Opportunity Knocks
By Mitch Berg
To: Hollywood, the major media, the opinion-making classes, the educational/industrial complex
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant.
Re: Want to do some good?
Millennials know nothing about the Holocaust:
Twenty-two percent of millennials in the poll said they haven’t heard of the Holocaust or are not sure whether they’ve heard of it — twice the percentage of U.S. adults as a whole who said the same.
The study, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, interviewed 1,350 American adults in February and recruited by telephone and an online non-probability sample.
Asked to identify what Auschwitz is, 41 percent of respondents and 66 percent of millennials could not come up with a correct response identifying it as a concentration camp or extermination camp. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says that at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, from 1940 to 1945, and 1.1 million of them were killed. It was the largest concentration camp among many built by the Nazis during their campaign to wipe out the Jews and other groups.
But lest you think its just malfeasance and sloth:
Respondents indicated much more awareness of modern-day bias against Jews, with 68 percent saying anti-Semitism is present in America today, and 51 percent saying there are “many” or “a great deal of” neo-Nazis in the United States today.
So a majority “know” a non-existent factoid that is entirely a figment of propaganda intended to gull the hysterical, but a tiny fraction know why those people might conceivably matter.
So, media and entertainment industries – perhaps we could make with a little of the “never again” in between comic book remakes and endless FBI “investigations”?
Just a suggestion.
That is all.
April 18th, 2018 at 5:15 pm
I’m not sure that it’s that great of an idea to get “Hollywood, the major media, the opinion-making classes, the educational/industrial complex” involved in fixing a problem of their own making. Especially when I doubt they see it as a problem.
Leftists long ago took advantage of the high trust environment found in Western societies to do what leftists always do: ruin it (too). In the past, not too distant by the way, one could trust that “Hollywood, the major media, the opinion-making classes, the educational/industrial complex” would continue to pass on cultural norms and touchstones. But no, as time passed from FDR to now, leftists saw their secular religion as more important than anything else and so sabotaging the very countries they live in was possible.
April 18th, 2018 at 6:29 pm
If this was limited to home schooled kids, the SPLC would be naming home school parents a hate group.
But as it’s the result of 12 years of inculcation into leftist doctrine, a little anti-Semitism is acceptable, I guess.
Who wants to bet the % of public school kids that can identify the origins of the pink triangle tops 70%?
April 18th, 2018 at 11:43 pm
As far as I can tell, millenials accept the basis of Nazi doctrine, namely that racial characteristics are both the most socially significant feature of the self, and that they are immutable.
Thank you, American education system.
April 19th, 2018 at 7:49 am
2015 minus 1945 is 70. Kids nowadays aren’t up in arms about the Holocaust, they don’t even know what it was. The horror!
1960 minus 70 is 1890. When we were kids, should we have been expected to be up in arms about the original massacre at Wounded Knee, or the Dreyfus Affair? Did we even know what they were?
This is how life works, people. The burning issues of your youth are forgotten as we are consumed by the burning issues of our youth. That’s why “Never Again” is such an unfunny joke. It always happens again because nobody remembers the last time, and besides, this time it will be different.
.
April 19th, 2018 at 8:09 am
But it’s current events, Joe Doakes!
If you don’t know about the holocaust, you probably are mystified as to why there is a country run by Eastern European Jews in the Middle east.
April 19th, 2018 at 9:53 am
I’m with jdm on whether I’d trust Hollyweird to revive knowledge of the Holocaust, as you’ve got a few very strong tendencies on their part that will work against you in that regard. For starters, it seems that every junior Hollyweird script writer who graduated with a C in English literature thinks he’s got a better idea how to tell a story than Shakespeare. No story, no matter how compelling, is safe from their depradations.
Second, Hollyweird is addicted to sexy, and they try to insert it in the weirdest places. One particular place of note is the shower scene from Schindler’s List, where my instant thought when I watched it the first time was “those are not the bodies of women who have been systematically starved by the Nazis.” Now thank God the directors didn’t systematically starve the actresses to achieve that effect, but it is witness to the fact that they insert “sexy” into the creepiest places.
For that matter, I wonder what portion of Americans would know about mass killings in Rwanda, South Sudan, Bosnia, and Syria. I am guessing you would find out that most Americans, not just the young, simply aren’t reading the papers, or their papers aren’t covering the news.
April 19th, 2018 at 10:58 am
As a fomer history major this makes me sick but isnt surprising, Stop teaching kids there are 57 genders and they are evil because they are white and start teaching actual things. Until then stop complaining about lack of resources teachers, seriously.
April 19th, 2018 at 11:02 am
1960 minus 70 is 1890. When we were kids, should we have been expected to be up in arms about the original massacre at Wounded Knee, or the Dreyfus Affair? Did we even know what they were?
Not a fair comparison Joe, those events werent anywhere close to as historically significant. Did kids in 1930 learn about the Civil War and know that the South seceded? You bet they did.
In fact go back and looks at test from the 1910s-1940s of what kids needed to know back then. Youd practically have to be a PhD student to even comprehend half the questions.
April 19th, 2018 at 8:05 pm
I’ve been out all day doing non-Internet things – yes, it is possible – anyway. Great comments all.
In fact go back and looks at test from the 1910s-1940s of what kids needed to know back then. Youd practically have to be a PhD student to even comprehend half the questions.
Yes!
Kids nowadays aren’t up in arms about the Holocaust, they don’t even know what it was.
Actually this is a Real Problem for me because the Nazis were pikers compared to the Reds, both in numbers and nastiness. And if Hollywood et al were to take up Mitch’s challenge, the Nazis is what we’d get without a single mention of the Reds… come to think of it, most people who think of themselves as edumacated *only* know about the Nazis and the Holocaust. But then, WTF, a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
April 19th, 2018 at 11:40 pm
Apples and oranges, JDM. The Nazis directed their fury at non-Germans. They were like mad dogs when turned loose on the Jews & Slavs. One historically minor atrocity, when they razed Warsaw, was to attack a Catholic hospital. They burned it to the ground with the patients still inside. The holy sisters who were nurses were taken prisoner, stripped, flogged, raped, and shot in the head. I don’t believe the Reds ever matched that level of savagery.
April 20th, 2018 at 6:20 am
Staying in class and learning something instead of doing this (Strib headline: Minnesota students will walk out, rally for gun control on 19th anniversary of Columbine shooting) might help too.