She looks nice.
That’s Freddie Oversteegen. She was 14 years old and living in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded. She and her sister got busy.
If the Nazis or Dutch police caught the sisters, they might have killed them. However, the fact that they were both young girls—and Freddie looked even younger when she wore braids—meant that officials were less likely to suspect them of working for the resistance. This might be one of the reasons why, in 1941, a commander with the Haarlem Resistance Group visited their house to ask their mother if he could recruit Freddie and Truus.
Their mother consented and the sisters’ agreed to join. “Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: sabotage bridges and railway lines,” Truus told Jonker. “‘And learn to shoot, to shoot Nazis,’ he added. I remember my sister saying: ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never done before!’”
In at least one instance, Truus seduced an SS officer into the woods so that someone from the resistance could shoot him. As the commander who recruited them had said, Freddie and Truus learned to shoot Nazis too, and the sisters began to go on assassination missions by themselves. Later on, they focused on killing Dutch collaborators who arrested or endangered Jewish refugees and resistance members.
I have to admire the Oversteegen sisters. They were doing good work. We should be more like Freddie and Truus.
On these missions, Freddie was especially good at following a target or keeping a lookout during missions since she looked so young and unsuspecting. Both sisters shot to kill, but they never revealed how many Nazis and Dutch collaborators they assassinated. According to Pliester, Freddie would tell people who asked that she and her sister were soldiers, and soldiers don’t say.
Consequently, we don’t have too many details about how their “liquidations,” as they called them, played out. Benda-Beckmann says that sometimes they would follow a target to his house to kill him or ambush them on their bikes.
Their other duties in the Haarlem Resistance Group included “bringing Jewish [refugees] to a new hiding place, working in the emergency hospital in Enschede… [and] blowing up the railway line between Ijmuiden and Haarlem,” writes Jonker.
I think it’s time to stop merely punching Nazis.
Yes.
Excpet, wait, its long overdue.
Also wow. Stay safe PZ.
Hope you have plans for what amy come and back up plans & back up p[lans for thsoe back up plans and repeated again ad infinitum recursions.
I worry about you and sure others do too.
^ May come..
The USA is no longer a nation where speaking out and telling truths is safe. As sure you already know.
I always wince when I hear a neo-Nazi or a homegrown fascist extolling a Second Amendment solution for the people they dislike. But, upon reflection, they may be onto something. Goose, gander.
Cool.
Unfortunately, for me the link to the article doesn’t work. It connects me to the history.com main site, which only shows a full page advert for Ancient Aliens. Now, she certainly is ancient, and for you Americans she’s technically an alien (as in a foreigner)… but no thanks :D
PZ seems to be getting more angry and ready for more direct action against the rtwingnut christo-fascist tRUMP regime. I find them obscene: their war on science, their destruction of constitutional protections, their attempts to destroy the educational system, their dismantling of science base health care. their ignoring the law, their murder of so many (directly or indirectly by stripping the vulnerable of our society of the basics needed to live), their attempts to steal people’s investment in medicare and social security, etc.
I agree with him. If we don’t find effective ways to neutralize the inhumane destruction of these cockroaches, they will push this society the rest of the way down the death spiral we are already in.
Well, I didn’t want to have to resort to this drastic, devastating solution. But, here, PZ can use this against the evil magat empire:
http://theartsinarizona.org/b9-zaps.gif
robert79, this is the naked link, which works fine for me: https://www.history.com/articles/dutch-resistance-teenager-killed-nazis-freddie-oversteegen
—
I do think it’s a bit clickbaity of PZ to play thus with the title and the lede:
[Stop punching Nazis] vs [stop merely punching Nazis]
(That one tiny word inverts the sense)
Is this activity from home by Freddie and Truus why Trump and Musk don’t like work-from-home?
I don’t understand what any of this anti-nazi shit has to do with Luigi Mangione. The man killed a guy in cold blood on the street. He killed a guy who may be distasteful in that he ran an evil health care insurance company, but was he a NAZI? Was he a fascist? We don’t know. Was he following the stupid laws and weak regulations this country has established? I think he was, which does not make the guy an angel. I’m concerned how we go from let’s punch a NAZI to let’s shoot CEOs who have not been found to be NAZIs. There does not Seem to be any way to square that in my mind. Luigi should be jailed as should anyone who commits acts of violence unless in self-defense or in defense of another’s life. The real problem here is not the CEOs, it’s the politicians (ahem, Republicans) who refuse to tax the billionaires and create a nationwide health care system which makes health care a human right.
