Nor about what causes civilizations to decline. Nor anything else, apparently, that he makes his own issue or writes a book about.
The Wannsee Conference was in January 1942. Belzec began operations as an extermination camp in March 1942; Sobibor became operational by May 1942; and Treblinka by July 1942. Experiments with mass killings using gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau actually seem to predate the Wannsee Conference, with Auschwitz-Birkenau clearly in action as a major extermination camp by June 1943.
Meanwhile, Nazi Germany launched a major offensive against the USSR in June-November 1942; the German position at Stalingrad did not finally collapse until February 1943.
If anything, the Nazis launched the worst phase of the Holocaust at the point where they still clearly thought they could win, and began trying to wind down the Holocaust as the tide began to turn against them: Belzec was dismantled in June 1943, Treblinka in August 1943 and Sobibor in October 1943 (following uprisings in the latter two camps); shutting down these camps also coincided with the beginnings of massive Soviet counteroffensives. Of course, winding down the Holocaust did not involve letting the remaining Jews go; killing any survivors was part of the process of getting rid of witnesses and evidence, along with attempts to destroy the bodies of victims.
Well, to be fair, British low-skilled people don’t want to work there, so we have to import people who do, so British immigration is America’s fault. Subject settled.
Darn, I thought we were already in the Pit.
Dennis Hopper tried that, didnt turn out well.
(btw, first time I notice it’s Delibes’s “Lakme” as background music for this scene, good choice)
Indeed. Is it just me that finds it amusing that our Swede here has such an issue with those horrible brown people coming to his country when over 10% of the population of his country emigrated to the US?
So, what makes it OK for Swedes to go en masse to the US but not brown people to go en masse to Sweden?
Put up or shut up RaleighRally. Several (most?) of the historical or demographic assertions you have made have been proven false by direct evidence. These have also mostly been facts you could have easily found by yourself by simple web searches.
You’ve repeatedly dropped lines of debate without acknowledgement where contrary evidence to your position has been revealed and have simply moved on to a different tack - which often also lacked in factual accuracy.
Maybe it’s time to pull back, do some research (that’s not just repeating some nutter’s position while superficially checking the facts), and put forth a version of your theory with the level of support a reasonable high school student could muster.
It wasn’t just Poles who immigrated here to Pittsburgh before the 1950s, either. I saw a news article today about a church that was the hub of a Croatian community. The parish’s Web site says the parish was established in 1894, to serve Croatian immigrants, most of whom came here between 1890 and 1920.
They weren’t trying to assimilate into America, either, as is often claimed about immigrants in this time period. One of the purposes of the church was to “preserve the Croatian language and customs”.
We’ve also got a Greek Orthodox cathedral that I pass on my way home from work most days (and that has a lovely Greek food festival every spring). Its sign proclaims that it was established in 1906, so presumably there was a Greek Orthodox community here at that time.
We have an Italian neighborhood, Bloomfield, that has had a significant Italian population since around 1900.
We have a mosque that was founded in 1932, according to their website. Again, that implies that there was a Muslim community here at that time. People generally don’t build churches, mosques, or synagogues unless there are people there to use them.
Pittsburgh has had many different kinds of immigrants since well before the 1950s.
San Francisco has a Chinatown that dates back to the 1850s. North Beach, also in San Francisco, started attracting Italian immigrants after it was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake.
Immigrants are amongst the most highly motivated and productive members of a population. People generally don’t like to leave their birthplaces. Especially in traditional cultures, there are generations of connections to people and places and traditions that they have to give up. It’s hard and it’s painful and it’s a lifetime of heartbreak. People move because they need to and because they are driven to. Immigrants have always been the engine of American progress.
Remember Lawrence Welk and his funny accent? No, he was no immigrant. He was born and raised in Strasburg, North Dakota, where everybody spoke German; he learned English in school.
Interestingly, one President had English as a second language. No, it wasn’t Barack Obama: it was Martin Van Buren, whose first language was Dutch, even though he was born and grew up in upstate New York.
(But of course, the Dutch and Germans are white folk in the eyes of the OP.)
