Shot in the Dark

He/She/Whatever Who Forgets History Is Susceptible To Democrat Drivel

It’s possible that the collapse of public education isn’t a plot to make society dumber and more susceptible to totalitarian meddling.

But it’s hard to figure how they’d do a better job of it if they were trying:

Nearly 20 percent of millennials and Gen Z in New York believe Jews caused the Holocaust, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

The findings come from the first-ever 50-state survey on the Holocaust knowledge of American millennials and Gen Z, which was commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

For instance, although there were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos during World War II, 58 percent of respondents in New York cannot name a single one.

Additionally, 60 percent of respondents in New York do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

It was my observation when my kids were in school – over a decade ago, in the Saint Paul Public Schools – that the only things they learned in their various social studies classes were slavery and civil rights.

No “Federalist Papers” or origins of the Constitution. Nothing about the Civil War but slavery.

Nothing about the rise of progressivism, the causes of the Depression, World War II. Nothing about the sixties but Civil Rights.

Again – that was anecdotal, and entirely possibly wrong. But I’ve found little reason to not assume I’m at least largely right on this.

And this article is certainly a plaintiff’s exhibit.

Posted

in

, , , ,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

40 responses to “He/She/Whatever Who Forgets History Is Susceptible To Democrat Drivel”

  1. FRESCHFISCH Avatar
    FRESCHFISCH

    Asked my son, age 24, to name some Nazi concentration camps after reading this story.

    He gave me four.

    Whew. 12: years of private schools weren’t all wasted.

  2. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    “the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany“

    Really? 😂

    Who said it was all about the Benjamin’s?

  3. golfdoc50 Avatar
    golfdoc50

    My middle daughter, born in 1983, asked me a few years ago to enlighten her about the Vietnam war. I guess that never got covered in high school. My stepson, age 13, is reading a Holocaust novel called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but his mom assigned it, not school. It’s up to us.

  4. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    I have to wonder how many rich liberals, including Jews, have their homes decorated with art pieces that were stolen from pre 1939 wealthy German Jews? “Monuments Men” types are still looking for that art work, with an estimated worth of over $500 million. The History Channel series, “Hunting Nazi Treasure”, which is very good, has shed light on this issue to the point that some pieces have been anonymously returned.

  5. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    The WW II ended 75 years ago. It’s not relevant to the life of kids today, it’s ancient history. When I was a kid in the 1960’s, we didn’t study Civil War prison camps.

    Pete Strunk makes an uncomfortable point: the people most interested in making sure history never forgets the fate of Jews are, obviously, Jews. For the rest of us, harping on the Holocaust feels like being scolded about slavery. I didn’t do it, it wasn’t my fault, I shouldn’t have to guilty about it.

    .

  6. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    “I have to wonder how many rich liberals, including Jews, have their homes decorated with art pieces that were stolen from pre 1939 wealthy German Jews?”

    Here’s something to consider; I have to wonder how many pre 1939 wealthy German Jews, had decorated their homes with art pieces that were stolen from wealthy Russians, including Jews, during the Bolshevik revolution?

    “Yes, we loot the looters”
    ~VI Lenin

  7. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Aside from the horrors of the Holocaust, there are lessons to be learned from war and history that can be applied to every day life.

    WWI War Lesson: If the Treaty of Versailles had taken its cue from Lincoln “With malice toward none, with charity for all” the second war may not have happened.

    Personal Takeaway: Be gracious in victory and the greater the victory, the more important it is, which is why we stress good sportsmanship.

    From WWII: You cannot appease a Nazi.

    Personal Takeaway: This is especially true when they call themselves anti-nazi.

    But the greatest lesson of all comes from The Peloponnesian Wars: “The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”

    Personal Takeaway: Stay strong especially when the need for it is least evident.

  8. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    The study sounds “truthy”, but are there not a lot of Jewish millennials and Gen Z’s in New York? What about the NY public schools? I wonder about the statistics, or at least the sampling group.

