Holocaust Scholar Suspended After Drawing Parallels Between Hitler And Trump's Rise To Power

If the goose stepping boot fits.

Story out of Mountain View, California:

A Mountain View High School history teacher is on paid leave after comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, in an effort to show students that the 2016 election is a reflection of the past.

Frank Navarro, a Holocaust scholar who has taught at Mountain View High School for 40 years, said the school’s principal and district superintendent asked him to leave Thursday, after a parent complained about the parallels he was drawing in his world studies class.

“This parent said that I had said Donald Trump was Hitler, but I would never say that,” Navarro told The Chronicle on Saturday. “That’s sloppy historical thinking.”

He did, however, point out the connections between Trump’s presidential campaign and Hitler’s rise to power: Both had promised to eject foreigners and make their countries “great again,” Navarro said.

But Principal Dave Grissom and Superintendent Jeff Harding feared that the lessons may have been inappropriate in the tempestuous aftermath of the election.

Two days later, a Mountain View High School alumnus started a Change.org petition, demanding that Grissom revoke Navarro’s leave and publicly apologize “for attempting to intimidate a respected educator.” Cont.

Story from - San Francisco Chronicle

Note - As of this post the Change.org petition is up to 6,107 signatures.

New York Times Hilariously Roasts Trump In It's Review Of A Book About Hitler

The New York Times hints at parallels between Trump and Hitler in it's review of "Hitler, Ascent."

Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order.

Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”

Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.” Cont.

Story from - New York Times

Brexit Forces Descendants Of Jewish Refugees To Reclaim German Citizenship

Descendants of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi persecution to settle in Britain before and during the Second World War now seek to reclaim German citizenship so they can remain a part of the post-war entity founded in a bid to ensure war would never again raise its head on the European continent.

It's one of the consequences of Britain's decision to end its membership in the European Union after a partnership of some 43 years.

"I stayed up all night watching the Brexit vote," says Thomas Harding, a London-born writer and historian. "Around 7 a.m., they announced [the referendum result] and I was really distressed. It felt like a real loss."

And so he went online to look into an old law that allows anyone stripped of their German citizenship by the Nazis "on political, racial or religious grounds" between the end of January 1933 and May 8, 1945, to reclaim it, including their descendants.

Harding's ancestors fled the Nazis in the 1930s. Cont.

Story from - CBC News

White Supremacist Linked To 1995 Murder Arrested On Weapon Charges

Oh sure, target the guy with the Hitler mustache that goose-steps through neighbourhoods. That's profiling, man. Story out of Lacey, New Jersey:

A suspected white supremacist linked to a 1995 murder was arrested on weapons charges after police stumbled across him and another man – and a cache of guns and ammunition – during a search of the Pinelands.

Officers from Lacey and Waretown police departments, State Police, Ocean County Sheriff's Office, and state fish and wildlife officers traversed 60 miles of woods in Lacey and Ocean Sunday, looking for “criminal activity, trespassing and off-road vehicle violations,” Lacey police Chief David Paprota wrote in a prepared statement. Around 1 p.m. officers found 42-year-old Bruce J. Post III in the woods off Bryant Road.

Post “was wearing combat gear and gave indications of possible white-supremacist involvement,” said Paprota. “The officers then discovered an AK-47, a Walther P38 9 mm handgun, eight 30-round high-capacity magazines and one 100-round drum magazine, and various forms of ammunition at the scene within the woods.”

Post is a felon who was sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and has twice been convicted of hindering prosecution, according to court records. Lacey police charged Post with illegal possession of a weapon by a felon, illegal possession of a handgun, illegal possession of an assault weapon and two counts of illegal possession of prohibited magazines. He was held on a $400,000 bond.

Post is tied to the 1995 murder of Andrew Whited. His younger brother Joseph is still in prison for the crime. The murder was the subject of an Investigation Discovery documentary titled "Evil Kin: Brothers in Arms" which also reported that the elder Post liked to dress in a Nazi uniform and goose-step around his childhood neighborhood. Cont. (Video)

Story from - Asbury Park Press
Image from - APP/(Courtesy Ocean County Jail)

Far-Right Rock Concerts Are On The Rise In Germany

Guess who's back? I did Nazi this coming. Oh, wait it's Germany, yes I did.