:dubious:
“Ethnic suicide”?
Please provide some specific examples of such a thing in times past, and, as to each, please make the case it was a bad idea. N.B.: Ethnic assimilation is not the same thing and is usually not a bad idea.
If there was such a huge number of Polish in the US, why didn’t they get a higher quota in the Immigration Act of 1924? Consider this:
Immigration Act of 1924 - Wikipedia
European Americans - Wikipedia
The Poles were not the ones to be favored in the quotas because of a reason you might conclude yourself.
Until 1890, you mostly had Northwestern European immigrants, so it was all fine. But then the US started to get immigrants that were not able to assimilate as easily, and that’s why the need for Immigration reform. But in the 60s, because of the “Political Correctness”-revolution, you just had to lift those quotas in order to avoid the risk of being stigmatized by the mighty “Political Correct”-media.
From your link:
And according to a professor at Harvard who is the world’s leading political scientist and expert on social capital, one can even now measure the positive impact on America’s social structure as a result of the Scandinavian immigration.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/25/6/1825848.pdf
High social capital is very important in a society. High social capital leads to less crime, less corruption and greater productivity, among other things. Social capital tends to decline in diverse communities, and in Scandinavia immigration will of course also mean less fraction Scandinavians, further fueling the decline of social capital.
So amanset, I have showed you that Americans and Swedes are very close in terms of culture and Swedes produce higher social capital than any other ethnicity in the US. And if that is not enough for you, I can add that the Swedes didn’t emigrate to England, because that country had no continent to fill!!!
I must admit to being a bit confused about the reason. Was it because Poland did not exist as an independent state during the relevant time period, but was mostly part of the Russian Empire?
And I find it hard to see why you want to draw a line between Germans and Poles. Apparently, Germans are northern Europeans, and so are good immigrants, while Poles are eastern Europeans, and so are bad immigrants. I don’t see that matches the reality of German Americans and Polish Americans, quite apart from the fact that historically the boundary between Germany and Poland has been very moveable.
Okay, and what do the Swedes have that the Irish or Germans (or Chinese) don’t, that make them more apt to become Americans? Are the latter organ grinders and sellers of ready-made clothing, only in the US to foster nihilism?
Or maybe it’s just the timeless European cultural practice of taking the piss out of obvious bullshit.
You haven’t demonstrated the first part is true and you can’t since it isn’t, and I think the inhabitants of countries other than mine can decide for themselves what they do or don’t want to teach themselves. What do you care about Japan’s immigration policies?
Why did the politicians care what the media was supposedly saying?
Who, exactly, are “Northwestern European” immigrants, and what about them makes them better than other immigrants?
But the earlier immigrants didn’t always assimilate easily. They continued to speak their native languages- my grandmother remembered an uncle of hers who had immigrated from Sweden and did not speak English. There were towns in the Midwest where a lot of people spoke German, Norwegian, or Swedish. They formed churches and organizations made up mostly of their own ethnic group and intended to promote the language and culture of that group, as the Croatian immigrants here in Pittsburgh did with their church that I mentioned earlier. The children of the immigrants were more interested in learning English and assimilating. It’s much easier to learn a new language when you’re a child than when you’re an adult. Of course more of them were going to learn English than the adults, you always have more people willing to do something when it’s easy than to do something hard.
They look more assimilated now, of course, because they came here longer ago. You don’t know that the descendants of today’s Mexican immigrants in the 2100s won’t be as assimilated as the descendants of 19th century Swedish immigrants are today.
The descendants of those Croatians who founded that church in Pittsburgh have assimilated. The diocese is trying to demolish or sell the church, because not enough people go to it. Presumably, their descendants go to churches with other Americans, or disdain organized religion, just like many other Americans do.
Having a different religion isn’t a total barrier to assimilation, either. There are a lot of Jews in the US who you wouldn’t know were Jewish unless they told you. Today’s Muslim immigrants may end up following a similar pattern. Most of them haven’t, yet, because they haven’t been here long enough.
Prejudice against us Poles?
FTR, I’m only half Polish. The rest is good old American Mutt. You know, like our current President…