Ken Burns Tackles American inaction during Holocaust

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naturalplastic
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16 Sep 2022, 11:18 am

DW_a_mom wrote:
QFT wrote:

By the way, America is not the richest country in the world either. Euro is more expensive than a dollar. Yet America surely likes to draw attention to itself as such.


But I believe the US was, around the time of WWII, the richest country in the world and for some 30-40 years after. Or, at least, that is how it felt to people. We were proud of it back in the 1970s, I remember that.


But...the US was in the midst of a little thing called "the Great Depression". A third of the population was unemployed. So that was one reason for not wanting to take in refugees...competition for jobs.



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16 Sep 2022, 12:16 pm

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
When you look back on history is there really any country out there that's not guilty of xenophobia, genocide, or slavery? Every time I see people complain about how bigoted and evil the US supposedly is I think they're calling the kettle black.


I wouldn't assume they're picking on the US unfairly, merely telling important stories. Lots of countries have that sort of dirty laundry and it all should be exposed.


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16 Sep 2022, 12:20 pm

funeralxempire wrote:

I wouldn't assume they're picking on the US unfairly, merely telling important stories. Lots of countries have that sort of dirty laundry and it all should be exposed.


Eh, I'd say that the West generally and the US specifically get an inordinate amount of scrutiny on this stuff, you'd really think we never did anything good to read some academics on the subject.


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funeralxempire
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16 Sep 2022, 12:41 pm

Dox47 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:

I wouldn't assume they're picking on the US unfairly, merely telling important stories. Lots of countries have that sort of dirty laundry and it all should be exposed.


Eh, I'd say that the West generally and the US specifically get an inordinate amount of scrutiny on this stuff, you'd really think we never did anything good to read some academics on the subject.


The US does get more scrutiny, but it also attempts to frame it's foreign engagements as being motivated by higher causes than just simply power projection among factors.

The other powers that tend to engage in similar power projection do so less often and their intentions are more obvious (no one thinks Russia is spreading democracy, no one questions that the UK or France are just fighting for the last scraps of their empires, etc).

By trying to present foreign engagements as being motivated by a desire to spread liberal ideals (democracy, market economics, etc) the US is far more open to liberal criticisms compared to other powers.

It might not be fair, but they kinda did it to themselves. If it's any consolation several other Western bloc states would end up in the same situation if they were to position themselves the same way.

Those states also dodge scrutiny when they act to support the US in those sorts of actions, which is also unfair but still somewhat understandable.


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23 Sep 2022, 9:43 pm

I recommend that this documentary be required for every classroom where it is age appropriate.

Doubt it will happen because it is everything the country is not.

It shows how America was not so great. How embedded antisemitism was in the public and in the government, how Indian Reservations and Jim Crow laws were the inspirations for the concentration camps, and Nuremberg laws.

While there is no whitewashing of racism this documentary is no America is irredeemably racist screed. It showed there were large demonstrations in multiple cities against the Nazi treatment of Jews early on. It showed how the US with the help of others stopped the deportation of 100,000 Jews to the concentration camps in Hungary via bombing and printing documents.

It is still available via blu ray, DVD,DVR, and streaming


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24 Sep 2022, 5:13 pm

Dox47 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:

I wouldn't assume they're picking on the US unfairly, merely telling important stories. Lots of countries have that sort of dirty laundry and it all should be exposed.


Eh, I'd say that the West generally and the US specifically get an inordinate amount of scrutiny on this stuff, you'd really think we never did anything good to read some academics on the subject.


Only because our civilization is built of the precepts of equality, fairness, and liberty. Or in other words, if we get called on bad behavior it's because we should know better.


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