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

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

#161

Post by knz » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #101

finid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Considering that Iran has been, without the least exaggeration, in active cross-hair of the "great game" of the Anglo vs Russ for the past 150 years, saying that Iran is playing the "great game" is rather bizzare.

I was using the term loosely - not specifically the UK/Russia relationship.

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

#162

Post by legodt » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #147

iambateman wrote: post #15

I love this article, because we have to remind people that Americans have been afraid of Italians and Germans and Swedes and Jews and the Japanese and Muslims and the Chinese and DEFINITELY the Irish at one time or another. Established groups feared new groups. But in the end, these people generally brought new innovations and economic growth and interesting new foods. They mashed new cultures with old - not without…

> In other words, it's gonna be alright. In the long run, sure. But in the short run, were there Irish gangs, German mafia &c.? Were those forms of criminality different from the forms prevalent amonst ethnic-English Americans of the same time period? I honestly don't know. What sort of social upheaval and strife occurred along the way to assimilation? In the long run, things might be okay, but how much pain will the…

Stop fearmongering and implying immigrants are naturally criminals.

Criminality us a result of being marginalized from society and not being able to work "honest" livings. You are forced to rely on your own group, pushed to the edges and fighting for its own.

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

#163

Post by cshipley » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #156

anigbrowl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dispute your attempt to conflate protests against Trump's ban on entry with an indictment of middle America. People who support the ban do so for a variety of reasons and are not neatly grouped in the political center as you suggest, just as people who oppose the ban do so for a variety of reasons and can not be neatly grouped on the left. it may not matter if it seems like they're calling middle America racist It'…

> I dispute your attempt to conflate protests against Trump's ban on entry with an indictment of middle America. You can refute all you want. I'm talking about real conversations I've had with real people. It looks like some Americans are hateful towards "hateful" Americans and it puts people on the defensive and pushes them away. EDIT: > you don't speak for the American people Right. That's not the message that peop…

Well here, talk to me. I protest the travel ban. I think it is racist. Not middle America, but the president and his strategist.

I think a lot of other people who are for the ban aren't racist, just misinformed. A lot seem to think Muslim immigrant|refugee == terrorist.

One person told me "I'm for the ban because I don't want them to come and kill me and my family in our sleep."

I blame this perception on the people who seek to profit by the general hysteria, not those manipulated by it. I am sad for the victims of it.

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

#164

Post by sctb » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

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.

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13560351.

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

#165

Post by humanrebar » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #142

humanrebar wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit silly, since Obama did get a lot of criticism for this stuff, so the only argument for hypocrisy is that he should have had more. That's a fair point, right? People weren't skipping work and class to march in the town square when Obama bombed Yemen and other countries, but they'll do it when Trump makes a (insensitive, idiotic, broken, heavy-handed, unjust) change to the visa process?

It can be a fair point, depending on exactly what the ultimate argument is. Some have used this argument to defend Trump's actions. It doesn't work for that at all. "You didn't protest sufficiently about Obama, so you should approve of Trump's policies" is just a non sequitur. Some have used this argument to say that we should have protested more about these other things. That argument works, but it's not actionable…

> "You didn't protest sufficiently about Obama, so you should approve of Trump's policies" is just a non sequitur.

The argument is that the current reaction doesn't make sense given recent history. So the current "debate" is instead a placeholder for a culture war, disappointment with the election results, or something.

That is, the non sequitur is the new levels of disgust. The non sequitur is resolved if you add some subtext that make Obama deserve a (perhaps begrudging) pass and Trump a fail.

> That argument works, but it's not actionable...

Sure it's actionable. Politicians apologize for letting Obama get a pass. Some writers rip Obama a new one in ex post facto editorials. Propose laws to make sure president's can't bomb countries without Congressional approval. Propose laws giving Congress more oversight into the visa process, etc. Shoot, propose Constitutional Amendments if the rights of foreign nationals aren't clear enough.

> The only good, useful argument to be made with this is that we should be more critical and more willing to make ourselves heard in the future

Honestly, being heard isn't the problem. Trump supporters know what others think. Corporate America literally has TV specials, policies, and training courses about this stuff. The people with different concerns are just on different wavelengths, so there's no conversation, just a big struggle over the reigns of power.

