"History lessons about Democrats," WWI & WWII edition

Why'd you include WWI in the title? It had nothing to to with fascism.

To bring President Wilson (D) into this, and I believe you could make the argument the German Empire was proto-fascist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Empire

After WWI, the allies certainly did their best to try to nudge Germany in the "Weimar Republic" direction, but the seeds of democracy are fragile, old habits die hard, and they reverted to a strongman.

After all, a big part of Hitler's appeal was "restoring German glory."

President Wilson was quite the racist and eugenicist. I think if you do some research you'll see that he is not a very admirable figure at all.

Fascism wasn't a child of imperialism. While imperialism did promote strongman behavior in world affairs and was a horrific ideology in its own right, Nazi Germany wasn't the result of a reversion to it. Fascism was something totally new, a creation that could only be born in the 20th century. And born it was, and like imperialism has had its own effects and legacy.

There was no 'good guy' or 'bad guy' in WWI. Britain and France for example were strongmen in their own right. Germany just got shafted at Versailles and had to take the blame because they lost. Am I saying that the German Empire was better and more morally right than everyone else in respect as a strongman? No, they did plenty of bad s*** too. For example like the British and the French, they also participated in late 19th century colonialism(although Otto Von Bismark had been against it).

Hitler did use the former glory appeal, perverting and twisting that history to fit the agenda of his own. And it certainly wasn't hard with the effects of Versailles being what they were. These effects are what made his rise to power possible, without that dynamic he would've still been an art school reject. It is a common theme among fascists to appeal to some former glory of the perception thereof, and the Nazis were not unique in this respect, another example of this was Mussolini's promise to 'rebuild the Roman Empire'.

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Hitler did use the former glory appeal, perverting and twisting that history to fit the agenda of his own. And it certainly wasn't hard with the effects of Versailles being what they were. These effects are what made his rise to power possible, without that dynamic he would've still been an art school reject. It is a common theme among fascists to appeal to some former glory of the perception thereof, and the Nazis were not unique in this respect, another example of this was Mussolini's promise to 'rebuild the Roman Empire'."

In that text alone I am reminded by trump's promises to "make america great again"

Oh yeah, the usual “this president was a flaming white supremacist” caveat certainly applies to Wilson. As it arguably does to any President who could permit an evil like slavery or Jim Crow to take place inside his country’s borders. Although I am told that Wilson’s case of it was particularly severe even for his time.

Even Abraham Lincoln (see this cringeworthy gem from a Lincoln-Douglas debate) — a complicated relationship with race too even as he emancipated the Southern slaves during the Civil War (by necessity?) and across the nation after the Civil War (which he can be commended for). I personally think Lincoln was forced into saying things like this in order to reassure white voters: which, coincidentally, were the only kind of voters there were back then.

I am also told LBJ used the N-word in private as you might expect from an old white genteel politician from the South. Even as he did more than anyone since Lincoln to further black civil rights in this country.

All of which is to say: our country has plenty of reckoning to do with race, but I feel we can still look to the beneficial examples of our past leaders for inspiration and guidance. The alternative is to become completely unmoored from history, which is dangerous.