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"Don't Be A Sucker": Anti-Fascist film from 1947 going viral.

M

Malyse

Member
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How should Americans fight against a resurgent white-nationalist movement in the United States? This weekend, they returned to an artifact from an earlier era of anti-Nazism. Tens of thousands of people rediscovered—and promptly shared and retweeted—a clip from Don’t Be a Sucker, a short propaganda film made by the U.S. War Department in 1943.

When it first debuted, Don’t Be a Sucker would have played in movie theaters. Now it has made its 21st-century premiere thanks to a network of smaller screens and the Internet Archive, where it is available in full. Almost 75 years after it was first shown, Don’t Be a Sucker lives again as a public object in a new and strange context.

Its opening clip is a direct and plain-language parable in anti-fascism. It begins as a red-faced man brandishes a pamphlet and addresses a crowd: “I see negroes holding jobs that belong to me and you. Now I ask you, if we allow this thing to go on, what’s going to happen to us real Americans?” He proceeds to blame blacks, Catholics, Freemasons, and immigrants for the nation’s ills.

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America,” says an older man with an Eastern European accent.

He introduces himself to a younger man next to him: “I was born in Hungary but now I am an American citizen. And I have seen what this kind of talk can do—I saw it in Berlin. I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we have heard today.”

“But I was a fool then,” he continues. “I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. Unfortunately it was not so. They knew they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation.”
Click to expand...

Michael Oman-Reagan, an anthropologist and researcher in British Columbia, was the first to post the clip on Saturday evening, in a tweet comparing the orator’s rhetoric to President Donald Trump’s. His post has since been retweeted more than 85,000 times.

But he was not alone in linking the events in Charlottesville to the Second World War. Orrin Hatch, a Republican of Utah and the president pro tempore of the Senate, said in a tweet on Thursday: “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

What makes the film so remarkable? It’s not as if Don’t Be a Sucker encapsulates some lost golden age of American anti-racism. Indeed the contradictions of the 1940s are inseparable from the film. In its opening montage, it shows a multiethnic group of kids—white, black, and East Asian—playing baseball. Yet in 1943, the same year it was released, the U.S. federal government kept more than 100,000 Americans imprisoned solely for the crime of being Japanese. And it was on its way to implementing one of the great anti-black wealth transfers of American history.

Still, Don’t Be a Sucker seems wise. It seems to know how democratic solidarity falters, how prejudice and factionalism can fracture a nation, and how all these forces might manifest in the United States of America. This wisdom may have emerged from simple practicality: Though the U.S. Army and Navy remained segregated for another five years, they were already vast and diverse enterprises by 1943. Simply put, different people had to work together to win the Second World War. The same was true of the whole country.

And in that, Don’t Be a Sucker may point to a deeper driver of the American experiment in multi-ethnic democracy. Building a diverse commonwealth has never been just an idealistic aspiration or moral avocation. It has been a requirement of the republic’s survival—the sole remedy to the cancer of white supremacy.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...n-anti-nazi-film-has-its-viral-moment/536739/

You can watch the whole film here
 
1

1.21Gigawatts

Banned
Who would've thought that this would become relevant again?

Were are all the people now who claimed in recent that the nazi comparisons were so out of this world?

Didn't even take a year after Trumps inauguration and nazis are roaming the streets and taking lives.
What, if not Trumps nazi rhetoric emboldened them?
 
L

Lightning_Roller

Banned
The fact that a film from the forties about facism needs to be brought back into the modern era tells us everything we need to know about our time period.
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
It hit me at a personal level.. I was raised Catholic, and I see Catholics named as one of the scapegoat groups in this video.

Nowadays, Catholics aren't really considered as targets of hate.. but I know plenty of Catholics (family, coworkers, acquaintances) who happily go-along with the targeting of others.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
It's a slow process to erode his support amongst conservatives. It's happening but it can be discouraging when you see posts on social media from people who aren't necessarily diehard Trump supporters but are still able to wave away all the terrible things. Stuff like this helps but it's a shame that this won't be a mass awakening, like it should. So many still finding ways to blame minorities for the atrocities brought on them.
 
A

Agent Gibbs

Member
It's funny a lot of people who support Trump don't like change, they want things to be back how they were in the 40s and 50's, things were better back then apparently. Well for once I agree and this video shows it, time to ram it down their throats that even back then people weren't openly racist ass hats and fought extremism and Nazi's to the death, so we'd have a better world free from people like them
 
J

JustenP88

I earned 100 Gamerscore™ for collecting 300 widgets and thereby created Trump's America
I've watched it a few times this past year and I like it cause I cry ever tim.

It's like it was created by time travellers, given its relevance to today.
 
A

Atolm

Member
Lostconfused said:
Why not and specifically which ones?
Click to expand...

The battle of Stalingrad ended officially the 28th of February 1943.

If the film was made in 1943 it would be literally impossible to know the place of the D-Day landings. Outside of very-high ranking officers no one knew and more than one place was considered. Even the Nazis were convinced (thanks to misinformation and counter-espionage) that the big landing would be elsewhere until a week or two after D-Day, that's why they delayed sending reinforcements, which in turn cost them greatly as the Allies managed to establish bridgeheads and gain firm foothold in the continent due to their massive air superiority.
 
