this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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Yah but to be fair, MAGA isn’t helpful in this regard by being so much like the Nazis.
I mean it's fine to make comparisons if they're valid, but Nazi Germany comparisons are literally the only comparisons that I see. I never see these camps being compared to the Russian Gulags or MAGA being compared to the Know Nothings from the 1850s or Trump being compared to Andrew Jackson, and so on. These comparisons are also accurate and valid, and I would argue that they add an element of depth that our discourse severely lacks.
Essentially all history education in the US is heavily politicized except for WW2, the only thing Americans could agree on about the last 200 years is that Nazis were bad, and even that is now becoming 'controversial', with some schools like in Florida wanting to teach more about "both sides" of the holocaust. There's a reason my mom really loved the quote "Don't let school get in the way of your education."
The average knowledge of the things you mentioned would be "isn't Jackson the guy on the $20?" "Weren't gulags in Siberia or something? What even is a gulag exactly?" And "'Know Nothings'?? Yeah I literally 'know nothing' about that."
It's up to individuals and families to teach their kids actual history, and most parents both work and have little time to teach their kids anything that the schools don't teach them. And now I see kids leaning history from youtubers, it's a pretty depressing situation.
While I agree with your point that parents should take an active role in teaching their kids history, I also think a lot of adults need to actually spend time educating themselves because they lack basic historical knowledge themselves. A lot of grown adults don't know why Jackson is on the $20 bill or what the gulags even are. We can't possibly educate the next generation when the current generation is ignorant. We need to have some sort of shift in our society to emphasize the importance history and historical accuracy because our national discourse is severely lacking in nuance and depth.
Definitely, we have been trending further toward anti-intellectualism for a while, not just history but people of all ages need to recognize that learning is a lifelong process, you can't just graduate high school and be done with it. Things learned in school even ten years ago or less can be outdated, society as a whole is learning more about the past all the time.