    It does remind me of 2005, though, when the MN Federation of Teachers wanted to ban students from buying school supplies at WalMart, because it was a capitalist exploiter. With your indulgence, l’ll share what I bogged then:

    Honest, Mom, I wasn’t doing anything. I was sitting in my American History class and Ms. Wolverton was talking about the founding fathers, and when she got through telling us about the first president — Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, that is, so you know I was paying attention — she told us to take out our Diversity Journals and write about what it would feel like to be beat up by cops employed by fatcat capitalists and to not have health insurance besides.

    So I was opening up my backpack when it slipped – honest! – and everything spilled out on the floor. Well, not everything, because I was able to catch my iPod, you know, and then the Wolf, I mean, Ms. Wolverton points at the floor next to me and says, really mean-like, “What’s that?”

    Well, I look down and I say, “Nothing Ms. Wolverton, that’s just the condoms they gave us in third period today.”

    “No,” she says, “What’s that?”

    Then I say, “You mean this flyer about what time Tuesday morning we’re to catch the school bus to take us to the state capital to protest for higher education spending?”

    “No!” she says, and now she’s really mad. “That looks like one of the new Trapper Keepers that Wal-Mart is advertising in the newspaper! How dare you bring something like that to school?”

    “Hey, it’s not mine,” I said. “Someone must have stuck that in there just to get me in trouble, probably during Conflict-Resolution class!” Really, Mom, that Billy Swedberg is sooo passive-aggressive.

    So anyway, now Ms. Wolverton is all, “shopping at Wal-Mart is the first step to economic servitude, and how buying a Trapper Keeper seems innocent enough now but, like, the next thing you know I’ll be listening to talk radio and voting Republican,” you know? Then she says something like, “someday when you’re working 70 hours a week for $1 you’ll wish you’d paid more attention in class.” Well, I didn’t really know what to say to that, but she gave me the idea, so I said, “I’m sorry, my ADD is acting up – what was the question again?”

    Well, that seemed to calm her down and I thought it was all going to blow over when she says, “I don’t know what people are looking for when they go into a den of iniquity and social injustice like Wal-Mart.”

    OK, Mom, I knooow I should have kept my mouth shut, but I wasn’t really thinking because I was still so nervous, so I said, “Good values?” And that’s when she went ballistic and told me I knew I wasn’t allowed to use that kind of language in school and that I had to go to the principal’s office and they were going to call you to come and get me.

    So, am I in trouble?

  9. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Well, I guess Conservatism is indeed a big tent to welcome anti-semites such as our beloved swiftee.

    Who said it was all about the Benjamin’s? and I have to wonder how many pre 1939 wealthy German Jews, had decorated their homes with art pieces that were stolen from wealthy Russians, including Jews, during the Bolshevik revolution?

    I am not even going to touch the first one, but care to elaborate, show examples of the second? I am sure your wondering mind wants to get facts to back up your statement or leave your bigotry and hatred for all to see.

  10. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    So, am I in trouble?

    Brilliant, Night Writer, simply brilliant.

  11. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Joe,

    Your point that Jews are interested in making sure that history doesn’t forget the fate of Jews, seems to be less of a priority with each generation. Despite the fact that the Democrat party has sold out to radical anti-Semites like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour and CAIR, too many Jews are still more loyal to the party than they are their faith. As I have said before in these comments, they are either failing to see or ignoring the fact that their chosen party is now so closely parallels the Nazi party of pre WWII Germany, that it is scary.

  12. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    WWI War Lesson: If the Treaty of Versailles had taken its cue from Lincoln “With malice toward none, with charity for all” the second war may not have happened.

    Also – among Woodrow Wilson’s many crimes against humanity – the establishment of the bureaucratic state, the entrenching of Jim Crow at the federal level, getting into the war – his handling of Versailles, which couldn’t have been better designed to lead to war if he’d tried, has to be at the top of the list.

  13. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    That’s pretty powerful nothingness you have here MBerg…

  14. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    “they are either failing to see or ignoring the fact that their chosen party is now so closely parallels the Nazi party of pre WWII Germany, that it is scary.”

    Not Nazi’s, Bolsheviks.

