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During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#61

Post by nemild »

vixen99 wrote: post #38
JackFr wrote: post #19

> By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo-Americans. These scientists were 'pseudo' only in retrospect. It literally took a world war to knock eugenicists out of the mainstream. As we pat ourselves on the back today for being so rational and enlightened, we would do well to remember episodes like that and restore some sense of h…

Just to be clear, this was not a small group of pseudo intellectuals. Eugenics was applauded almost universally by Progessives and Conservatives among others. Included we can count J. Maynard Keynes, Irving Fischer ('prevention of breeding of the worst'), Gunnar Myrdal (economics Nobel Prize) Bernard Shaw, Harold Laski, Sidney Webb and Julian Huxley, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and dozens of other famous n…

And even later it was someone like William Shockley, inventor of the transistor and Nobel prize winner.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#62

Post by georgecmu »

JackFr wrote: post #19

> By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo-Americans. These scientists were 'pseudo' only in retrospect. It literally took a world war to knock eugenicists out of the mainstream. As we pat ourselves on the back today for being so rational and enlightened, we would do well to remember episodes like that and restore some sense of h…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299061/

American and German eugenicists were in close contact with each other, especially after World War I: they were working together in international organizations, following and even reporting on developments in eugenics in each other's countries. The Germans did, in fact, borrow much of their 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Defective Offspring (the so-called 'sterilization law') from the model sterilization law drawn up for the various states by Harry H. Laughlin, Superintendent of the ERO, and a number of American eugenicists were impressed with the Nazi eugenical laws after 1933.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#63

Post by dsfyu404ed »

logfromblammo wrote: post #45
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #21

My great-uncle was one of them. A second-generation immigrant, his father forbade any utterance of Italian in his household. But my great-uncle - born American - nontheless dealt with discrimination, and so he went a step further and changed his Italian name to Bill Morgan. Bill loved his country so much that when he failed the physical for the OSS - already an army captain - by being legally blind in one eye, he lie…

This is heavily stereotypical, but you can judge the loyalty of an Italian-American with just two questions: Where does your mother live? What's your favorite [sports] team? If mom lives in the US, and the team plays baseball, NFL or NCAA football, or NBA or NCAA basketball, you could probably hand over the nuclear launch codes. If mom lives in Naples, and the team plays Euro-soccer, you'd better keep an eye on that…

I've heard this one before. One would be wise to remember that stereotypes typically have a small foundation of truth if you dig deep enough.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#64

Post by paulddraper »

URSpider94 wrote: post #48
paulddraper wrote: post #33

Nice thoughts, but none of the groups you mentioned in your analogy have the worldwide penchant for terrorism that Muslim groups do. Berlin, Brussels, New York, Israel, Orlando, etc. Italians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, and Japanese didn't immigrate to other countries and slaughter its citizens. I understand the tiny minority is the problem; just don't think your analogy to these other groups is an apt one.

I call complete BS. "The 1909 murder of Elsie Sigel in New York, of which a Chinese person was suspected, was blamed on the Chinese in general and led to physical violence. "The murder of Elsie Sigel immediately grabbed the front pages of newspapers, which portrayed Chinese men as dangerous to "innocent" and "virtuous" young white women. This murder led to a surge in the harassment of Chinese in communities across th…

Well, "complete BS" right back.

> portrayed Chinese men as dangerous to "innocent" and "virtuous" young white women

Suspecting a group of criminal activity is hardly terrorism; you could have just quoted attitudes towards blacks for a less obscure analogy.

> So your allegation that the linkage of Muslims to terrorist extremism is unique is provably untrue.

I never said that no other group has ever been linked to terrorism. I said it hasn't ever been close to the scale it is now, with major attacks in every culture across dozens of countries. Comparing IRA to ISIS is a big stretch, not in type but in magnitude.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#66

Post by gm-conspiracy »

ardit33 wrote: post #32
dominotw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some of them were "detained", put with handcuffed for over 20 hrs. I have travel coming up in two months, this makes me nervous. Do you have a source for this by any chance?

