TikTok ban thoughts?

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dualstow
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Re: TikTok ban thoughts?

Post by dualstow » Thu Mar 30, 2023 2:51 pm

Mountaineer wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:47 pm
Oh my gosh! I thought this thread was a call for silent clocks. ;D
OK, W.H. Auden 😂
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Re: TikTok ban thoughts?

Post by vnatale » Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:04 pm

The below describes the state of our country in early 1940 ... we now know how that turned out while we do not know how TikTok / China will end up.

But from the vantage point of today and using whatever knowledge you have of our country in 1940 (nearly two years before we entered the war) which threat would you think to have more possibility, to be more of a threat?

I have read lots and lots of history, particularly regarding World War II but this is the first time I've read anything like this.

After rereading the below I'd say that what it describes is a far greater threat by magnitudes than what TikTok / China poses.

Finally, in my basement I have several boxes of old LIfe magazines from that era. I hope I have the one described below.




Adding to the sense of crisis were alarming reports by Roosevelt, Marshall, and other senior government figures that German infiltration of Central and South America now posed an imminent danger to U.S. national security. The State and War Departments had long been concerned by the large number of German nationals living in Latin American countries, as well as by Germany’s many military and trade missions in the region. In addition to helping Latin American nations equip and train their armies, the Third Reich also controlled several key national airlines. Among them was the Colombian airline SCADTA, which operated planes within three hundred miles of the U.S.-run Panama Canal.

There was considerable fear in Washington that in some particularly vulnerable Latin American countries, Nazi-backed coups might overthrow the current governments and establish regimes that would become vassal states of Germany. In late May, after receiving reports of possible future coups in Argentina and several other nations, Roosevelt ordered plans drawn up for the dispatch of a U.S. expeditionary force to South America. (The coups never took place, and the plans never got beyond the drafting stage.) There was also concern, voiced by Marshall and others, that a German force might one day be transported from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of Brazil, a distance of some 1,600 miles across the Atlantic. The Germans would then be in a position to move northward toward the Panama Canal.

In his May 16 speech to Congress, Roosevelt had mentioned the possibility of German aircraft making their way from South America to Central America and into Mexico, which then could be used as a staging area from which to attack the United States. A few weeks later, Life ran a story that described in hair-raising, hypothetical detail how “fascist” forces could occupy Brazilian ports, raid the Panama Canal, bomb Caribbean islands, destroy America’s Atlantic fleet, occupy Cuba, and invade the U.S. mainland. The article, complete with illustrations, envisaged “a victorious Fascist Army” marching up Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware, while Fascist tanks and infantry overpowered small, underequipped U.S. forces near Pittsburgh. After the fall of Washington, New York, and the major East Coast industrial centers, U.S. envoys, in the Life scenario, would meet with Fascist officials at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to sue for peace.

After reading such stories and hearing repeated warnings from political and military leaders about a looming Nazi threat to the Western Hemisphere, many if not most Americans became convinced that such a danger did exist. In a Fortune poll, 63 percent of those surveyed believed that if Germany succeeded in conquering Britain and France, it would then try to seize territory in the Americas.

Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle was one of the believers. In late June, a Hearst newsreel cameraman told Berle that Hitler planned to conquer Britain by July 10; then, supported by a massive fifth column, German troops were to invade the United States three days later. Astonishingly, Berle believed him. He later wrote in his diary that the cameraman’s prediction was “so graphic” that “it frightened me completely,” adding wryly that “paranoia can be catching.”
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