Meet the South’s biggest idiot: “I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning

[DonViejo]

Meet the South’s biggest idiot: “I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning of the Nazi Germany takeover”

A pro-Confederate flag rally in Alabama is the worst of the worst

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Confederate flags returned to the cradle of the Confederacy on Saturday as hundreds of flag supporters arrived at Alabama’s Capitol to protest the removal of four rebel flags from a Confederate monument next to the building where the Confederacy was formed.

Standing at the bottom of the Capitol’s steps, where 50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. led a march for civil rights, Tim Steadman said it wasn’t right to remove the flags.

“Right now, this past week with everything that is going on, I feel very much like the Jews must have felt in the very beginning of the Nazi Germany takeover,” he said. “I mean I do feel that way, like there is a concerted effort to wipe people like me out, to wipe out my heritage and to erase the truths of history.”

Days earlier, Gov. Robert Bentley had ordered the flags taken down from the 1898 monument amid national controversy about whether Confederate symbols should be displayed on state grounds.

Standing next to Steadman was Ronnie Simmons, who wore a t-shirt with the face of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis, who was elected as the first and only Confederate president inside the historic Alabama Senate chamber inside the Capitol in 1861, once lived a block away in the First White House of the Confederacy while Montgomery was briefly the capital.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/06/29/meet_the_souths_biggest_idiot_i_feel_very_much_like_the_jews_must_have_felt_in_the_very_beginning_of_the_nazi_germany_takeover/

[Fred Sanders]

1. Hundreds of racists showed up? Hundreds? Hope the FBI got photos. A dying small minority.

Look at how terrified Americans are of the ISIS flag; these asshats would shit their pants if one showed up in their "protest". Then maybe they would get it??

[randys1]

2. wow, depth of stupid, wow

[HassleCat]

3. Truths of history?

OK, Mr. Steadman, let's talk about some truths. Read the statements of secession from the various states that joined the confederacy, then tell me about how it had nothing to do with slavery.

[peacebird]

5. Exactly.

[n2doc]

7. The Truth is, Your side lost, Mr Steadman

The Truth Hurts, doesn't it. Your side lost completely and convincingly, at huge cost. Your "heritage" is that of losers.

[peacebird]

4. No one is erasing their history. People may still wear and fly that flag at will, but official govt

Sites will no longer fly it.

And it is finally being publically outed as a racist rag, irregardless of their "heritage not hate" excuses. Wear the comfederate flag and people will know you to be a racist cracker, unless you are doing a civil war re-enactment.

[truebluegreen]

6. I'm not so sure about your exception:

why on earth are civil war re-enactments popular at all? I just don't get it.

[HassleCat]

8. Advice on analogies and comparisons

Some people like to compare their plight to that of the Jews who faced the Nazis. In this particular case, there is a similarity, but let's look at just exactly how similar the two situations are. European Jews faced a big, well equipped powerful army that had orders to round them up and kill them. Unless the Swedes invaded Alabama while I wasn't looking, no similar situation exists in the southern US, in spite of rumors of FEMA camps and the federal army invading Texas. About the only similarity concerns the display of symbols. The Nazis demanded that Jews display the Star of David, while the southern states are demanding the rebels refrain from displaying their "stainless banner" in a few places. So the only similarity involves symbols, but, in the tiny, dysfunctional brains of the rebels, an insignificant resemblance is enough to claim systematic extermination. If I had been there when Steadman compared himself to the Jews in Nazi Europe, I'm afraid I would have burst into hysterical laughter. I wager Holocaust survivors and their families are not amused by this.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

17. Speaking as the son of a Holocaust survivor

I am not amused.

Moreover, I have known men who had fought with distinction for Germany in WWII. I look upon flying the Confederate flag to honor Confederate soldiers on exactly the same level as flying the Hakenkruetz flag to honor German soldiers.

Besides, what the Confederate flag symbolizes is those who would commit treason to maintain slavery. This is honorable?

[underpants]

9. Damn! Where are the Jade Helm 15 drones when we need them?

I am definitely bringing this up at the next meeting.

[Nitram]

10. F-ing whiners.

They have no clue what actually happened to the Jews in Germany.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

12. They don't have a clue to the difference between

Socialism, Marxism, Communism, fascism, or dumbfuckism!

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

11. It's almost like there isn't much to be said anymore.

How do you, or why even bother with debating these morons (with a capital H).

[stevenleser]

13. Asshole should be forced to live like a concentration camp inmate for a few hours just to see

how fucking ridiculous his comparison is. And even then it wouldn't be as bad. A camp inmate knew that any moment they could be killed.

[TeamPooka]

14. Gee, maybe we can pass a law forcing them to wear their Confederate flags on their armbands and coat

[whatthehey]

15. Well to give him just the tiniest bit of credit

Loath though I am to do so, but he did say "at the very beginning". After all they didn't go straight from "so you're Jewish? That's cool." to the death camps in a day.

What I think he may be fearing, stupidly and falsely, is the dehumanization and smear campaigns that whipped up antipathy towards Jews and made the camps possible. After all, reasonable people can be dismissive and antagonistic toward knuckle-dragging troglodytic racist homophobes in ways that make them out to be less than fully evolved humans (guilty...).

Where the lunacy comes from is in thinking that being dismissive and antagonistic towards them is automatically on the path to a final solution. Speaking only for myself of course, I feel no need to go beyond scorn and ridicule.

[Enthusiast]

16. Truly the South’s biggest idiot.