There are plenty of stories like this: Sudanese student at Stanford detained, handcuffed at JFK airport http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/28/stanford-university-st...

Horrible:

She claimed that customs officials appeared confused and were apologetic to the detained travelers. One of them told her: “I have to do this.”

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#67

Post by Avshalom »

paulddraper wrote: post #56
ctrl-j wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Italians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, and Japanese didn't immigrate to other countries and slaughter its citizens. Neither do Muslims? I mean, show me the statistics that show that they have a higher terrorism rate than other groups. The IRA, the extremist christian groups, and the mentally ill all do a lot of damage as well, but they're not being banned from the USA. I think Muslims get targeted by the media because th…

Overall numbers are hard to come by, especially for smallish incidents, but of the 23 acts of terrorism in 2016 killing a hundred or more people, 100% of them were done by Muslims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... > they're not being banned from the USA Were there countries with huge numbers of extremely violent mentally ill people, I have no doubt the US would limit or halt immigration…

>all but one of which were part of the civil wars in Iraq or Syria.

Unsurprisingly all sides in a muslim majority country's civil war are muslim, equally unsurprising is that the non-recognized-states action are written down as terrorism.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#68

Post by finid »

knz wrote: post #44
finid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit disingenuous to omit the fact that both Iraq and Syria have areas experiencing active warfare? But what you seem to ignore is that the active warfare in both countries was caused by us. And in Libya too. Think about that. Those countries are now a mess because of "regime change".

I'm aware that the US/NATO was involved in the Arab Spring. But again, I think the reality was far more complex - Mohamed Bouazizi didn't immolate himself because the CIA/MI6 told him to. There were videos from the time of people marching and being shot by their governments - those governments could have chosen to bring meaningful reform but instead chose violence. Likewise with Assad in Syria - the CIA/MI6 aren't ma…

Since the so-called Arab Spring started in Tunisia, you have to ask yourself why we didn't push for "regime change" in that country.

The demonstrations in Syria were not spontaneous. They were engineered. If you have time, read the email exchanges between the US ambassador to Syria and H. Clinton.

Regarding Iran and Russia playing "the great game", they're supporting the legitimate govt of that country. Without their support, Assad would have been dead years ago, and Syria would have been in worse shape than it is now.

You might start by reading https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328

Edit: Added WikiLeaks links

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#69

Post by [deleted] »

knz wrote: post #44
finid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit disingenuous to omit the fact that both Iraq and Syria have areas experiencing active warfare? But what you seem to ignore is that the active warfare in both countries was caused by us. And in Libya too. Think about that. Those countries are now a mess because of "regime change".

I'm aware that the US/NATO was involved in the Arab Spring. But again, I think the reality was far more complex - Mohamed Bouazizi didn't immolate himself because the CIA/MI6 told him to. There were videos from the time of people marching and being shot by their governments - those governments could have chosen to bring meaningful reform but instead chose violence. Likewise with Assad in Syria - the CIA/MI6 aren't ma…

[deleted]

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#70

Post by AbrahamParangi »

paulddraper wrote: post #56
ctrl-j wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Italians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, and Japanese didn't immigrate to other countries and slaughter its citizens. Neither do Muslims? I mean, show me the statistics that show that they have a higher terrorism rate than other groups. The IRA, the extremist christian groups, and the mentally ill all do a lot of damage as well, but they're not being banned from the USA. I think Muslims get targeted by the media because th…

Overall numbers are hard to come by, especially for smallish incidents, but of the 23 acts of terrorism in 2016 killing a hundred or more people, 100% of them were done by Muslims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... > they're not being banned from the USA Were there countries with huge numbers of extremely violent mentally ill people, I have no doubt the US would limit or halt immigration…

I notice that reading that link, 22/23 acts of terrorism killing a hundred people or more happened in Iraq and Syria which is literally a war-zone.

Just as a thought experiment, if you listed civilian casualties in the Ukraine-Russia war as deaths from terroristic acts you could easily come to the conclusion that it was Eastern-European Christians that were the world's greatest terrorists.

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