I cannot live in a country that makes racism into law.

It's getting just too close to Nazi Germany for my liking. I'm gonna start doing some research into relocating somewhere else. I never thought I would do anything like this. I really thought that if we Americans stuck together we could make this country work for everyone, but it seems like the bigotry is just too ingrained and we get awful laws passed because of it, laws that hurt everyone in the long run.

I'm feeling very sad and disgusted as well today. :-(

And this law notwithstanding, the USA is a hell of a lot different than Nazi Germany.

Yeah the law is abominable, no it doesn't make us "too close to Nazi Germany...".

Or maybe checking one's papers in one state is too close to genocide. I actually think there's a big difference.

Yellow badge made mandatory by the Nazis in France

You see... as much as the Nazis hated the Jews, is wasn't particularly easy to tell a Jew from a non-Jew. So the solution, NOT the FINAL one, was to not only make everybody carry papers, but once identified, make certain people wear a type of badge identifying their status. That way it made it easier for the powers that were, and their followers and supporters, to inflict their hatred and crimes on the "right" people.

Wouldn't want to accidentally beat up a Catholic, now would we?

Arizona has the same problem you see? The governor even said so.

No racism, no racial profiling on her watch.

Wouldn't want to accidentally beat up a legal Mexican-American, now would we?

Maybe Arizona should use the badge thingy too. You know, streamline the work it takes to hate.

:evilfrown:

Very true!

In what year of Nazi Germany?
the first year?
2nd?
3rd?
Last?
Do you even know how long Hitler was in power and how incremental the steps towards fascism were?

we're NOT CLOSE TO NAZI GERMANY. arizona is the outlier, not the norm.

progress is v e r y slow - and there will be 1 step back for every 2 forward. it's the way this place has always been.

Do you not see that the very fact this got passed as a law has moved the "norm" wayyyyyyy down the line for America?
do you not realize, or perhaps, if old enough, remember when a law like this would never ever have been
discussed, much less contemplated???
How many laws like this do there need to be before it is worth concerning yourself about?

Remember that as of a few weeks ago, the idea of a President sanctioning the assassination of an American citizen would have been horrific. But now it is merely being debated AFTER the decision has been made.
The US torturing people and denying them legal protection was unheard of, until 2002.
The right "justification" is all that is needed to change the norm.

Amazing what you can get used to, and tell yourself it is just an anomaly, not really what America is like.

i recognize and understand every single implication and possibility of the slippery-slope scenario that you're freaking out about. but when was it that a law like this would never have been comtemplated? the brief period from 1964 - 1980? before that, racism was institutional across this country, and since reagan we've been on a trajectory wherein american corporations get to hire illegals with no consequences - hence there is a growing demand for the cheap, non-union labor they provide.

this law reflects a demographic (white arizonans) who are afraid of losing what they have and understand (a white majority society) to a phenomena they don't understand and can't control (illegal immigration).

it won't stand.

but someone will sue over it and it will get repealed.

Things are definitely coming to a precipice in this nation.

I think the few left that survived that would disagree.

citizens rights are being chipped away legally bit by bit by a rogue, radical element that is taking over?

Is it right? No, but it is pale in comparison to being killed for being a Jew.

It was done incrementally starting out with finding a scapegoat, the Jews, to blame for Germanys problems. Then their rights and identity as Germans were slowly taken away from them bit by bit, law by law until one day German Jews woke up to find themselves considered illegal in their own country, unable to work and often even shop for food legally. Then years later came the arrests, the camps and the genocide because they had been singled out as undesirables in German society. If you can't see the parallels, I don't know how to make it any clearer to you.

rather than the travesty of the law itself.

i mean, think about what you really wanted to talk about in this thread...was it Nazi Germany or stupid Arizona?

the same was what went down in Germany, and to comapare the two takes away from those who were killed during Nazi Germany and at the same time, takes away from this discussion.

You know that little ditty about not repeating history or you will be doomed. That's what I'm talking about. But this crosses the pale for me. It's the line drawn in the sand, the straw that broke the camel's back. I finally realized I gotta get out.

:shrug:

We've pulled into the parking lot of fascism, driving around and looking for a parking space right now.