    Read “Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia”
    by Erich Haberer (Cambridge Press), and tell me you cannot see the parallels being played out here today.

  15. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    I’m no fan of Wilson, but I believe the most humiliating and draconian elements of the Versailles treaty were implemented over his objections–and his choice was either to insist on repayment of lend-lease (and go through the Royal Navy to collect it most likely) or concede to a treaty that was basically 1871 in reverse, no?

    Back to the topic, I remember having dinner with a man who’d been a sailor on a U-boat in WWII when I was a young pup, and when he arrived in New York City, some of the residents greeted him with comments like “what happened–run out of gas?” So it may be a stretch to assume that just because someone lives in Gotham, that they’ll actually have awareness and knowledge of the Holocaust just because they live near a lot of Jews.

    (unless the gentleman was BS-ing me, of course, and not having been around in 1945 or so, I couldn’t tell you for sure)

  16. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    Recall that Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews root and branch. In the East, he razed Jewish villages to the ground, and used the tombstones as road paving for his tanks. Having a single Jewish great parent, even one who had converted to Christianity, was enough to send you to the camps. Hitler had elderly nuns, who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism as girls, thrown into the death camps.

  17. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    That’s pretty powerful nothingness you have here MBerg…

    What, the idea that we’ve got a generation that knows nothing of history?

    Yeah, why worry.

  18. Prince of Darkness_666 Avatar
    Prince of Darkness_666

    Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Interesting note, Jews are now fleeing Europe because of all the Muslim immigrants they have let in and they are actually being attacked. Its almost like some people want this to happen again. This shit is getting scary.

  19. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    “Recall that Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews root and branch. In the East, he razed Jewish villages to the ground, and used the tombstones as road paving for his tanks.”

    Substitute “white people” for Jews, and you have described the pogrom the leftists are getting started in the good ol’ USA right now. Hell, we have white people identifying themselves as black, just as the Jews identified as Christians, and we have white kapos out there attacking their kith and kin to garner favor.

    Learn from history? Like hell.

  20. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    The fact that George Soros is funding a lot of this stuff is ironic on multiple levels. Just like the good old days of his youth.

  21. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Hey, Jew-hater, Soros ceased to be a Jew when he started delivering notices to his neighbours to gather up into cattle cars leading to showers in the gas chambers. Btu you probably think Auschwitz and Maidanek where resorts. Soros is the most anti-semitic, anti-Israel, soul alive. So you can take your hating and stuff it. Oh, and how is that search going on facts about Jews looting Tzarist Russia? You always seemed to pride on putting your actions where your mouth is – you are getting called out.

  22. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    “Soros ceased to be a Jew when he started delivering notices to his neighbours”

    Huh. Is that a “hell with your genetics, I’m wearing a dress, so I’m a woman” kind of deal?
    Lol. Just kidding friend. I’m sure he appreciates the backup.

    Reading some history will equip you much better than weak insults. They don’t phase me coming from the right any more than they do from the left; facts make me proof against it all.

    I suggest “Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia”
    by Erich Haberer (Cambridge Press). It’s quite a well researched bit of historical documentation.

  23. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    “Dear America: You are waking up as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.” ~ Werner Herzog

  24. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    If you read Belloc’s The Jews (1922) you will understand how European gentiles viewed the “Jewish problem” between the wars. Belloc considered Jews to be a a non-European nation living within the borders of Europe, always foreign, and insular, their goals necessarily different from those of the nations they lived in.
    If you read The World of Yesterday (1942) by Stefan Zweig you will get the opposite POV. Zweig, a bourgeois, irreligious, Austrian Jew, considered himself to be more European than non-Jews, because unlike them, he considered his identity to be European, rather than Austrian, Czek, French, etc.
    The world of humanity is a complicated place. Racism artificially simplifies that complexity.

  25. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord


    “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.”
    ― Tom Wolfe

  26. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    “Soros ceased to be a Jew when he started delivering notices to his neighbours”
    The Nazis didn’t think so. Most of the guys who did what Soros did ended up in the camps, eventually, or got a Nazi 9mm in the back of the head. The Jews that policed other Jews were killed last.
    Small mercy.

