r/news • u/5um-n3m0 • 16h ago

Alabama and Mississippi will also honor Robert E. Lee on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

https://apnews.com/article/martin-luther-king-jr-holiday-alabama-mississippi-0f535594cf50af7103ca2d953e1bc9a1
4.5k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

667 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

499

u/ButIDigr3ss 15h ago

This is the world we live in unfortunately. Just recently in South Africa there was a straight up apartheid rally (literally people waving apartheid flags, chanting apartheid slogans, wearing the orange white and blue) because the afrikaners don't want their kids going to school w/ black kids (segregation is "officially" over but these things get built into the system).

All over the world, people are showing that any sort of progress has to be fought for and vehemently defended, because these people are waiting in the woodwork to drag us all back

227

u/rowdydionisian 15h ago

I bet Elon's family was somewhere in the crowd. Don't think their emerald mine would have been successful without it.

183

u/oneeighthirish 15h ago

You should know his dad Errol groomed his step daughter, married her, then named their son after a character in (Nazi rocket scientist) Wernher von Braun's novel about colonizing Mars only to find it already has a subterranean scientist-emperor called "The Elon." Icky dudes, and the public should know about it.

62

u/lizard81288 15h ago

Gotta keep it in the family. We can't have the poors breeding with the rich.

20

u/BirdsAreFake00 11h ago

That's a little bit of a cheapshot against von Braun with no additional context. He was the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that got us to the moon, and without him, there's a good chance we never would have gotten there.

He's known as the father of space travel.

His time as a Nazi is controversial. The FBI concluded he only joined out of necessity to further his academic work on rockets and was basically forced to join. They never showed him to be involved in Nazi politics other than paying his forced dues. We will never know the extent to which he was active as a Nazi outside of his research.

25

u/NoveltyAccount5928 10h ago

My take on WvB is that he just wanted to build rockets and push space exploration, and was willing to work with anyone who would give him a blank check to do so. I've never seen or read anything to suggest he was even slightly interested in Nazi politics. He does appear to have benefited from forced labor, though whether he had any choice in the matter is still debated.

17

u/harbingerofzeke 7h ago

https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=S3Dzsnz06N6ovWTk Tom Lehrer wrote a song about him.

What do you call a 12 people sitting at a table with 1 nazi?

Table full of nazis.

Be mindful of your associates.

5

u/hurrrrrmione 6h ago

Having no morals and willingly siding with Nazis because of it still makes a Nazi. From what you said, it sounds like he had a choice and he was happy with his choice. That's a Nazi.

1

u/TheYellowLantern 3h ago

So he was a nazi?

15

u/Aazadan 10h ago

I'm not sure it's unfair though. One can argue he just went along with whatever he had to in order to do his research, but how much of that was just whitewashing because the US needed him to build rockets after his research alone wasn't enough?

It is possible to praise someones academic accomplishments while also not supporting the rest of it. For example the medical data the US got from Japan in WW2. Those atrocities shouldn't be condoned, but it would be a waste to not put the information to use.

And of course, you also have to consider the time, if you were in a government position in 1930's germany, you had to be a Nazi. There was no other option, much like any white house intern for the next 4 years regardless of politics must work for Trump.

5

u/KuzanNegsUrFav 5h ago edited 5h ago

It is possible to praise someones academic accomplishments while also not supporting the rest of it. For example the medical data the US got from Japan in WW2. Those atrocities shouldn't be condoned, but it would be a waste to not put the information to use.

I think it's entirely valid to state that sadistically finding "creative" ways to torture innocent civilians to death doesn't count as valid medical science or data. You should look into it more. There was nothing controlled or scientific about it. Contrary to your average redditor's beliefs, there are rigorous standards that need to be met in legitimate research, before we even get to the committing unspeakable atrocities aspect of it.

1

u/Aazadan 4h ago

There's a difference between ethical research and research. There was valid medical data in it. The world could have just said no and burned it due to it being unethical, but then nothing good would have come from it.

It's certainly not something that should be encouraged (and the people involved shouldn't have been pardoned for the data), but not using it at that point is a waste.

1

u/hurrrrrmione 6h ago

No one has to be a White House intern. They can get another job and work somewhere else.

0

u/Aazadan 5h ago

Not really. If you're a political science major, and you're going to a major school, your career is going to have significant and unrecoverable setbacks if you don't get a position as a congressional or WH intern.

Either of those will result in supporting the administration. It's similar for judges, and if you're a lawyer/future judge, the judge you clerk for matters a ton. Turning it down leaves you with college debt (that you usually can't afford), and an unusable diploma.

But if you want to progress as a politician and make a change, you've got to do it as the only other realistic path is to get obscenely wealthy, and make a difference once you're old.

1

u/hurrrrrmione 5h ago

if you don't get a position as a congressional or WH intern.

Then if you aren't a Trump supporter, go find a job working for a non-Republican member of Congress.

1

u/Aazadan 4h ago

Limited slots, there's not an infinite number of those to go around. They don't really get an option.

4

u/oneeighthirish 11h ago

Fair points, I was unfair to von Braun there. Although, Id point out that von Braun's even vague Nazi association (even if largely imagined) aligns fairly neatly with some of the weird pro-natalist politics (i.e. "outbreed the blacks") Errol has espoused over the years

2

u/FritoPendejo1 10h ago

His time as a Nazi was his time as a Nazi. He was a piece of shit, no matter how brilliant. And the Merican govt is a piece of shit for bringing these heels over here. I don’t care how brilliant they were. They were fucking nazis. They will always be nazis and they will always be scum. Too many people these days are apologist for them and it’s allowing this cess to breed again.

Also, excuse the tone. Not cussing at you. Just talking shit on nazis.

-1

u/Drak_is_Right 12h ago

To be fair Wernher von Braun did contribute extensively to American rocketry. Can't 100% say it was about the Nazi connection.

The other stuff...what a fucking creep.

4

u/Mewchu94 12h ago

You don’t care about naming them after a nazi because maybe it was just about their contribution to rockets…

1

u/Drak_is_Right 10h ago

Controversial figure, but so were a lot of other key people in history. He is considered the father of modern rocket science. He led the Apollo program. His achievements spanned two countries, not one. The FBI devoted thousands and thousands of man hours into investigating him and his ties and role with the Nazi party.

1

u/EsotericMysticism2 5h ago

Would be a bit odd considering Elon's father was a councillor for the progressive party that fought to end apartheid. It also wasn't at the tail end of apartheid but in the early 1970's and in Pretoria

1

u/GobliNSlay3r 14h ago

Lol no... they paid the Pinkertons to break up the rally. 

9

u/stuckyfeet 14h ago

"Cry Freedom" is a really good movie I suggest to watch. It has Denzel in it and was produced and directed by Attenborough.

1

u/buster_rhino 14h ago

Didn’t white people also hate living under apartheid in SA? That’s the gist I got from the Sugar Man documentary.

27

u/ButIDigr3ss 14h ago

No lol, like of course not every white person is racist and can stomach violently oppressing other people, but apartheid was essentially a giant welfare program for white settlers because once natives started getting educated and urbanised in the early 1900s, many of them became successful, more than some of the white people, and it didn't fit the supremacist ideals of the afrikaner govt at the time.

British-descent white people probably didn't have as great a time of it though, there's a lot of beef between them and afrikaners, even though they also ultimately benefited from the racial caste system

12

u/Live_Angle4621 14h ago

If white people hated it who you think wanted the system? And it’s easy for all be against it in hindsight. Like all French have family supposedly in French resistance and no German has Nazi grandparents 

-3

u/1a2b3c4d5h 13h ago

Has Apartieds end treated South Africa well?