We need to actually understand others' arguments (so we can in turn be better understood) instead of wondering if we need to do a better job of making themselves heard.

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

#166

Post by bostonpete » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #120

pavlov wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another example of America's fluidly morphing standard of whiteness, Finns were sometimes considered Asians: "Finns faced racial discrimination, with many people using the Finnish language as “proof” that Finns were not European and thus fair game to be subject to unfair treatment. Some argued that Finns were Asian, meaning they should be barred from citizenship under the Asian Exclusion Act of the early 1900s. Th…

Whiteness is a theme of The Godfather , particularly the book but also the movie.

I know this is touched no in The Godfather II, when the Senator's talking to Michael. Where is whiteness a theme in the first movie?

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

#167

Post by nsxwolf » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #126

badmadrad wrote: post #109

Using this as a criticism of Trump's travel ban is a false equivalency. There have literally been a rash of terrorist attacks in Europe perpetrated by radicalized Syrians, Somalians, and Iranians. Not to mention the knife attack from Somalian refugee (who was getting a free ride) at Ohio State. Read through these lists and tell me there is nothing to be worried about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_i…

The last time I looked, the perpetrators of mass casualty incidents in the US were at best only 40-50% immigrants. Even for most of the immigrants, I suspect they were radicalized subsequent to entry in the US. The number of terrorists that the travel ban would have stopped is at best in the low single digits. It is not at all clear that the number will exceed the number of people in the US who will become radicalize…

I don't know how the argument that this will cause Muslims to "become radicalized" helps Muslims, at all. If there really are people who can be turned into killers with a little bit of propaganda, then scrutinizing immigrants from those countries seems prudent.

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

#168

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

throwaway000040 wrote: post #158

KirinDave wrote: post #75

I like this article because it reminds us that "whiteness" is not actually a strictly racial identity. There are numerous factors that make someone "white" in America, which makes them acceptable to white nationalists. These purity rules can change over time to represent what's politically expedient. Many young Americans are shocked to learn that Italian and Irish (who are often a baseline of appearance in modern Ame…

I have yet to see anyone try to advance a similar line of argument citing the past or present hostility existing between the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean peoples as proof that "East Asians" don't really exist and are merely some kind of social construct--let alone with the non-obvious corollary that the peoples wrongly socially constructed as "East Asian," not really existing as such, should therefore immediately op…

I'm impressed by the number of fallacies you manged to cram into a single run-on sentence.

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

#169

Post by ekiru » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #135

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Italian , I surely feel demonized by the Guardian style of 'journalism' and American leftists. Too bad no one is calling them out. I guess Fascist tendencies too are acknowledged out of convenience, not rationality.

Stop being part of the problem and you can stop self-assigning to the group that is causing the problem? Shame only works inasmuch as you believe folks have a point. It doesn't work on the guiltless or the guileless.

It may be true that "shame only works inasmuch as you believe folks have a point" (I'm unsure), but it's certainly not true that shame only works when the folks doing the shaming have a point. People often feel shame when people criticize qualities that they do have that I think we'd both agree are not shameworthy. As well, some people have a tendency to, when they see criticism of a vaguely-specified group to which it is remotely plausible that they are included in, include themselves in the criticized group and feel shame as a result.

These objections do not necessarily imply that we should not attempt to publicly shame shameworthy behavior, but such tactics do harm some people who are guiltless (unless "guilt" here is intended to include feeling a sense of guilt without having actually done something wrong, in which case the statement seems tautological) and guileless. So does asserting that they don't in a public setting like this, independently of whether the particular individual the assertion is deployed against is themselves worthy of disapproval.

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

#170

Post by sandworm101 » Fri, Feb 03, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #74

sandworm101 wrote: post #42

Irish, italians, russians, jews, chinese, japanese... is there a group that america hasnt at some time feared? Did canadians get thier turn? Having a guilty and irrational fear of some group, whatever the group, seems almost part of american identity. I cannot think of any period of american history that wasnt steeped in such fears.

The 1990s?

Gays+aids? Urban black "super predators? Werent the 90s the height of white-flight and the bussing debates? Perhaps thats a different type, an internal fear.

Perhaps the post-apollo 70s? Americans then feared nuclear war generally, but not russians as a people. Racism was a thing internally, but i cannot think of an especially hated outside group.