As others have said,the final solution did not take place till years after the beginning of the demonization of the Jews,Gypsies,Gays and anyone else who did not have the right genes.It took years of slow,steady and relentless indoctrination to create the mindset that led to the atrocities.
What is happening in this country is very much similar to what happened in Germany.We have a country whose population has been put to sleep by a well planned and coordinated brainwashing and indoctrination program/mindfuck into accepting a slow dismantleing of our civil rights and a disregard for human rights.
That is exactly what happened in Germany.And it is happening here.Now.

Frankly,this law scares me more than any other thing that has happened in this country during my life time.This law is very much a case of allowing the camel to get his nose under the tent flap and as far as I am concerned it needs to be struck down immediately.

I understand things progress to worse things sometimes...I just find thinking the country is so bad that you have to leave it...when you can't really find a country that doesn't have some failing on its treatment of people or minorities and thus, what's the point?

survived the death camps, I'd be offended by the comparison.

who's been comparing this country to Germany in the 1930s since oh the USPA was passed.

Yep, she danced in front of Dr. Mengele...

How them apples?

I am sure many would be offended. It offends me to compare the two. Definitely over the top.

That's not to say what is happening isn't wrong. Of course it is. We can do our best to stop it. Come together, not leave.

There's an idea by a mainstream politician with his own TV show. There are plenty of people who would gladly "round up" gays, nonChristians, etc etc...

The OP fears that if the Arizona law stands, who knows what is next?

Never say "it can't happen here".

If they get away with it, I can see other "undesirables" targeted.

Rev. Niemoller stated it very well in his statement:

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Niemoller, who was not Jewish or Communist or a Gypsy or a union guy ended up in a concentration camp himself and he had been a supporter of the Nazis in the beginning.

That is what happened in Germany, as I am sure you are aware. Not the same thing.

than standing up to it, I wish her the best, but it was false to compare the two.

based on their religion or their ethnicity? Like we did in New York after 9/11?

Not like that.

with millions of its citizens being rounded up to be murdered. It was a process. And of all the elements that are similar in America, the idea that we are special and do not do wrong is the most worrisome one because the attitude exists in the space where brakes should be.

to killing millions of Hispanic poeple?

because of their race???????
Guess you missed the whole New Orleans police trial news last week, eh?

Do we group them all together and starve them to death? Gas them?

In New Orleans, all the poor people, mostly blacks, were grouped together with no food or water for a week, in the Dome. Supplies were PREVENTED from being sent to them. Others were left on rooftops to die of heat.

In Haiti, it is being revealed, by first hand accounts by DUers who have been there, the relief money is not being spent on the poor. Medical care, food, water and shelter is still not being provided.

In Iraq, we cut off food, water, electricity from cities and shot civilians on sight.
the entire infrastructure of the cities was DELIBERATELY destroyed, except for the oil fields.
Hospitals were stripped.
Same in Afghanistan. A recent story is that a group of youths, under 18, were handcuffed and shot to death
by OUR troops.They were yanked out of their beds at night and murdered.

Recently this winter, the Navajo reservations were devastated by severe winter storms.
The state and Feds were non-responsive.

Are you honestly saying because we do not gas people that we are not killing masses of them?
"Them" being non-white?
It doesn't count unless we gas them? We have to go that far before it is a problem?

You talk about citizens rights being chipped away...
Why are you leaving?

you think the Holocaust came out fully formed?

No, it started with bullshit laws like what Arizona passed and the governor signed

This is why those of us who GET THAT and understand what NEVER AGAIN stand for, want to stop this before it gets THERE.

Oh and before you say it, MY DAD is a holocaust survivor, so don't throw that at me. I also went to school and ahem studied the Holocaust... as well as other GENOCIDES and they all share starting with innocent sounding laws to protect the good citizens of (insert here) from the OTHER... (INSERT IDENTITY HERE)

So should I compare this with oh Jim Crow South? Is that better for ya? I mean at least nobody died...

(Yes they did, Lynching, and this was pushed by a WHITE SUPREMACIST)

thanks nadinb.. (can't spell too much Vicodin) give 'em the real history!

scary trends are scary trends. We cannot repeat that history. Although comparisons to Nazi Germany are far too common in modern times, this one is for a reason and is indeed a clear preliminiary step in many of the genocidal events in history.

