Behold the incredibly weird-looking Horten Ho 229 -- an all-wing "wonder weapon" plane that the Nazis frantically developed even as they were collapsing and losing WWII. Read the rest

The Auschwitz Memorial Archives preserves 38,916 photos of registered prisoners: 31,969 photos of men & 6,947 photos of women. These photographs were taken from the first quarter of 1941 until spring 1943. In total, 400,000 people were registered as prisoners of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The math on this suggests that we've got photos of less than 10% of the prisoners that were held, murdered, or, if they were very lucky, survived the camp. The lives of each and every one of these individuals deserves to be honored. In collaboration with photo restoration and colorization specialist Marina Amaral and the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, I'm working on a project that aims to do exactly that.

Faces of Auschwitz is a project that will tell the story of each of the 38,916 registered prisoners that we have photos of, based on what records of their lives we have. Each week, we'll talk about the story of another prisoner of Auschwitz. Some will have survived. A few managed to escape. Most of those we profile will have died behind the barbed wire perimeter of the concentration camp. Marina's talents in photo restoration and colorization will breathe new life into the fading pictures of prisoners, bringing their faces into the modern era, while at the same time, ensuring that the colors used in the process are historically accurate.

While the Auschwitz Concentration Camp is infamously known for its role in Nazi Germany's plans to eradicate European Jewry, other groups were also tortured and senselessly murdered inside the camp’s walls as well: members of Poland's leadership, intellectuals, clergy and resistance activists, Sinti & Roma, Soviet POWs, Jehovah witnesses and homosexuals. Read the rest

We all know that Poland resisted the Nazi invasion and that Poles and Polish Jews bore the brunt of the Holocaust. But the world is now finding out all about Polish complicty in the Holocaust, thanks to its government trying to ban discussion of it.

The new law, which took effect this week, prompted widespread criticism from Israeli officials and Jewish groups in the United States — as well as Polish historians, Germany’s foreign minister and the State Department. In an effort to defuse tensions, Poland’s far-right, nationalist government has promised that the law will not be enforced in the coming weeks, until it can be reviewed by the nation’s constitutional court.

But even if the law is never enforced, the debate over the text of the amendment has already profoundly damaged Poland’s past and present reputation.

The clearest impact of the legislation has been to draw fresh attention to recent historical research which makes it plain that Poles rarely opposed and were frequently complicit in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis following the annexation of western Poland to Germany.

Pictured is Poland's Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose cunning plan to distract attention from Polish complicity in the Holocaust involved telling an Israeli journalist that Polish Jews were in on the complicity. Read the rest

Anti-Semitic attacks rose faster in 2017 than any time in the past 40 years, The Anti-Defamation League today said. Read the rest

Comedian Jena Friedman killed it in her recent standup set on Conan. I somehow missed this a couple of weeks ago when it came out. Glad it landed in my feed today.

If you liked this, she's got a new special on Adult Swim called "Soft Focus with Jena Friedman" that's hilarious too. Her segment with Gilberto Valle (the "Cannibal Cop") is simultaneously subversive and awkward. Win-win! Read the rest

You may have noticed of late that things in America are becoming less, well, American.

A cruel misogynist with dangerously racist beliefs is running the show. Nazis and bigots of all stripes no long fear giving voice to their hatred in public. The nation's journalists and the free flow of information are under attack. The government is working hard to defund the healthcare apparatus designed to protect the country's most vulnerable citizens. Piece by piece, the country's institutions, its heart and soul are being torn asunder, paving the way for something new. After reading Timothy Snyder's most recent book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, I gotta tell you, if you're scared of the outcome of all of this, chances are you're likely not scared enough.

Snyder is a scholar who specializes in the history of the the 20th century and, more pointedly, the holocaust. His knowledge of how a country's slow slide into fascism at the whim of a tyrant can occur is beyond reproach, given his academic street cred: he's the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, a Committee on Conscience member at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. What I'm getting at is that he knows from bad shit, how it starts and historically, how it's gone down. With the current political and popular climate in a number of nations around the world, he's concerned that the ugliest parts of humanity are ready to rear their heads once again.