Corporate lackeys of the corrupt capitalist state are the next best thing to Nazis.
I’ll agree that Mangione deserves jail when Kyle Rittenhouse gets a taste of justice.
Say what you will about Luigi, I think those health insurance moguls should be in jail. Surely they have a higher body count.
@10 direlobo Evil is as evil does. I’m not gonna quibble over labels when, as an elite citizen of an increasingly fascist state, the guy has yachts and jets and mansions and stuff paid for by way of the misery and deaths of millions.
I like the sentiment. If I could make a few polite suggestions… Don’t make any overt threats, don’t talk about weapons you may own, don’t directly point out people that you think should be targets. There are probably more things to suggest, but that’s all that comes to mind at the moment. Stuff like that will get you put on a watch list.
On a totally unrelated and completely historically related subject, Axis propagandists were considered to be legitimate military targets-Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw, to name a couple.
Well, there’s this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
Exactly what PZ is doing. No more, no less.
does boot polish actually taste that good?
The original Fascists used castor oil, not boot polish.
(It’s the ring they kiss and their nose they brown)
Her friend and comrade Hannie Schaft also shot her share of Nazis.
Direlobo@ @10
So the CEOs of the corporations who fund the Republican politicians are not the “real” problem? Here in Canada a person who hires a hitman to kill someone is charged with first degree murder just like the hitman.
Little side note: in Dutch, IJmuiden is spelled with a capital I and a capital J.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJ_(digraph)
Dire nonsense, Wolfie. The law did not require him to exploit people’s suffering, nor to optimise his corporate structures to extract more misery for his own financial benefit. You were right when you said he was responsible for running his own evil health insurance company. Alas, your comment could have stopped there.
“… running his own evil health insurance company.”
Nope.
He was the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, not of UnitedHealth Group Incorporated itself.
Facts matter.
(Like confusing Google with Alphabet, that is)
The corrupt politicians are the big problem, because they pass laws that legitimise what should be criminal.
The corrupt media landscape is part of the problem, as it entangles private enterprise with politics in a way that makes access to correct information difficult.
But if you are a serial killer with the skills to bypass corporate security (unlikely, but not impossible) it is beyond my power as not-a-police to stop you.
I am like Lenny, the guy working for Mr Burns as Burns desperately needs a transfusion of a rare blood type: “I have that blood type, so I could give it to him. Only, I don’t want to”.
Crossposted with the endless thread
.
-Instead of throwing bombs, maybe we should come down like a load of bricks on anyone who helps to normalise the machtubernahme?
I am thinking of Larry the Curb Your Enthusiasm guy, criticizing Bill Maher.
I am thinking of Bernie Sanders criticising CNN for settling with Il Duche.
I am thinking of every Democratic voter disgusted with their congresscritters voting to confirm a Republican.
.
Also: Primary the collaborators the hell out of congress.
Most of them have shown they are not pulling their weight during an existential threat against democracy.
For instance make them clearly state if they are in favor of adding more seats to the Supreme Court beyond the current 9.
If their answer is “no” or “maybe” = Primary their asses!
It is an old idea among fascists it is better to live a year as a lion than a long life as a sheep – I think old Benito was the original source.
.
The number of base jumpers killed at the Norwegian mountain Kjerhag just reached 16.
Idea: Spread the meme “real alphas do base jumping”. Especially among the wealthy Musk clones.
From some of the stuff I’ve heard about Mangione he sounds like he was a Trumpoid until the leopard started to eat his face. And his crime did zip to change the US health care system. His victim was just replaced with another corporate type who will follow the same corporate procedures.
Luigi got one thing right. He hit the correct level of society. If someone were to do more than punch, down and lateral aren’t as effective as up in this broken nation.
On occasion I’ve looked at people “going postal” like it’s a waste to blame your fellow sufferers when they’re held down by the same forces higher up. This all assumes that we are at a point where we have to do more than punch.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Trump will use any ORGANIZED violence to declare emergency and cancel elections. I’ve seen some point out that his abuse of brown and black people and elevation of shitty white people (like from s. Africa) are meant to trigger race wars and declare emergency. So the organized responses there should be non-violent.