I think the poor cops in AZ are going to be pulling their hair out on this one.

I'm qualified to emigrate, and I have the classification of a "skilled and desirable" worker on a "long term shortage" list - which means, I'll get it.

So now its really up to America. Are people going to wake up and start fighting back? I'm on the streets of my community, writing letters, putting up flyers, speaking at community gatherings, writing on the internet, connecting with other activists in other states trying to mobilize and organize actual resistance to the rape and pillage that is structurally embedded into the very fabric of our plunder capitalist fascist (ie. merging of corporate and political power) nightmare.

But as I become more and more convinced that there is no hope, and that the people are going to allow this immortality just like the Germans did - there's going to come a point where I decide it is hopeless, and them I'm gone.

homelessness in the early eighties. Now it's gone on for thirty years, become institutionalized and nothing is being done to reverse it, but this hits an all time low. After all the progress made in the sixties in the Civil Rights Movement, we've not only stepped backwards but actually have done something I find scary and that is the first step of institutionalizing racism. For those who don't see how it was done in Nazi Germany, it started out slowly with laws being passed making Germans of Jewish religion and ancestry distinct from other Germans stripping away some of their rights. The camps and the murders came years later, but it started with seemly innocuous laws making certain Germans not as German as everyone else and therefore not entitled to the same privileges as those other Germans.

:)

I know Reagan kicked all the insane folks out of institutions in the 80s, but homelessness has been around forever.

Welfare would put them up in motels and try to find them permanent housing especially families. Most of the skid row bums who slept in the streets actually had a hotel room somewhere but were often too drunk to make it home after a bender. Pick up a book called "You Owe Yourself a Drunk". It's about the skid row habitues of Seattle who were studied by a Phd. student for his thesis. He found most of them had a room to live in and did day work for the cash to pay for that as well as what they panhandled.

In the eighties two things happened after the Jarvis Amendment passed in California and then similar legislation was passed in many other states in a domino effect. That not only threw the mentally incapacitated out of institutions into the streets, but it caused a real estate boom, that priced all the flops out of the price range of the poor.

When I was a bartender in the late seventies and early eighties, I had a group of golf caddies who would come into my place and who worked in the nearby country club. Most of them were alcoholics or suffered from PTSD's from being in the Vietnam war so they weren't capable of doing more than day work, which caddying is. All had marginal housing of some kind, like a motel room paid for on a weekly basis or renting a room in a rooming house. One lived in a converted laundry room in the basement of an apartment building. I watched these men, who were hanging on to their lives by a fingernail become homeless one by one as these places were sold because they had become too valuable to be used just as income property with cheap rentals.

I am by no means ready to leave here, but I can envision futures in which I would. What kind of labor is in demand and where? What countries are open even if no family connections?

paperwork via INS, others not so much.

by it's expatriate citizens. The world is full of communities of refugees who are organizing and fighting out side of their countries of origin to bring democracy back where dictators have taken over.

it is a good thing that the civil rights marchers in Selma had more courage then you - you betray all those that sacrificed so much for civil rights in America. Here we are with an African America President, something unimaginable 50 years ago, and you are blathering about dictatorships just because one state out of 50 passes an idiotic law.

that broke the camel's back. We all have one, perhaps yours is a long way from breaking. The unnecessary wars really had me thinking, and still do. She must have a long list of things that have been getting her down, and things about which she is truly "feeling ashamed".

I agree with you on some levels, of course we should stand and fight, and that is a good point. I think these discussion boards do more than just get our frustrations out and serve as a communication point. I think they also serve as a motivational and organizational center, and could indeed help us change the things that we are not proud of.

But again everyone has their breaking point. And it is true that some will have better success promoting change from outside the US instead of becoming frustrated here.

Don't you think that many in the march to Selma felt fear and doubts as they approached the state police at the Edmund Pettus bridge? They didn't quit and run away - did they? So what is so noble about betraying their sacrifice because Arizona - one state out of 50 - passes a racist law? Is it really that hopeless?

... when you get situated in your new Homeland. (Or PM me when you land so that I can apologize for my skepticism.)

Call me cynical if I don't believe that you'll really make good on your threat. (My bad if I'm wrong.)