  27. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Small mercy.

    In Soros’ case, it is what he did afterwards and his anti-semitism that makes it very likely he revelled in seeing his brothers sent to the concentration camps.

  28. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Reading some history will equip you much better than weak insults.

    I and my immediate family (for a number of generations) lived that history and wear scars to this day to prove it.

    How is that research going to put up or shut up on the art smear? Or are you going to bring up blood libel as a talking point? Maybe drag Dreyfus into it?

  29. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    I can’t read the mind of George Soros. But I am certain that the things that he does that I do not like, he does because he is a human being, like me, rotten to the core, and not because he is a Jew.

  30. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    That, Mamm, we are in violent agreement. But the anti-semitic element of this thread is very much of the different opinion. And they will not be deterred until ALL Jews are exterminated, because we are responsible for ALL the evil in the world. Just read Haberer! It proves EVERYTHING!

  31. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    jpa, you asked for some background on Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik revolution. I gave you a well researched, peer reviewed book from an academic publisher that details it. Many of the top people in the various Bolshevik committees were Jews; its historical fact.

    Speaking truth isn’t bigotry, or hate; that’s a reprobate fallback position. I’m a big fan of David Horowitz who documented his childhood among card carrying Communist Jews. I think Prager says a lot of stuff worth listening to. I’m not emotionally biased towards Jews one way or the other. I’m just not afraid to point out facts others are.

    The fact is, they’ve been at the vanguard of Communist revolutions and leftist agitations for 100 years; still are. Karl Marx was Jewish for crying out loud.

  32. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    i don’t like to stick my foot in, in an argument between conservatives,
    But anyone who says “so-and-so is a greater sinner than I am” is taking the side of the Pharisees.

  33. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    Max, Commies and Nazis are greater sinners than I am. In that regard, I have nothing to apologize for, and I don’t think you do either.

  34. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    btw jpa, that wasnt directed towards you.

  35. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    Swiftee, I remember when Derbyshire wrote in his blog how excited he was to meet a fan who recognized him on the steps of his church. “What are you doing here?”
    “Worshiping God” said Derb.
    A few years later, Derb had given up the worship of God for the worship of race and social class (God is where you believe Truth resides).

  36. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Soros?

    The man’s politics are loathsome and his currency manipulations criminal (so says France and Thailand) but what does his ethnicity or faith (or lack thereof) have to do with anything?

    People should be judged solely on their character and behavior and that says all that needs to be said about George.

  37. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    you asked for some background on Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik revolution

    I did not do such thing! I am extremely, and painfully (in my case literally) aware of that fact. What I asked of you is to answer your charge of I have to wonder how many pre 1939 wealthy German Jews, had decorated their homes with art pieces that were stolen from wealthy Russians, including Jews, during the Bolshevik revolution?. You made an assertion that German Jews were in possession of the art they looted in Russia during the Russian revolution. Instead of answering the direct question, you chose to deflect and misdirect.

    To claim ownership of a piece of art, you have to have clear provenance, and “looted” and “stolen” are hardly clear grounds. So in this context, how would anyone attribute your “having to wonder” to anything else but anti-semitism? But, it’s ok. Nobody’s perfect and I pity you for having to live with such hate boiling inside of you. You choose this path of your free will, so carry on.

    I will not be crossing the street to shake your hand any time soon, but if you are ever in need of help, let me know. Because based on your posts, underneath, you have redeeming qualities, very unlike the politruk trollbots who infest this blog. And if you decide to follow the herd in killing all Jews, I am sure we will be meeting face to face. I do not have to be afraid of you shooting me in the back.

  38. Pete Strunk Avatar
    Pete Strunk

    OK jpa, in order to cool you down a bit I’ll do something I would never do with lefties. Here’s some direct, source background. I’m giving it to you to prove I’m not singling Jews out because I don’t like them; I’m just relating the historical facts.

