re: #61 Dr Lizardo

True, but economic anxiety gives them a convenient, and more socially acceptable, rationalization for their racism.

The racism’s always been there - just like how anti-Semitism was deeply ingrained in German culture prior to the advent of the NSDAP. Hitler capitalized on that cultural defect, dressed it up in some fancy economic duds (“The Jews own everything! They’re the reason you’re unemployed and your children go hungry!”) and the rest is history.

The bulk of the Nazi rank and file were middle-class and lower middle-class Germans, and some working class and a smattering of the truly wealthy, with the middle class/lower middle-class terrified of being pushed back into the amorphous mass of the lumpenproletariat and seeing all their economic gains erased. They flocked to the hakenkreuz in droves. And of course, the Nazis had a racial answer to their economic fears - an answer long prevalent in German history and culture.

Yep. A lot of the guys with economic anxiety up here drive Ford F150s that tow fishing boats in summer and snowmobile sleds in winter. But the lumberjack beards make it all authentic.