Your reference to yourself as "we Americans" suggests otherwise...

TYY

_{TYY--->>> (Who is not fond of thinly-veiled (ill-informed Nazi Germany comparison) threats when used for dramatic effect on a public bulletin board.)}

but not leaving..not yet...

Bank on it. Our nation will tell one state to go fuck off and die.

don't let these bastards run you out of your own country - stay and FIGHT

If you've ever dealt with government contracts you know that the government will only give certain contracts to businesses run by people of the correct color. Unfortunately for me, I'm not the correct color, which means I get to experience the business end of government-sponsored racism in action on a regular basis. Experienced the same in college - would have easily gotten into the #1 school in the nation, were I the proud owner of an approved skin color.

It means, you are, whichever the consequences, on the better side of history.

Once, oh say 300 or 400 years from now, humans REALLY believe that all humans are created equal and deserve an equality of opportunity from cradle to grave, you can shed that chip on your shoulder.

Does that really make sense?

Doesn't anybody stop and think, wait, if we force people to think in terms of race, we might be perpetuating a vicious cycle?

If one approves of one flavor of institutional racism, on what grounds is there to condemn another flavor of the same thing?

who are AS QUALIFIED as your business get additional consideration to compensate for institutional racism. What that means is that, without the additional consideration, a white owned business would (because of acknowledged and unacknowledged bigotry) would win the contract no matter the status of their qualifications.

Institutional racism has been proven time after time after time after time. Leave society to its own devices, it will come out on the white side.

"Leave society to its own devices, it will come out on the white side."

Why do you think this is so?

Things are changing but we've got a long way to go.

Are you saying that white people are racists, therefore they should be discriminated against to compensate for their inherent racism against others?

Dey dook er jerbs!

"It's getting just too close to Nazi Germany for my liking."

Ahh, historical ignorance. A common sight on DU.

Their racist minutemen bullshit is coming over to our side. How long will it be before California has similar laws, or Texas?

i dunno how long.

though i think here in CA we will be able to beat those back without you.

Many have gone from being scared to angry as hell.

There is no way we're (the people here) are going to allow our fellow man and woman to be rounded up like trash without a fight.

I feel strongly that this law will be deemed unconstitutional but not without us making a lot of noise.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

....and it's greed and over-population at the source....too many on the planet, too much demand on resources, the value of life has declined....the unthinkable of a few years ago has now become the accepted norm....

....but you can't run and hide Cleita, it's everywhere....you'll have to stay and throw rocks with the rest of us; we'll need all the rock-throwers we can find....although for me, I'm just about three-quarters dead; my rock-throwing days are rapidly fading....but, good luck....

:hug:

So I rec'd your thread. I looked into it myself after the 2004 elections, along with another quarter million folks who were told Canada would not be taking in discontented US citizens. I don't blame you for seeing departure as a solution, your country left you long before you considered leaving it.

Be well. Leave sadness and disgust here where they belong. You make a difficult choice to be free of such things.

I went to his office and screamed bloody murder every day for weeks, but Ms pinhead and her kind are hell bent in embarrassing my state and have us all fucking labeled bigots. I'm gona tell people I'm from Amsterdam. :evilgrin: She's a foreigner to this state from Hollywood CA came here in 1970, maiden name "Drinkwine" :puke: Take a look at the face at wiki. :puke:

I hope she's barred from every mexican restaurant in town for spoiling appetites in her presence, but you can bet she eats where bushitler ate. If they feed her, I hope one of Joe's kids arrests the owner for drying while brown. I found a better place in the opposite direction not to far from here.

Look at the hatred then? Hundreds of thousands of clansmen marched on Washington. They didn't have Fox News or right wing hate radio to motivate them. They were born in hate. They lived in hate. And through their network of hatred they had massive marches. Compare that to the lame protestors of today. Today's haters have to be motivated by corporate-sponsored astroturf organizations. Today's tea baggers are minor compared to the clan.

The biggest difference between the KKK days and now is the media, the instant media where we are always shown conflict. If there is no story the media creates one. They have to produce conflict because that is how they make money. People love to watch conflict. America's pastime is a sport where one is pitted against the other. Fox News is the master of conflict.