J

jelly

Member
Blame and misplacing it deliberately or not is easy and people, politicians, media ram it home. You hear it every day.
 
R

rudger

Member
It's sad that this shit needs to be brought up again and again after so many years. Last year I was at birthday party for somebody on my wife's side and there's a family that shows up to all the events. The people her parents age were shit talking Hillary and saying they might vote Trump and their mother (who is 90) just looked on in disbelief. Eventually I asked what she was thinking and she said, "My children are being idiots. I actually remember what Hitler sounded like. He speaks like Hitler. How can they support him?" People like to pretend this stuff is ancient history when there are those alive today who can still remember.

Some on here might notice I get frustrated in many Israel related threads. Sometimes it's cause I see dumb fucks write things like, "anti-semitism isn't as prevalent as people make it out to be" or "there is no longer a need for a Jewish state, we are past that". It's no more ignorant than "racism ended with Obama". Last weekend thousands of white nationalists marched with anti-Semitic chants to support a confederate statue. These fights are far from over. Our country is under siege and it is terrifying. I can be thankful that I live in an area where I feel relatively safe, but that doesn't mean I should be blind to what's going on around this country.
 
M

Messofanego

Banned
This is what white people should be sending to their families and friends. Especially to the bigots, which are bound to be in most families.

"Hey, that fella is talking about me"
"And that makes a difference, doesn't it?"

Right? But whites aren't being persecuted. So white people have to make up a persecution complex because equality seems like oppression to the privileged.

"When that first minority lost out, everybody lost out. They made the mistake of gambling with other people's freedom."

"If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice, we are threatening our own freedom and this is not simply an idea. This is good, hard common sense. You see here in America, it's not a question whether we tolerate minorities. America is minorities. And that means you and me."

Yet people still attack Black Lives Matter among other minority-driven organisations. They think they are terrorist groups. This kind of thinking is the same as when the Black Panthers rose in prominence. First it starts with disagreeing vehemently with how minorities protest, that it's too disruptive and not ordered enough. They'll argue about the name. They won't research anything. Next thing you know, they're fine with protests being shut down. They're fine with voter suppression tactics. They're fine with transgender people not being allowed in the military. They're fine with a travel ban. They're fine with shutting down affirmative action. Diversity quotas? Safe spaces? Women-only screenings? White males not allowed into the conversation? Any inch given to persecuted minorities means discrimination.

These are well-meaning moderates and liberals turning into suckers.
 
G

gabbo

Member
HylianTom said:
It hit me at a personal level.. I was raised Catholic, and I see Catholics named as one of the scapegoat groups in this video.

Nowadays, Catholics aren't really considered as targets of hate.. but I know plenty of Catholics (family, coworkers, acquaintances) who happily go-along with the targeting of others.
Click to expand...

A certain segment of Catholics will claim victimhood and persecution because they can't target others openly and don't like being called on it.
 
G

Geist-

Member
Wow, what a great video. It's hard to believe the US government made something so progressive 17 years before the Civil Rights Act.
 
M

MLH

Member
Excellent video, sadly won't work on the people it needs to. So many people with their head in the sand these days...
It would help if we could separate them from their social media "news" bubble they've created for themselves, bring community back into peoples lives. I feel like the current state of society is partially responsible for such behavior festering. We're all isolated, eyes glued to screens, content provided for us automatically by machines that match us with things we'd 'like' to see, not what we should see.
 
E

Ekai

Member
MLH said:
Excellent video, sadly won't work on the people it needs to. So many people with their head in the sand these days...
It would help if we could separate them from their social media "news" bubble they've created for themselves, bring community back into peoples lives. I feel like the current state of society is partially responsible for such behavior festering. We're all isolated, eyes glued to screens, content provided for us automatically by machines that match us with things we'd 'like' to see, not what we should see.
Click to expand...


It would get called fake news and the Republicans and their base would deny how Nazi like they are.
 
S

SovanJedi

provides useful feedback
gabbo said:
A certain segment of Catholics will claim victimhood and persecution because they can't target others openly and don't like being called on it.
Click to expand...

Lest we forget that video uploaded to Youtube a while back featuring Catholics being interviewed and crying over gay marriage being legal and not being allowed to discriminate against them.

I forget who it is and, frankly, I'm not willing to find it. I can't watch it for even a few seconds without getting enraged.
 
E

Ekai

Member
SovanJedi said:
Lest we forget that video uploaded to Youtube a while back featuring Catholics being interviewed and crying over gay marriage being legal and not being allowed to discriminate against them.

I forget who it is and, frankly, I'm not willing to find it. I can't watch it for even a few seconds without getting enraged.
Click to expand...

It's this. They literally think it's a different point of view. It's bullshit. "No one should be suppressed!" "I have gay friends so I can discriminate against them and it doesn't make me bigoted!" "God loves us, therefore we can discriminate them" "Speak truth with love, express bigotry with opennness"
*cue swelling music*
God this is such horseshit propaganda. Plus it was made in response to a video of people coming out. It's ridiculous.

This is such a good parody.
 
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