Fritz Kuhn was a despicable man. But he and his fellow Nazi followers in the United States thought he had a valuable reputation to protect. Which is why Kuhn sued Warner Bros. for libel in 1939 after the Hollywood studio released a film called Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
Alex Jones and his conspiracy theory empire InfoWars have officially been booted from Apple, Facebook, and YouTube. But Twitter is one of the last big social media companies that has declined to ban Alex Jones. And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended his decision to allow Jones on the platform in a series of tweets last…
Facebook on Tuesday announced its banning of eight pages, 17 profiles, and seven Instagram accounts that engaged in what it described as online political activity that was both “inauthentic” and ultimately an “abuse” of its platform. While the activity was not attributed to anybody specific, the implication was clear,…
Last summer’s infamous neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was supposedly about “free speech.” But that claim was always ridiculous. The latest evidence? Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the rally, sued a woman for swearing at him. And a judge in Charlottesville has now awarded Kessler $5.
If you’ve ever watched the History Channel at 3AM, you know that the Nazis had a secret program during World War II to develop flying saucers. The Nazi’s UFO experiments never actually flew, but the model toy company Revell recently released a set in Germany that makes it look like one of the Nazi saucers actually…
Rome wasn’t built in a day. And the Nazis didn’t exterminate 10 million people overnight. When we look for historical parallels to the current rise of fascism around the world, it’s important to remember how things became normalized in the past. And an old book about propaganda is a helpful tool in understanding how…
In the dying days of World War II, a German sub was reportedly sunk near the Danish coast, but the wreck was never found, leading to speculation that high-ranking Nazi officials—even possibly Adolf Hitler himself—used the high-tech vessel to escape to South America. A museum in Denmark has finally found the missing…
The term “Asperger’s syndrome” will never be heard the same way again, owing to new research showing that Hans Asperger—the Austrian pediatrician for whom the disorder was named—was an active participant in the Nazi eugenics program, recommending that patients deemed “not fit for life” be sent to a notorious…
2017 was the year public sentiment began to turn against massive tech conglomerates like Facebook and Google. But nowhere in the West has the backlash been bigger than Germany, which last year passed a sweeping anti-hate speech law requiring websites to promptly investigate reports of posts illegal under German law…
It’s that time of year again when we look back at the photos and GIFs that went viral over the past 12 months. We did similar year-end round-ups in 2014, 2015, 2016 and I must say that 2017 was even weirder than usual. How so? There were so many fake images swirling around the internet that it was difficult to decide…
Would more Nazis and terrorists on social media make our internet more free?
As of approximately one hour ago, Reddit has begun a wave of new community bans, reminiscent of the culling during interim CEO Ellen Pao’s reign in 2015 that saw a handful of hate-based groups removed from the site. This time, Reddit’s leadership is taking aim at content and groups that incite violence, and the first…
You’ve probably seen that infamous photo of Madison Square Garden from 1939, where over 20,000 American Nazis held a “patriotic” rally in New York. But a new 7-minute documentary gives us an even more detailed (and terrifying) peek at just what happened that night on February 20, 1939.
Large sections of central Frankfurt, Germany were evacuated on Sunday in preparation for authorities to defuse a World War II-era, 1.4-ton HC 4000 air mine, with CNN reporting at least 60,000 people were asked to leave the area while the bomb defusal operation proceeds.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s refusal to simply condemn the actions of white supremacists at a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, business leaders, politicians, pundits, and many more have issued statements making it clear that racism can not be tolerated. But not everyone has called out the man who is emboldening…
Ben Curtis, aka the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” guy, served as Dell Computer’s pitchman for years and remains one of the most iconic symbols of the company. On Tuesday, Dell CEO Michael Dell insisted on remaining part of a (now-dissolved) presidential council while many others resigned in protest following Trump’s…
Superhero comics’ earliest rise to prominence occurred at the height of World War II—so it’s no surprise that the Nazi party became fodder for all sorts of spandex-clad superheroes, from their early days all the way up to 2017. As a reminder, here’s a few of the most famous examples of fictional heroes rising up to…
Any masochist who has spent a second taking part in the eye gouge that is “internet discourse” has heard one of its core tenets, Mike Godwin’s law. That law, as recounted by Wired, goes as follows:
Yesterday’s rally of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and so-called “alt-right” activists predictably devolved into violence. One anti-fascist protester and two police officers are dead, and dozens more were injured by neo-Nazis in a fascist rally at the University of Virginia. But after the streets were cleared, far right thugs…
Germany’s parliament passed a law on Friday that forces social media sites to quickly take down illegal and slanderous content or face a fine of 50 million euros ($57 million). The new rule affects Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites with more than 2 million users.