It’s quite the mess.
@timgueguen 26
Good point about the faceless leopard eaten ones. How to maneuver them into striking out at the right targets?
At rhis point I am mostly reduced to revenge fantasies.
Constantine / Lucifer
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=j_gFjrO8Mck
At 1.25 Peter Stormare expresses the feeling I have for Trump and Stephen Miller.
Nazis need safe spaces.
About six feet deep.
I have been increasingly coming to the opinion that the progressive left should if not embrace, than at least tolerate stochastic terrorism as a practice.
It seems to be that through a combination of our dismal, late-stage capitalist rot economy and basic human psychology that there are more and more people – mainly young men – out in the world looking for a cause to give their life to in a dramatic way.
These people are going to find something to throw their life away for, and they currently face a sea of mostly right-wing-adjacent grievance politics and incoherent-terminally-online conspiracy groups to give them that ideology. The Incels started celebrating their ‘saints’ first, and it’s bled into very-online right-wing communities as well.
When a dysfunctional young man looking for something to give him a false sense of purpose and meaning casts about for a group or idea to fill that need, he’s going to find mostly toxic and hate-based ideologies. Incels/Racists/Accellerationists/Right-wing-Mystics.
What if there were other ideologies they could attach to that would at least be working towards a positive goal? I think the celebration of Luigi is a good step along this path. There was another case recently where a terminally-ill trucker took out the CEO of the company that had been stealing his wages. Another ‘saint’ that comes to mind is Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who built his own shotgun and ammunition from scratch in order to punish the otherwise untouchable Shinzo Abe for his various crimes. We should be celebrating these people as working-class heroes pushed to an unfortunate extreme by the excesses of capital, regardless of any actual motive they might have had for their actions.
Also: we should be using the war in Ukraine to inform the tactics these wanna-be heroes employ. If Luigi could have been convinced to leave the American totem of the gun behind, and instead learn to build and operate small FPV drones with explosive devices attached, who knows how many CEOs might have fallen before he was caught.
Note this from the article on the sister.
In another interview, Freddie recalled seeing a person she’d shot fall to the ground and having the human impulse to want to help him.
“We did not feel it suited us,” Truss told Jonker of their assassinations. “It never suits anybody, unless they are real criminals.”
timgueguen @26:
“From some of the stuff I’ve heard about Mangione he sounds like he was a Trumpoid until the leopard started to eat his face.”
No. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Mangione#Social_media_presence
Glorifying child soldiers is a choice I guess.
Interesting. I would have thought we were all against recruiting child soldiers on principle. You learn something new every day.
@ # 34, 35: You don’t see a difference between child soldiers and resistance fighters? Child soldiers aren’t recruited, they’re forced into service. Child soldiers are also made to do some horrific things to desensitize them to the atrocities they’ll be forced to commit, e.g. torturing animals to death. By the time the process is finished, they’re all dead inside. No Conscience, no empathy, no compassion.
@ #36: Yes, I can see a difference. Can you?
Quoting the Wikipedia article on “Children in the Military”: “The Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (1977, Art. 77.2),[83] the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002) all forbid state armed forces and non-state armed groups from using children under the age of 15 directly in armed conflict (technically “hostilities”). This is now recognised as a war crime.”
Just because I agree with the goals does not mean that I have to condone the methods. I tend to believe that we should protect children, not send them out to seduce SS officers and hope for the best.
Punching Nazis is a tactic that’s meant to discourage Nazis from seeking power. It’s meant to show everyone that Nazis will not be tolerated in the public sphere, that Nazis do not enjoy the wide support that they claim, and that anyone who acts like a Nazi in public will face serious consequences for doing so. It is, I believe, an effective tactic with a united front and consistent application. Nazis are cowards; you’ll notice that every time a Nazi or group of Nazis was faced with violent pushback, the next bunch of rallies were significantly smaller.
However, if, every time someone punches a Nazi, you have a faction of those groups who ostensibly oppose Nazis come out shrieking “how dare you, violence is never the answer, you’re just as bad as the Nazis are if you go around punching them!” then the tactic is doomed to fail. If you greet Nazis with nothing more threatening than harsh words, they’ll take it as a sign of weakness, and their numbers will grow.
