“The Protest at the Dock” was scheduled for noon on a Tuesday, so it wasn’t surprising to see mostly retired people out there waving their signs. My sister and I among them. Our “audience” was people in their cars and trucks lining up to drive onto the Edmonds-Kingston ferry and, after a new ferry docked, those coming back from Kingston. It was a friendly crowd, and many of them waved and honked back at us. We loved them for it.
The formal name for the demonstration was “Stand up to Fascism.” As Sue and I moved around, admiring the artistry and ingenuity of the signs, we talked with people holding them. Several people made historical references to Europe in the 1930s and ‘40s. One man talked about his father-in-law who’d fought in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Later, as we were walking toward Top Pot for coffee and donuts, a couple of young men, barely voting age, stopped us. “Hitler wasn’t elected,” the one with the cleverly gelled blond hair said, pointing at my sister’s sign.
“Oh, yes he was,” Sue replied.
She’d been infuriated for months about important facts the history books in her grandson’s school left out. She was still talking about it while we waited for out coffees at Top Pot. The barista came right back at her with stories about how clueless her own teenage children were.
I tend to be more sympathetic. History is a huge subject. I still don’t know all the Civil War battlegrounds or the list of the Chinese dynasties in order.
That’s not the point, though. While the rise of Hitler and the world war that followed is real for Boomers, it may not seem so for their grandchildren.
Time passes, and without real connections, you have to wonder, will history books be enough?
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Note: Was Hitler actually elected? (Was Sue right?)
1932: Hitler’s party, the Nazi Party became the largest party in the Reichstag with 37.3% of the vote.
1933: President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor.
1934: President Hindenburg died. Hitler called for new elections and, using fraud and voter intimidation, won 90% of the vote and became Furer.
Himself is a historian and he very aerated about those who quote using unchecked and unverified sources. It’s always been a problem, and one which is only going to get worse with AI’s methodologies of (not) verifying everything it crawler-reads online.
Tell him thank you for the warning. The AI overview that Google gives you at the top of the page is convenient as a starting point. But then, when you scroll down, you can judge the source. With all the garbage on line, you wonder how good AI is at judging the veracity of what it scoops up. And, as he says, it may just get worse.
Agreed that history is a huge subject. Subjects within subjects, eras within eras. Not to mention complex too. And depending on who you read, you get a different account or perspectives on things. Sometimes it feels it’s getting harder to share our voices or what’s the truth. People can be so quick to believe what’s on Google and the AI-results these days.
I’ve been adding to my historical knowledge by reading acknowledged historians: On Ukraine: Prof. Timothy Snyder (his Yale classes) and Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: a History of Ukraine, The American Revolutionary War in a new TV series by Ken Burns. Chinese history is so long and complex that I have to read about it bit by bit.
I admit that I got the information on Hitler from AI, Google, and wikipedia. It’s hard to find truth on social media, but it’s useful for keeping up with current affairs as long as you take some things with a grain of salt.
urghhhh. I think it’s not just history books. The teachers are told to teach to the MCAS tests, and MCAS is not asking these questions. Parents and relatives need to step up and educate their children/grandchildren. Get them off their phones (where they read things that aren’t true). Will we have to repeat history to find out? I sure hope not. I’m so grateful to all who protest.
My sister is scouring bookstores for history books that at least hit the high points. She supplements that with discussions with her grandkids. If they can learn the basics and develop an interest in history, that’s a good start. Hopefully it will lead to an open mind and a lifetime of learning more about the enormous, fascinating story of the people who came before us.
Well done both of you for doing what you can. Sometime in the early 1990s my youngest daughter asked me who Winston Churchill was. I was shocked until I reflected that at her age I would not have known about our World War One leaders.
It’s a good sign that your youngest daughter asked about Winston Churchill when she was young. I suspect she knows a lot about him now.
I’ve seen Trump as a Hitler – Wannabe since 2015. My older brother told me I was being paranoid. I knew I wasn’t.
Hitler eventually gave up and killed himself.
Maybe history will repeat itself.
It’s infuriating to me that folks can simply GOOGLE information instantaneously and still don’t bother to check their facts. (Meanwhile, I’ll even google the correct spelling of “instantaneous” before posting this reply.)
The only time most of us Google something is when we’re uncertain. The problem is when you’re certain about something because you wanted to believe the lie.
I guess ignorance of history only ensures it will repeat itself in some form or another.
So true.
Last night I watched just the first half of one episode in the PBS series, That Small Island, the Story of the Irish, and I was shocked at all the violence against the Irish in the 1600s. We don’t want to go back to those awful times.
The women’s outfits remind me of A Handmaid’s Tale. Was that intentional?
Yes. They said they had the dresses from an earlier demonstration.
Okay. That was a clever idea! So glad to see people taking action!
The big news in the east (besides ICE killings) is that the federal government took down all references to slavery in the Philadelphia historical exhibits. It’s as if it never happened. People are upset. The feds came in and ripped down the signs. Just like that.
They don’t want us to think about slavery. It undercuts their cult of perfection.