What's funny about this is you're going a long way to imply the father was a fascist/Nazi, when growing up in Alabama in the 50's is all that's needed to turn a child into a racist, fascist piece of shit.
Heritage foundation isn't a Nazi respawn. It's the American born and bred fascists who have been in America all along. Either way it doesn't matter. They're fascists through and through, no different to the nazi's.
growing up in Alabama in the 50’s is all that’s needed to turn a child into a racist, fascist piece of shit
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.
Alabama was the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights Movement, from Montgomery to Birmingham to Selma.
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?
Ok.. not sure why you're trying to defend a neo Nazi or his old school Nazi dad, but sure.
I don't think they were defending him; I think they were saying you don't need German credentials to be a proper, full-blooded Nazi. Just being American is enough.
Uhm.. ok just seems like it's kind of deflecting from the point that this dude's dad probably got off the hook for commiting crimes against humanity and was allowed to start over fresh without ever facing justice for the atrocities he directly committed.
I know as an American in many ways, I arguably hold some responsibility for benefiting from an unjust system. Still seems like a distraction in a post trying to call attention to the fact that a man literally trying to overthrow the American government was probably raised by a war criminal, and nobody has ever noticed this or brought it to the public's attention.
So like the openly racist son of a Nazi war criminal who escaped justice is equivalent to any other American such as myself? Interesting, I would like to imagine I'm not quite as bad for being part of an exploited working class in an unjust system this guy is actively controlling, but I guess if you see it that way, not much I could say to change your mind.
You don't have to be German to be a Nazi, there are American Nazis.
Are you calling me a Nazi?!?
Jesus you people...
At first I thought you were implying the dad was a part of Operation Paperclip. But that would require Nazis to have recruited an ethnic Slav for missile work.
Then I wonder if you're implying dad might have been a Soviet spy targeting the stuff in Huntsville. And that seems more plausible. Under that scenario it is likely that significant parts or all of the refugee story are real, and that can be fashioned into decent cover.
And then it's also plausible that there is no meaning, and a refugee settling in Huntsville is mere coincidence.
Operation Paperclip
So the idea of apolitical nazi scientists just working on rockets is kinda not true when you look closer, but the real meat is Operation Bloodstone, where nazi officers were brought over snd given immunity to help run anticommunist programs.
I went to Paperclip because of the connection to Huntsville specifically with Redstone and NASA.
By the looks of the dates he left Yugoslavia when the Axis attacked, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do
An ethnic slav? He was born in Saint Petersburg...
And sure, it could just be a coincidental 9 year gap in his resume starting in 1941 and have nothing to do with him being a Nazi
Why would it be weird for an ethnic Slav to be born in the capital of the Russian empire? And are you suggesting he was a member of the Nazi party while he was teaching in Yugoslavia?
Well if you're saying he was in paperclip, paperclip has been mostly declassified. You can look him up in the rolls here. Not a lot of Russian names on that list, but there might be a few.
Not sure why most commenters are shitting on you. It is an interesting possibility. The apple not falling far from the tree is an expression for a reason.
Because they're making huge unfounded leaps of logic and then doing things like accusing people of defending Nazis for questioning the logic
I read almost every reply. The general tone of responses are "you can't prove that so be quiet! Also I'm smarter than you"
That seems like a very uncharitable way to describe people pointing out that OP hasn't actually presented any evidence and has seemingly misread their own source. I think there needs to be something stronger than "was a Russian emigrant who was unaccounted for after the Axis invaded his home" to call someone a member of the Nazi party
You left out the fact that the son has been actively implementing the Nazi agenda in the US. I think that makes it a bit more plausible.
I left it out because I don't think that we should use the activities of someone's child to accuse them of doing a separate wrong thing long before the the child was even born. Every single Nazi ever was the child of someone
Buddy, that is not how ideology works. If a guy is doing nazi things, speculating is fair game. If there are circumstantial things, we'll talk about it.
Go write angry letters to the National Enquirer if you don't like this stuff, internet commenters aren't exactly the biggest fish to fry.
If a guy is doing nazi things
The entire problem here is that there is literally no evidence anywhere of the guy in question doing any Nazi things at all
I'm not saying people can't speculate. I'm saying I think the conclusions they reached are wrong. That's equally fine to do on the internet
If he contributed to project 2025, this is exactly nazi shit.
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/18/fascism_expert_jason_stanely_on_project
The guy in question is his dad, not him. Anatol von Shpakovsky died in the 80s
Ok, raising a nazi shit is doing nazi shit too. So we'll speculate.
Oh right, so Hitler's dad Alois was a Nazi since he raised Hitler even though he died before WWI and doesn't seem to have had any unusual views. And then since Alois was a Nazi, I suppose his dad must have been a Nazi too, and then it's just a solid unbroken string of Nazis all the way back to the dawn of humanity
If Anatol was involved with Hans' career at all, sure, I could see why it'd be relevant. As it is, he died only a few years after Hans graduated and long before his involvement with government or the Heritage Foundation.
I don't know if you can really call Huntsville a small town? It's a city of almost a million people, including the suburbs around it.
In 1941?
Technically I don't think he got to Huntsville until 1951, but yeah when he got there it was a town of less than 17k people and only 4 square miles.
In 1941 he was somewhere else... Doing something. Who knows what. We can't say for sure what he was doing before he suddenly reappears in Germany in 1950 and then off to the city that never sleeps, Huntsville, Alabama, in 1951.
Huh, if only there was some way to know how big Huntsville was in 1951
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Huntsville,_Alabama
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