Now, here we are. The tactic has failed. We allowed Nazis to go around preaching their vile philosophy without real consequences, and it’s too late to prevent them from taking power. They have it. Because some fucking fools were unwilling to compromise their delicate moral sensibilities with mild violence, we are now under the control of those who are eager and empowered to inflict maximum violence on us. They’ve already shipped people off to death camps.
And those same fucking fools are out there saying “Stay peaceful!” Or, in this thread, sticking their noses in the air and proclaiming that they think child soldiers are a bad thing.
Of course violence is bad! Of course child soldiers are shameful! But, you know what’s worse? Refusing to sully your precious purity to stop a repeat of the Holocaust. There is nothing more horrifically violent than the organized mass slaughter of innocents, and that’s what’s happening right now.
If you truly believe that violence is bad, then you will do whatever you have to do to stop a repeat of those atrocities. I see it as analogous to surgery: yes, it’s usually bad to cut someone open, but if a body is riddled with tumors and septic rot, it’s often the best option available necessary.
If you are against child soldiers, then get off your worthless ass and fight yourself. Gods know someone has to do it if this is ever going to stop, and if we piddling old farts aren’t willing to take up the fight, then the young will increasingly choose to fight and die for our cowardice.
You take the burden on yourself, instead of sniffing that you’re too good for that. I have yet to see any of these oh-so-moral people offer a real alternative. Peaceful protest? The fascists in this country learned how to counter them decades ago. You want to see how the courts rule first? Fine. And when they keep allowing atrocities? When regime continues to ignore the rulings? When the “big beautiful bill” passes and renders the courts powerless?
If your argument is that it’s too soon, that we should wait to see how a few things play out, that’s fine. But make real plans now for genuine resistance now, because the odds of us being saved by courts or elections at this point are vanishingly slim. However, if your argument is that you’re too good for this sort of thing, then fuck off Nazi scum.
@ arkhilokhos2, # 37: I would have volunteered. Would you have?
Christoph, if it makes you feel better about yourself, I’m happy to posit that you are altogether more manly and courageous, handsome and hung than I am. None of that has anything to do with the morality or legality of recruiting child soldiers, though.
Um, is this debouchment into child soldiers some sort of reference to Luigi?
(If it is, then it should be about child murderers, no?)
@ arkhilokhos, # 40: I never said I was more manly or courageous than you. I just don’t value my life above anyone else’s. Don’t put words in my mouth-it makes you sound like an ineffectual and sanctimonious poseur. And for the sake of definition, the resistance fighters weren’t soldiers since they weren’t in uniform. They weren’t forced into service, they volunteered. The Germans, and also the Russians, forced both the underaged and the elderly into service towards the end of the war out of desperation.
But feel free to continue turning this into a pissing contest and keep slinging insults.
@christoph, #42: Your question was either an attempt to deflect from the issue at hand, or an attempt at ad hominem.
You’re right; I should have said something like “child combatant” instead of “child soldier”, but it’s a difference without consequence in this case. The phrase “non-state armed groups” in the Wikipedia quote above covers resistance fighters. The issue at hand is what sorts of situations children are being put in, not whether the people putting them into those situations represent an officially recognized state actor.
“[A] commander with the Haarlem Resistance Group visited their house to ask their mother if he could recruit Freddie and Truus.” That’s recruitment, not volunteering. In addition, one of the things that we’ve become more sensitive to is that there are things that children cannot meaningfully consent to, even with their parents’ agreement. In my opinion, and presumably in the opinion of the signatories of the Genava conventions, this is one of them.
arkhilokhos, # 43: Did you mean my question about volunteering was a deflection? It’s a legitimate question. And I think you’re using “ad hominem” incorrectly.
And you’re being disingenuous by calling it “recruitment.” I was “recruited” into the military back in the 1970’s. They ASKED me to volunteer, they didn’t force me. I was 18 at the time, 4 years older than Freddie Oversteegen. Not much of an age difference, and the military will accept you (with parental consent) at age 17.
What the Oversteegen sisters did took courage, and most likely contributed to preventing further Nazi atrocities. I’ll also point out that this was over 80 years ago, and you’re being an armchair quarterback. You don’t know what you would have done if you were in that situation-you may have volunteered, maybe not. You’re more qualified to answer that than I am.
Also, sadly-no country seems to give a fuck about the Geneva Convention these days.