The first time I watched “The Blues Brothers” a lot of it flew over my head. I was just a kid who vaguely knew the skit from Comedy Central’s reruns of classic Saturday Night Live, so I didn’t fully appreciate all of the cameos or get a lot of the jokes. But there were three things I understood without a doubt.
Giving the address to Wrigley Field to the cops will always be hilarious
Ordering four fried chickens and a Coke is a tremendous power move
Nazis are horrible and will always be the bad guys
I’m usually the first person to argue that morality is a spectrum, but when it comes to Nazis it’s pretty goddamn binary. The Nazis were pure evil. Period.
For a good while this was the consensus in this country. Sure, there were still idiotic racists and fascists all over the place, but they were less overt. They knew they couldn’t be open with their beliefs because people would lambast them over it. Right wing policies and beliefs certainly reflected a plainly horrific ideology while I was growing up, but a sitting congressman would never proudly display photos of their visit to Hitler’s vacation home.
Call me naive, but I honestly never thought I’d live in an America that had a Nazi homeschool network. But here we are. Vice uncovered a homeschooling network that unabashedly celebrated Adolf Hitler in their lesson plans this week. A couple in Ohio had built up a following of thousands in their publicly accessible “Dissident Homeschool” Telegram group.
There are a lot of shocking elements to the story and I highly recommend you give it a read, but it was their post covering Martin Luther King Jr. that sent a shiver down my spine, especially given some of my recent writing about how Robert E. Lee Day is still a holiday in two states.
From Vice:
The contents of the MLK lesson plan would be shocking for almost anyone, but for members of the 2,400-member “Dissident Homeschool” Telegram channel, this was a regular Monday at school.
“It is up to us to ensure our children know him for the deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro he actually was,” the administrator of the network’s Telegram channel wrote, alongside a downloadable lesson plan for elementary school children. ”He is the face of a movement which ethnically cleansed whites out of urban areas and precipitated the anti-white regime that we are now fighting to free ourselves from.”
I could spend a week picking apart the hypocrisy in that one excerpt from the channel alone, but we all know this is disingenuous horseshit being spoon fed to children, polluting their minds before they’re even fully-formed, so what’s the point? It’s beyond sickening.
Nazi school is certainly outside of the ordinary, even for today’s right wing, but the embrace of fascist ideology is rampant. Whether it’s Ron DeSantis throwing all of his political weight behind making it easier to execute people, Brian Kemp sending in the National Guard to quell protests stemming from yet another police murder or right wing troll Matt Walsh advocating for executing drug dealers and beating petty criminals bloody, there is a running theme that fascistic authoritarianism is the only solution to the ills of society. As long as they’re directing the thugs doling out the violence, they see no issues whatsoever.
In one breath they’ll praise the glory of the Founding Fathers, in the next they’ll trample over everything the Founding Fathers stood for. I know fascism wasn’t around until the 20th century, but if you think life under the British Crown in the 1770s wasn’t filled with the same type of authoritarianism delivered from the barrel of a musket you’re delusional. Apart from being a bunch of white dudes who hated paying taxes, the founders abhorred being told what to do by the government. The same people who fetishize the founders and scream bloody hell any time their flaws are mentioned are the ones advocating for brutalizing protestors with no remorse.
It all comes down to a total lack of historical literacy. If the Boston Massacre happened today, Tucker Carlson would be defending the redcoats until his face was crimson. If the Boston Tea Party happened when Trump was in office he’d be calling for the federal government to “step in and do what has to be done, including using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.” If Jefferson was strongly advocating for a separation of church and state today, well, we know exactly how the current Supreme Court would rule on that one.
The cynical thought here is that as long as they yell just enough about what the Founders wanted or what America was founded on—no matter the accuracy of the statement—that people will believe them. And as much as it pains me to admit it, they’re 100% correct. That’s why idiotic statements like the one don’t cause nearly the fuss they should:
It’s when he says, “History lesson” that my blood started to boil. I wonder why FDR wanted the American people to throw a little support Stalin’s way. Oh, could it be because we were AT WAR WITH THE FUCKING NAZIS?! I guess that little detail got left out of the “history lesson” and all we’re supposed to pay attention to was a Democrat throwing love towards a communist. The gentleman speaking here is Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican from Pennsylvania. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that he hosted a radio show with Carl Higbie, a man who was deemed too racist for the Trump administration. Seriously. Higbie was a major proponent of setting up a Muslim registry, arguing that the Supreme Court decision that allowed the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II, Korematsu v. United States, made such a registry legal. Eventually the idea of a Muslim registry became too odious even for Trump, and Higbie would shuffle away from the administration to appear on Fox News and Newsmax with regularity and run a pro-Trump PAC. Reschenthaler claimed he never agreed with his pal’s more extreme ideas once they became public, because of course he did. But you don’t get in bed with a dude like Higbie without knowing where he’s coming from, he’s never remotely hidden his vile world view.
It’s funny, right? How could someone know enough history to see how a Supreme Court case could justify setting up a Muslim registry, but not have any idea why FDR might court the super power attacking Hitler’s flank? Because they know, they’re just betting that you don’t.
Jake and Elwood knew how to handle Nazis. We should learn a little something from The Blues Brothers.
Charlie’s Reading Corner
This was an original part of Moronitude that has fallen by the wayside, but since I’m railing about historical literacy it seems like a perfect time to revive it. Here are five essential books to read to further your knowledge of this nation’s history. This is a completely biased list, meaning it’s mine, and these are the books I personally consider to be essential. Feel free to argue with me if you disagree with any inclusions, or more likely, the omissions.
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I don’t know a single person who read this book and didn’t have their entire brain pan rearranged. It’s the single most influential (non-fiction) book on establishing my world view. (Vonnegut’s “Sirens of Titan” earns that title on the fiction side)
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. A comprehensive look at every single way the government fought to keep America segregated up until today. Absolutely mind blowing for anybody who naively believes that racism was merely a problem in the South.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. This is the perfect companion to The Color of Law, as it traces the (often) racial caste system that persists to this day in the United States.
Grant by Ron Chernow. OK, this is very much influenced by my own interests, but Grant is an absolutely fascinating character. Overrated as a general, underrated as a president, and a remarkably flawed human being who ended up doing extraordinary things.
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel. You can really throw in any book by Terkel—no one had a better grasp of the ordinary person’s struggle in America—but I am especially fond of this one. Terkel puts a human face on the nation’s greatest economic crisis.
That’s it for this edition of Moronitude. Next time we’re going to do our best to keep things light, unless the world continues being a cesspool of negativity. It’s out of my hands, really? If you like the newsletter, you know what to do.