murderers off the hook.In general, the Soviets and the Red Chinese elude the genocide charge--and hence the status of ultimate villains--despite having murdered scores of millions of people in the 20th century, in large part because their victims stood in the way of progress. Kulaks, or independent farmers, opposed Stalin's plan for collectivization, and so they were murdered for that "greater good." Yet Mao Tse-tung and Stalin aren't widely regarded as being as evil as Adolf Hitler because they were "modernizers." Just look how the Russians have no problem copping to the charge of mass murder but recoil at the suggestion that it was racially motivated.

It's a wrongheaded distinction. Murder is murder, whether the motive stems from bigotry or the pursuit of allegedly enlightened social planning. And that's usually a false distinction anyway. Racial genocide is often rationalized as a form of progress by those responsible. Under the Holodomor, Ukrainian culture was systematically erased by the Russian Soviets, who saw it as inferior or expendable. No doubt the Sudanese janjaweed in Darfur and the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Tibet believe that they are "modernizers" too.Comment:  Many Americans believe we've never committed genocide either. Unfortunately for them, our actions fit the definition of "genocide."

The Indians were arguably just the first of many victims. We paid for the enslavement and extermination of African tribes. We vaporized the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki unnecessarily. We bombed more than half a million Iraqi civilians to death after the first Gulf War.

And of course we stood by while others committed genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Sudan. Heck, we stood by while Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed millions. About the only time we've intervened to stop mass murder was in the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s.

For more on the subject, see Adolf Hitler:  A True American.