    On March 3, 1918 the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. It was harsh af, but the Commies had no choice. They were losing and they were broke. Along with vast concessions of territory, the Commies were forced to pay financial restitution for the stuff they had nationalized from German citizens and companies.

    Germany didn’t want rubles that we not worth cost of the paper they were printed on, so the Commies paid in gold and art treasure they had looted from wealthy Russians, and there were plenty of wealthy Jews in Russia before the revolution. That loot made it’s way into the hands of wealthy Germans, and there were plenty of wealthy Jewish businessmen in Germany before the Nazis. So provenance wasn’t a problem, see? The Commies guaranteed the authenticity of the articles, and their right to them. The Germans vouched for the transfer to whoever ended up with it.

    When the Nazis took things from Jewish Germans, it is certain that some of it originated in Russia, and highly probable some from Jewish Russians. That’s where my comment came from. No hate; just facts.

    So now, let’s get on with our mutual interest in raging on leftist slags.

  39. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    I am not disputing the facts. Was there theft of art by the bolsheviks, some of whom were Jews? Absolutely. Did some of this art with a “clean” provenance (and that’s a completely different topic) end up with art dealers who happened to be Jewish? Absolutely. Were some of the worst human beings in history born into Jewish homes? Absolutely. But guess what, there are monsters of all creeds out there. Last time I checked, Mao was not Jewish. Neither was Stalin. Neither was Torquemada. Neither was Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler and Jeffrey Dahmer.

    Is it our fault we had to spent most of our existence in diaspora and populate every nook and cranny of this planet, escaping prosecution and then inevitably moving on? (Of course, anti-semites will be very quick to answer Yes to that question). Ever wonder why Synagogues are so austere – for the most part – compared to their Christian period contemporaries? It is not the money, it is living with reality that anything permanent will be destroyed, sooner rather than later. So does it not follow that Jews would be the only creed that became ubiquitous and constant whilst civilizations came and went? Egypt, Rome, Babylon? The “eternal Jew” indeed.

    Where was I headed with all this? Oh, right. You can find Jews everywhere, good and bad. But since we have been everywhere bad things happen, it is easy to single us out as a constant for that and nobody ever remembers the good. And please spare me the proportion argument. It is precisely because of the diaspora and constant moving about and of course Torah, that Jews were overrepresented in the intelligentsia. We never stopped long enough to grow roots, were never allowed to (I am of course speaking on historical timeline, not just the past century or so). And thus when shit happens, Jews are overrepresented as a percentage of the population in charge of stirring up this shit. Millenia of oppression would tend to sour a bloke and lead to radicalism, no?

    What I object to is painting all of us with the same brush and immediately pointing out the Jew in the pile of shit. A Jew is trying to get their stolen property back. They obviously have, what they believe, is clean provenance. You immediately turn the table to point out that Russian stolen property may in fact had ended up in Jewish hands. Ask yourself this, if the original post was about a Russian count who was trying to get back his art stolen during the revolution, would you point out that there were wealthy pre-1939 Russians who fled the revolution before shit the fan who owned some of this art? I postulate that no, you would not. But the mere mention of the Jew, and it elicits a knee-jerk negative comment. That is anti-semitism.

    I’m done. And again, I am not disputing the facts. Facts are facts and I am not running away from my heritage. And thank you for bringing them up. But just wondering, why do we never hear of Russian counts looking to regain their stolen property? Again, I have no idea, it may be happening every day, just that I, personally have not heard of any.

  40. Maximum Overlord Avatar
    Maximum Overlord

    This is getting ugly.
    Christ was a Jew. He lived his life as a Jew. He was circumcised. He was a perfect Jew, sinless and complete in his obedience to God, the Father. He was the law.
    Non-Jews, Roman soldiers, crucified Him, and cast lots for His miserable clothes. This is a real thing that occurred in history, in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, in the year 30 AD. It is not a metaphor or a symbol or something like that. People like you and me gathered and nailed the creator of the universe to a cross, and watched him die in agony.
    And so, in perfect obedience, Christ took on and reversed the sin of Adam. For Christians, singling out Jews as especially deplored by God is wrong. It is crazy.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.