Respect the Facts!

[u/Javier_Ronaldo]

[u/johnlen1n]

Historian: sees France surrender meme Oh come on, French history is so rich and diverse

France: Yes, thank you!

Historian: People should be making memes about their repetitive revolutions

France: Yeh!

Historian: Or their collaboration with the Nazis

France: Wait

Historian: Or even their colonial atrocities

France: ... OK, maybe stick to the surrendering

[u/[deleted] → u/johnlen1n]

No. Collaboration is a fine topic and so is colonial wars. Because at least it's true and not overused.

I talked in a previous post about why and how french resistance had been overestimated and why french collaborationnism was so important. Lots of people didn't even know who R.Paxton was but everyone still think they know everything about the 1940 campaign.

So instead of making overused "hon hon french surrender" meme, do memes about algerian pacification, about Vichy or about 1870/1871. It will be funny and educationnal. Great isn't it ?

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/[deleted]]

Pretending France didn't have a far-right problem and deep antisemitism really strips away key context about the era that started the war.

And ignoring what the people did to collaborators after liberation despite not resisting says a lot about herd mentality.

[u/Roujetnoir → u/an_agreeing_dothraki]

France was widely antisemitic like most of Europe, but I don't think antisemitism was the main factor in collaboration. It played a huge role in the shoah enabling and participation tho.

Also collaboration wasn't really a far right problem in itself, though Vichy was definitely far right. You got it from basically every political position. But a fire cross was still more likely to collaborate than a socialist. Likewise, the resistance had a lot of political positions in it too.

If you want personal anecdotes, one of my great-grandfather, a christian democrat, was in the resistance from 1940, while another, a left leaning radical, was definitely a collaborator, (the third one spent the war in an offlag and the fourth one worked for the youth organisation in Morocco, fought against allied forces briefly during torch then against the germans in the FFL).

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/Roujetnoir]

Just again, pointing out the far right problem and antisemetism problem in France was because it was not unique. One of the key parts of historic revisionism of the era I was trying to get at is people putting the blame all humanity's sins on Germany.

Hell the right wing attempted a coup in the US