I have noticed that from when right wing talk radio began the level of civil discourse began to decline. Fox News is the visual representation of right wing talk radio. They both market hatred. Every day they concoct a stew filled with hatred, racism, anger, fear and distrust and their audiences eagerly lap up every drop. They are hate addicts.

Just like an occasional brush fire that will eventually be put out, right wing states trying to suppress the rights of others will be squashed by the powers of the greater good. Right wingers will continue their hate-laced assaults of against others. But we will win in the end. Hates seems to ebb and flow like the tides, rising and falling. Let's hope this latest resurgence of hate will soon subside and sane minds prevail.

I'm scared.

It was worse then. And more raw hatred.

today's media thrives on self-created conflict. Tea Partiers would be a non-issue without the fucking media blowing this so far out of proportion.

Cheers

We're not the ones who should be banished (especially by self-banishment). The small minded need to go somewhere where they'll fit in.

There are a lot of people who are fighting it right now. There are boycotts and there will be lawsuits. There will be demonstrations.

The entire world is watching Arizona...the one state who did this.

And no...this is NOT Nazi Germany. The comparison is an insult and you should be ashamed.

You posted this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8206806

I'm scared!

This is not Nazi Germany and will never be.

One state out of 50 that made ONE idiotic racist law hardly means the United States is Nazi Germany. Given what happened in Nazi Germany...you should be ashamed for the comparison.

I don't blame your anger or fear, either.

reason I point it out is so that people look at the similarities and say to themselves that it will never be. When a state holds themselves superior to the federal government, there is reason to fear.

Peace.

This recent episode in Arizona is just increaing my desire to live in another country right now. K & R.

I can help you with that, and they are damn sure out there.

Schooled by the federal courts.

That's the difference. Nazi Germany did not have that kind of system.

What is it you find so intolerable about proving you are an American citizen if you are challenged?

Don't you agree that illegal immigration has gotten out of hand? The citizens of Arizona are dealing with half a million illegals who are causing its hospitals to go bankrupt and one out of five inmates in Arizona's jail and prisons is a Mexican illegal. What do you think should be done about it?

I believe the solution to the problem is a biometric ID card requirement as proof of citizenship. It's a common sense solution, not a transition into Nazism. How do you think such a requirement would "hurt everyone in the long run?"

dude, keep your biometric key cards in your own backwater country. This is America. We don't do that here. People should not be forced to carry any id here. Any other way would be totalitarianism.

spare the melodrama.
:rofl:

lol

I think it is important that we all listen to how this law is making others in our country feel. I am enraged by this law .... but, as a woman of western European ancestry I can't know how you feel (though I can imagine). It is important that we listen and understand how this law is perceived by those that will be targeted by it.

I have no doubt that you ARE feeling the comparison to Nazi germany ... I also don't doubt that I would feel it too!

Edit: puntuation

That's the exact same type of bigotry, of course.

only citizens but human beings at large. I definitely want to see the anti-gay laws that have been passed declared unconstitutional and wiped off the books.

Do you feel like the treatment of our GLBT community is comparable to Nazi Germany as well?

them less American and deserving of the rights other Americans take for granted. This is what the Nazis also did. Remember that gays had to wear little pink triangle badges just like the jews had to wear Star of David badges. The passing of this discriminatory law was not the single reason I'm taking this position. It's the last in a string of violations that I have seen profiling segments of the population as undesirable. However, no law has been passed requiring gays to have some proof of their right to live in this country yet. This is why this last insult to civil rights is so disturbing.

I don't agree with the comparison. That is all. Atrocious things are still happening today. Too many. But the severity in the atrociousness of Nazi Germany makes it hard for me to compare the two or three.

the Reich were not that extreme when they started changing things in 1933. It was years later that the full frenzy of the craziness that was begun in 1933 came to its end.

My initial thoughts on the Teafreaks and the now blatantly racist Right Wing Noise machine is that they would be quarantined as fringe elements. Now I'm not so sure......

mainstream and that their hatred is deemed acceptable.

Its scary how much hate and fear mongering is becoming so mainstream. I want to know what is really going on here. Wish I could leave as well. But I want to become a community activist and fight for justice to the best of my ability. Good luck with whatever you decide.