this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Alabama was the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights Movement, from Montgomery to Birmingham to Selma. A little unfair to assert it was a state that just makes people racist. The neo-confederates of the post-Depression Era had to work pretty hard to keep cramming Jim Crow down people's throats decade after decade.
That said, Huntsville Alabama circa 1950 was most notable for Redstone Arsenal, home to the Marshall Space Flight Center. The center was founded through Operation Paperclip, a project to export German rocket scientists to the United States and pump them for their expertise in the field.
A guy with a Nazi mother and White-Russian father who emigrated to a city built around the famous rocketry lab was almost certainly influenced by the German brand of fascist ideology.
That said, the Germans got their strain of fascism from Fordist antisemitism pumped into the country after WW1. So if you're going to pick a state to blame for The Heritage Foundation's brand of white nationalist hate, you'd be better off pointing the finger at Michigan.
I mean, isn't that because the core of the movement was persecuted black Southerners? Alabama having enough of thise guys to kickstart the movement feels like more of an indictment than praise.
It's like saying the birthplace of antifascism was Fascist Germany or Italy... Like, yeah... It be like it do, because of how it did?
Post-WW1 Italy had one of the largest and most active Communist Parties in Europe. I don't think it is reasonable to say "Italians are just fascist because of where they grew up" when you've got an enormous contrary datapoint. Neither is it reasonable to say Alabama produces racists ex nihilo. In the case of Redstone Arsenal, the federal government effective created a Fascist Reservation System and cultivated European extremist refugees like it was some kind of political petri dish.
You could find persecuted black workers from California to New York to Florida in 1963. Alabama wasn't notable in that regard.
The movement that the nascent 50s civil rights movement tapped into in Alabama was a large socio-economic network of majority-minority townships, allied churches, and civic organizations that the white nationalist state was already struggling to control. Much like with Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the problem in Alabama was that too many black residents were doing too well.
The response to the 60s Civil Rights Movement along the Gulf Coast was to demolish a lot of that black wealth, export jobs overseas, and lynch a lot of those young black leaders.
Exactly my thought when I read that.
You linked a source saying his mother was German, not that she was a Nazi. His father also did not move straight to Huntsville in 1951 according to this post, he retired there over a decade later after having worked in ~~Florida~~ Jacksonville (thanks to derfunkatron for the correction).
I linked a source saying she was a German refugee from 1945 who emigrated to a township staffed full of Nazi emigres. Also, his father was White Russia - 100% a fascist.
They did not move straight to Huntsville.
It's also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis. Was Alexander Kerensky a Nazi?
The White Army was openly and explicitly Fascist
I see what you mean (though "explicitly" needs a citation) but not all so-called white emigres were members of the White Movement; "white emigre" is a misnomer. For example Trotsky could theoretically be called a white emigre, and less tenuously anyone fleeing the civil war would count.
To quote the wiki page you linked:
Now read the rest.
I know what the White movement is. Their only unifying factor was opposition to the Reds. If you want to claim that it was "openly and explicitly fascist", quote the bit you want. The wiki article does not actually use the word "fascist" at all, so I assume that when you say "explicitly" you either do not actually mean "explicitly" or you are referring to something other than what you linked
You clearly don't.
Stop dancing around the issue and quote what you are referring to.
Man, they still racist as fuck there.