On 22 June 1941 – coincidentally the same day that Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union – the NYT magazine published a excerpts from Mein Kampf, Hitler's 1925 biographical manifesto, as a warning about Germany's threat to the US. pic.twitter.com/ztRfS4ZqCw

The editors prefaced the excerpts with the remark, "Germany is now waging a psychological war against this country." It was not an "op-ed" written by Hitler for the NYT. It was an assemblage of 15 year old quotations from Hitler produced by the Times as a warning.

To say that "the NYT let Hitler publish an op-ed" is entirely false. Hitler did not send an "op-ed" to the NYT that they agreed to publish. It's the equivalent of saying that I'm spreading Nazi antisemitism when I lecture about the Holocaust.

But this sort of thing is commonplace on Twitter (and not just on the political right, I am afraid to say). Read the comments – virtually no one has bothered to fact check the assertion or to contextualize the piece.

This is where a history education can be a powerful tool against ideologues of all political stripes today, because students of history know better than most that the past is complicated, and not to be deployed as a blunt instrument in scoring cheap political points today.

Finally: 2000 retweets from an account with 50000 followers. It is probable that, in that single Tweet, this person reached more people with a false claim than I will in a lifetime of classroom teaching and academic publishing.

Update: 25 November. The original Tweet has been deleted. Anticipating this, I kept a screenshot. pic.twitter.com/U6XlP7SFBM

Nice use of slovenly. I always use it to refer to poor dress or eating habits, but now will have a new use to describe sub-par historical discussions/points.

@ThreadReaderApp Please unroll this thread.

Hi! there is your unroll: Thread by @ProfessorBroad: "Retweeted nearly 2K times, here's a perfect example of the kind of slovenly, ideologically driven thinking that passes f […]" threadreaderapp.com/thread/1198592… Enjoy :) 🤖