Principle

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None are against Hate Speech in principle. After all, what is the purpose of Holocaust Education, except to teach students to hate Germany, the Germans, and all things German? Of course, they forbid anti-Jewish and anti-Negro hate speech, and anti-Muslim and anti-Asian hate speech is more of a grey area.

What really gets me is this: there were non-German perpetrators of the Holocaust as well. I suspect that Poles, among other Slavic peoples, were heavily into helping the Germans kill off Jewish people. So, in a sense, I am taking Goldhagen's argument a few steps further (if I may do so). And of course, when brooked by the topic, as to why Americans hate Germans so very much, most Americans would rationalize that the reason they hate Germans is because Germans hate (or have hated) Jews.

Look, the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans hated Jews, as did the Medieval Spaniards of the Inquisition era. I suppose Americans also hate all of those people as well.

I don’t know anybody who hates Germans in particular.

What are you doing for Christmas?

Who hates Germans? People hate the ideology of Nazism but Germany does not equal Nazism. America probably has more trouble with Nazism/Neo-Nazism these days than Germany does.

Weird.

Hopefully, learning about the Holocaust, including the reasons behind it, will teach us how to avoid a similar scenario in the future or just to avoid prejudice and discrimination to begin with.

Education is beneficial. We can learn a lot from our fellow humans’ mistakes.

Goes to prove the old maxim: “Those who refuse to study history are doomed to repeat it!”

Come off it. Most Americans hate Germans. They certainly do not hate either the Koreans or the Vietnamese. After all, Americans are racked with guilt about the Korean and Vietnamese wars in a way they never are about US Military involvement in The Second World War. Americans, of course, see no reason to feel guilt about anything the US Military did, during The Second World War, including the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

I’m curious. Where do you obtain these “facts” from? How many people were surveyed to have a solid enough sample base to know that MOST Americans hate something? Have studies been done to find out whether Americans hate nationalities other than Germans? You appear to have solid (?) evidence that Most Americans do not hate Koreans and Vietnamese. Is it all Koreans that aren’t hated, or do the studies you utilize separate North Koreans from South Koreans?

Americans cant "hate Germans" because most White Americans ARE German.

And as everyone else on this thread has pointed out: Americans don't hate Germans, and the point of holocaust education is to prevent future holocausts. Not to "make you hate Germans".

I find that very, very hard to believe. One would assume most White Americans would be of English ancestry, or some form of British ancestry. After all, why is New England termed New England?

The original 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard were set up by colonists from the British Isles. And the 13 colonies were ruled by Britain. That's why English is the language spoken in the US. But the largest immigrant group to populate the US is the Germans, not the English. Germans were already a big immigrant group in Pennsylvania in colonial times, and once we became independent more Germans than English emigrated to America in the next two centuries.

I used to assume that too. That the English "must be the biggest European group in America" even though I knew that huge waves of Irish, and Italians, swept into the country since independence. But no. Though the English founded the country and set up the cultural template of the nation they are not the biggest group, even among White Europeans anymore.

According to Wiki the four biggest White groups are:Germans (13.9 percent), Irish (10), English (only 7.4), Italian (5.2), and Polish (3).

Last edited by naturalplastic on 26 Dec 2019, 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

My father’s side is of German and Dutch Catholic descent.

My mother’s side is of Russian Jewish descent.

Most people in the US are not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Most people here are not of British descent.

That is news to me! Still, is not America run my the White Anglo Saxon Protestants, as you call them?

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is a generic term for caucasians who may or may not be not Catholic or may or may not be Jewish. I doesn’t matter your nationality of origin, as most caucasians in the USA are of European descent.

Not exactly true. Your nationality of ancestry Does figure.

WASP Americans are those Americans who came from the Germanic speaking language countries of northwestern Europe (around the North Sea) that are also largely Protestant Countries: England, Germany, Netherlands, Scandanavia.

Italian Americans are not considered to be WASPS because they are from Romance language country that is mainly Catholic, and Polish Americans are not WASPS because they from the Slavic speaking eastern part of Europe, and are mostly Catholic, and the Irish are not WASPS because they are Celtic (and not Anglosaxon) and are also Catholic. Jews of any extraction are not WASP. And so on.

Trust me: WASPS don’t think of Scandinavians as being one of their own...

People like the Italians and Irish are considered to be “ethnic” and still face scorn by those who consider themselves WASPS.

By and large, most people of European descent who don’t look “ethnic” are considered in the mainstream—but are definitely not considered WASPS.

Recent immigrants from many places—including eastern and Southern Europe, but not so much Northern Europe, face scorn.

I’m about 35% German. There are lots of people with German ancestry in my area. Lots of restaurants serve sauerkraut, and I make it at home.

I’ve never met anyone who said that they hated Germans. I knew one person who admitted to having some prejudice against them due to her upbringing but she said that it was HER problem. Out of the thousands of people I’ve met in my life, she was the only person who expressed anti-German sentiment in my presence.

Most people are aware that Germans and Nazis are not the same thing.

I suspect there’d be more of a problem if Nazis were primarily from a different race instead of being predominantly European, like us. (I’m not saying that’s right, but I’m just envisioning the obvious problems that would stem from such a scenario - people with racial prejudice love having supposed reasons to justify their prejudice).

Reality: To teach students that (1) genocide happens, (2) genocide solves nothing, (3) war is hell, (4) dictators eventually lose, (5) the terrifying potential of dehumanization, (6) vigilance against the poison of anti-Semitism must remain, and finally, that (7) evil does not exist as anything other than a mere concept.

That last one is an odd, perhaps ludicrously offensive statement to some.  But to dismiss the atrocities of the Shoah as mere "evil" is to abdicate responsibility, to comfort ourselves by pretending somehow it was not human beings committing such sickening acts, but monsters who are nothing like us.  After a rational examination, three key points emerge:

(a) Germany was one of the most advanced countries on Earth at the time.

(b) Only about 1 per cent of humans are genuine psychopaths

(c) Millions of people -- not just Nazis and Germans -- helped the organised slaughter of Jews, Roma, disabled people, socialists, Slavs, et cetera.

Germany is not hated, neither are Germans.  Sure, people hate people, and some Germans may be on either side of that fact, but not everybody hates German or the German people as a whole, and certainly not in the same way that people hate Israel, Jews, and Jewish people.

Study history to learn, kid; not to reinforce your own prejudices.