On Tyranny's only 126 pages long. Read the rest

Good news! At least one law enforcement agency is working with members of the community they're sworn to protect. Just one problem. The local folks these police worked with were Nazis. Read the rest

With the rise of white nationalist groups whose allies in government extend all the way to the President of the United States, tech companies are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of deciding where tolerance begins and ends -- where they have a duty to step in and silence certain kinds of speech. Read the rest

Twitter began enforcing new rules against violent and hateful groups and content yesterday; early results suggest that the institutional accounts of extremist parties, groups and media are being closed en-masse, but enforcement aganst individuals and mouthpieces is patchy, especially when it comes to American white nationalists and conspiracy theorists.

Twitter announced in October that it planned to take a tougher stance against hate symbols as well as those who posted messages that glorified or condoned violence.

It has now said that those who express an affiliation with groups that use or celebrate violence to achieve their aims will be permanently suspended.

Hateful imagery - such as the Nazi swastika - can still be posted, but will initially be hidden behind a "sensitive media" warning, that visitors must disable to proceed. However, such content will no longer be allowed on a person's profile page.

Those that featured examples will be asked to remove them. Repeat violators will be banned.

The share price is up 10% in the hours since, but it's been soaring anyway and Twitter also announced investor-pleasing features this week. Best not fall into the trap of anointing the market as a validator of good ethics. Read the rest

Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer was recently pushed off the web by domain registrars, but can supposedly still be found as a hidden service. And would you know that it has a 17-page style guide? They pay $14.88 a post.

The site’s stylistic decisions, the subjects it covers, the specific racial slurs it employs — all are consciously chosen for the purpose of furthering The Daily Stormer’s ultimate goal, which, according to the style guide itself, is “to spread the message of nationalism and anti-Semitism to the masses.” Everything is deliberate.

The guide is particularly interested in ways to lend the site’s hyperbolic racial invective a facade of credibility and good faith. Or at the very least, in how to confuse its readers to the point where they can’t tell the difference. The Daily Stormer, for instance, uses block quotes for much the same reason Richard Spencer stuffs himself into vests

Here's some tips on encoding incitements to violence as "joking."

Read the rest

In 1942, Hitler paid a secret visit to Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland and Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces in honor of Mannerheim's 75th birthday. Read the rest

Frank Wu writes, "US Congressional candidate (MA-8) Brianna Wu (previously) will be killing virtual Nazis today. Brianna will be doing a playthrough of the new video game Wolfenstein II, whose tagline is 'Make America Nazi-free again.' The playthrough starts today at 5 pm Eastern." Read the rest

Reddit embarked on a purge of violence-advocating content today, the targets generally being Nazis and their friends, but also at least one animal abuse subreddit and one targeting white people.

The newly banned and removed pages include r/NationalSocialism, r/Nazi, r/whitesarecriminals and r/far_right.

Reddit's new policy says: "Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people."

DeAndre Harris is a 20 year old black man who was subjected to a vicious armed beat-down by Nazis who marched in Charlottesville on August 12. Two of the men who beat him have been charged with "malicious wounding" and are being held without bail; two others have not been arrested yet. Read the rest

Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black worshipers at a church in Charleston, made a show of defiance at his trial and waltzed into the hoped-for martyrdom of a death sentence. But his bravado has run out, reports The Post and Courier.

Given the ethnicity of his court-appointed federal public defenders, Alexandra Yates and Sapna Mirchandani, it is "literally impossible that they and I could have the same interests related to my case," Roof wrote.

Yates and Mirchandani were appointed after Roof was sentenced to death in January. During the trial, he often feuded with Bruck, who wanted to present evidence of mental illness and possible autism in an effort to garner Roof a life sentence.

Eric Judkins, 42, failed to return to his halfway house Monday night, but was soon found and arrested. No word on how they were able to spot him so quickly. Read the rest

A bunch of racist bigots billing themselves as "Alt-Right" demonstrators plan to invade San Francisco's Crissy Field this weekend. Locals are planning to leave their dog poop all over the field, just like it was Paris.

Don't worry, oh ye concern troll! The counter-protestors plan to return and clean up the fecal detritus shortly after the neo-Nazi fuckers are done marching in crap.

If you've got a dog who needs to poop, and you are close to Crissy Field...

Nazis, I hate these guys. Read the rest