Don't Be A Sucker (1947) (short film warning about fasclsm and the tricks it uses to gain power)

This video has some nice sentiments but it is also rife with inaccuracies and misleads. Of course, dividing and conquering is a core reason for marginalization, but who drives it? With whom did Nazis or the KKK find purchase? Why were they not suppressed? The deeper social forces, those with power, did not really oppose them, and in fact, they created or leveraged them as needed for their own purposes. Namely in response to the conditions they had already created - and the "they" were the liberal bourgeoisie and capitalism itself.

The Nazis built their ranks largely from the petty bourgeoisie and their children. The people that were beating up communists and lgbtq people were the sons of shop owners during a time of economic downturn. That downturn was itself created by the forces of imperialism and therefore capitalism: Germany had fought in an imperialist war (WWI) to stake a claim in the imperial core and lost. Its new position was that of an imperialized country in capitalist mode of production, stuck with infinite foreign debt, decreasing wages, and spiraling unemployment. In this context, there were backlashes and attempts to organize. The social democrats gained some power but repeatedly entrenched themselves in the liberal system, reinforcing it and therefore continuing its failures and oppressions. The communists broke with this and took more direct action, taking towns and cities through orgsnizational prowess. The socdems threw the police at them over things like this as well as the proto-fascist jackboots that would become the Nazi Party base, those sons of shop owners. In addition, there were monarchists, liberals, conservative nationalists, and fascists.

It is in this context that the fascists rose. Not simply by "dividing", but by reacting to the social forces that threatened a vulnerable bourgeoisie: the communists above all. They absolutely scapegoated minorities, yes, but the social function of the fascists and how they grew was actually their anticommunism. This is why they were funded and why they were tolerated, just like how the cops protect Proud Boys and fight BLM protesters. They serve to protect a subset of private property and are funded to do so. The Nazis did things not dissimilar to the cryptofascists taking their guns to "protect businesses" against BLM-adjascent property damage. But they operated over years of unrest from liberal (capitalist) policies and where it was largely communists that threatened capital.

The Nazis' rise shortly before Hitler became chancellor corresponded to two major kinds of events: first, economic downturn and therefore displeasure at the consequences if the capitalist status quo (with which most parties had associated themselves) and repeated decisions to build rightward coalitions against communists and, ultimately, simply give the position of chancellor to Hitler in order to expediently resolve a weak coalition.

So, when watching this video, literally a propaganda film from the US government's war department(s), ask whether there is any discussion of the material forces at hand, of political struggle, of anticommunism, of capitalism, of the reasons for economic decay, of who funded and worked with Nazis, and why. They tell a story of the "Aryan German" being taken in by the Nazis because his identity matched their propaganda. But there were many who supported or tolerated Nazis that did not match their propaganda and were even targets of it! They tended to be petty bourgeois or the children of them. The film says normal Germans asked themselves how this happened as if it were a surprise. This is a lie: these were open political developments spanning decades at the forefront of everyone's minds and were part of active and highly local political struggle. The film peddles the many falsehoods of American mythmaking about freedom and empty ripe land, lies to hide the reality of a country built on settler colonial genocide and racialized chattel slavery. There were people on that "empty" land already, they were killed or driven off by the same governmental organizations that commissioned this film. The film says the land is free and skin color doesn't matter even while at the same time Jim Crow waa in effect. The film says Nazis outlawed speech and that in America you can say your politics without such retribution and then America launched hard into the Cold War and an anticommunist, anti-black purge. The film says that what made Nazis wrong was race hate and militarism and then just a few yeara after thia film bombed out every population center in the north of Korea directly killing 20% of the population while constantly publishing racist claims against Koreans.

So yes, absolutely oppose Nazis and race hate. But don't trust a film like this for a valuable history lesson. You will be unable to recognize the patterns and harma that are currently right in front od you.

Isn't this political?

Great video though. My favorite type of propaganda film by far. Down with fascism and racism!

Hi OP, it seems like this is a political video, could you post these videos to !politicalvideos@lemmy.world next time?