Far-right rock concerts are making a return in Germany, with one in the state of Thuringia on Saturday attracting around 3,500 people, according to German media.

“Rock for Identity,” brought crowds of young right-wingers to the town of Hildburghausen to watch bands with names like “ Übermensch” and “Blitzkrieg,” Die Welt reported.

According to a report seen by the paper, the popularity of such events is growing, with 15 concerts, attracting over 1,500 visitors, taking place in the first three months of this year, more than took place in the same period for the past three years. Cont.

Story from - Newsweek
Image from - Wel-chleh Chlu
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Salon Forced To Remove Ad Against Far Right Extremism Featuring Hitler

A German salon has removed adverts featuring Adolf Hitler after prosecutors warned that it broke the law, despite the owner intending it to be an anti-extremism initiative.

The poster advertised hair removal at a salon in Cham, in the southern region of Bavaria, using Hitler's face alongside the slogan "Waxing against the Right", the BR public broadcaster reports. Little cards inside the salon used the same image with a strip across Hitler's top lip that could be ripped off, revealing the message: "1 x waxing = one-euro donation against the Right".

Owner Ursula Gresser tells BR: "The main thought was simply to nail my colours to the mast, at a time when refugee homes are being set on fire. If they [the far-right] can do that, why can't I hang a picture of Hitler on my door?" She adds that the act of "ripping off Hitler's moustache" struck her as a "perfect fit" for hair stylists. Cont.

Story from - BBC News
Image from - BBC News

ISIL And Nazi Sympathizer Joins Oregon Militants To Help With Technology

While militant leader Ammon Bundy has repeatedly denied government computers were being used by militants, OPB has again confirmed that Department of Interior computers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are being accessed, and in this instance, being used to make a website for the occupation.

One of the militants occupying the refuge posted video of himself using the computer.

Occupier David Fry said he drove from Ohio – through a blinding winter storm – to help Bundy and his supporters.

“It was (a) miracle, that I got here,” Fry said Tuesday. “I’ve had quarrels with the government myself, and I feel there has to be some point where people have to put their foot down against the problems.”

Fry’s Google+ account shows the Ohio man regularly posts anti-Semitic, homophobic, and pro-Nazi propaganda on social media.

Fry also posts in support of ISIL. Cont. (Video)

Story from - OPB News
Image from - Wikimedia Commons
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Father of Koch Brothers Allegedly Helped Build Hitler-Approved Nazi Oil Refinery

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families.

The book, “Dark Money,” by Jane Mayer, traces the rise of the modern conservative movement through the activism and money of a handful of rich donors: among them Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune, and Harry and Lynde Bradley, brothers who became wealthy in part from military contracts but poured millions into anti-government philanthropy.

But the book is largely focused on the Koch family, stretching back to its involvement in the far-right John Birch Society and the political and business activities of the father, Fred C. Koch, who found some of his earliest business success overseas in the years leading up to World War II. One venture was a partnership with the American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis, who, according to Ms. Mayer, hired Mr. Koch to help build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine. Cont.

Story from - New York Times

Image from - Pixabay

Update - Classified document says allied forces bombed the refinery during World War II.

Mein Kampf Immediately Sells Out In Germany

Hitler’s inflammatory book, Mein Kampf, is back in German stores for the first time in 70 years, and sales across the country skyrocketed within a week - with 15,000 advance orders placed for an initial print run of just 4,000 copies.

The new, heavily annotated German edition of the book sold out in just a week, despite a price tag of €59 (US$64) for a print copy. Copies of the new edition have also been put on re-sale on the German Amazon website for €385, over six times the publisher's price.

With demand for copies far exceeding supply, more than 15,000 advance orders have been made – nearly four times the initial print run of 4,000 copies. The publisher, the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History, has also received requests to translate the edition into Italian, French and English. Cont.

Story from - RT
Image from - Pixabay    

Turkey's President Thinks Hitler's Germany Would Make A Great Presidential System

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is pushing for constitutional changes that would turn Turkey's political system into a presidential system expanding the powers of his office, has cited Hitler's Germany as an example.

Asked whether the system he wants could exist within a "unitary state", Erdogan told reporters late Thursday that Hitler's Germany was one example in history, among others, where the presidential system had functioned.

Erdogan said: "When you look at Hitler's Germany, you'll see it there." Cont.

Story from CTV News
Image from - Wikimedia Commons
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