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Here is something unique that someone sent.  If it is true then it is remarkable.  RexCurry.net opposes all bans on all symbolism and does not endorse such laws in the EU or anywhere.
EU to ban USA’s pledge of allegiance?

NO OLD ROMAN EVIDENCE

The "ancient Roman salute" is a myth. The myth is used in the same way that the word "Nazi" is used: To cover up for socialism.  The myth covers-up the fact that government inside the U.S. promoted socialized schools, military socialism within government schools, the creation of industrial armies, and daily robotic pledges of allegiance in military formation with the infamous straight-arm salute (the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party or "Nazis").

Francis Bellamy and his cousins and cohorts, the authors Edward Bellamy and Charles Bellamy, were self-proclaimed national socialists in the U.S. who promoted "military socialism" and the straight-armed salute, and they did it 3 decades before the Nazis.

The Roman myth's use is expanding in efforts to cover up Dr. Curry's discovery that the Pledge of Allegiance was the origin of the salute of the horrid National Socialist German Workers' Party.

It is a myth that the straight-arm salute is an old Roman salute adopted by Mussolini.  According to Martin Winkler in "The Roman Salute on Film" of the American Philological Association, the salute is not in any Roman art or text.  The salute occurs in these films: the American "Ben-Hur" (1907), the Italian "Nerone" (1908), "Spartaco" (1914), and "Cabiria" (1914).

In imitation of such films, self-styled Italian "Consul" Gabriele D 'Annunzio borrowed the salute as a propaganda tool for his political ambitions upon his occupation of Fiume in 1919.  Earlier, D'Annunzio had worked with Giovanni Pastrone in his colossal epic Cabiria (1914). Mussolini worked with D'Annunzio. 

Even so, evidence shows that the National Socialist German Workers' Party officially adopted the salute before Mussolini did, not vice versa.   http://www.rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html

Winkler didn't know about the original U.S. flag salute (1892) that inspired the films. Dr. Curry advised him of that fact.

The myth's use is expanding in efforts to cover up Dr. Curry's discovery that the straight-arm salute originated with the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag.

Francis Bellamy was a national socialist in the U.S. and created the pledge of allegiance to the flag using a straight-armed salute, the so-called "Roman" salute, in 1892.
http://www.rexcurry.net/pledge1.html 

The straight-armed salute in the USA's racist and segregated government schools, served as an example to Germany through WWI and for over three decades before Nazism and WWII.  The National Socialist German Workers' Party was inspired by the films, by the pledge of allegiance, and by the older national socialism movement in the USA.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party was also inspired by German-Americans who were already national socialists in the U.S. and who joined the German-American Bund movement to support national socialists in Germany before WWII. http://rexcurry.net/pledgebund.html

The salute began to change during WWII.

Francis Bellamy was inspired by his cousin and cohort Edward Bellamy, the author of the book “Looking Backward” (a bestseller written in 1887 by Edward Bellamy).
http://www.rexcurry.net/pledgebackward.html 

Both Bellamys wanted the government to take over all schools and create an “industrial army” of totalitarian socialism as described in the book.

Government-schools spread and they mandated segregation by law and taught racism as official policy and did so through WWII and beyond
http://www.rexcurry.net/stopthepledge4.html

The bizarre practices served as an example for three decades before they were adopted by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. When Jesse Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Germany,  his neighbors attended segregated government schools where they saluted the flag with the Nazi salute.  As under Nazism, Jehovah's Witnesses (and blacks and the Jewish and others) in the USA were required by law to perform the Nazi salute in the USA and robotically chant the pledge.  If they refused, then they were expelled from government schools and had to use the many better alternatives.  There were also acts of physical violence.

Edward Bellamy’s best-selling book was translated into 20 different languages, including Russian, German, Italian, and Chinese.  It was popular among the elite in pre-revolutionary Russia, and Lenin’s wife was known to have read the book, because she wrote a review of it.  John Dewey and the historian Charles Beard intended to praise the book when they stated that it was equaled in influence only by Das Kapital (1867) (The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848).

25 years later, Bellamy’s totalitarian ideas continued. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began in 1917.  The National Socialist German Workers’ Party came into existence in 1920 (with electoral breakthroughs in 1930 and dictatorship in 1933).   In 1922, Mussolini gained power.  The People's Republic of China began in 1949.

The worldwide impact of Bellamy’s totalitarian ideas influenced the socialist trio of atrocities. While the Holocaust was monstrous, it was part of the bigger socialist "Wholecaust": Under the industrial army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,  62 million people were slaughtered; the People's Republic of China, 35 million; and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 21 million (numbers from Professor R. J. Rummel's article in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999)).
 http://www.rexcurry.net/socialists.jpg

Benito Mussolini was the leader of the Socialist Party of Italy.  Like many modern media Mussolinis, he was a socialist and a journalist. Between 1912 and 1914 he was the editor of the Socialist Party newspaper, "L'Avanti" (Avanti means "in front", "advance" or "forward" or even "come in"). In 1914 he started his own socialist newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia" ("The people of Italy"). 

He was considered by socialists to be a great writer about socialism. He was a staunch proponent of revolutionary rather than reformist socialism, and actually received Lenin's endorsement and support for expelling reformists from the Socialist Party.  He was in fact first dubbed "Il Duce" (the Leader) when he was a member of Italy's (Marxist) Socialist Party. 

When Mussolini differed with some Socialists it was over participation in World War I, not over abstract theory, or economic doctrine.   Many socialists were neutralists in the First World War, whereas Mussolini correctly foresaw that the Austro/German forces would not win the war and therefore wanted Italy to join the Allied side and thus get a slice of Austrian territory at the end of the war. 

During World War I, Mussolini publicized what he admitted was his new brand of socialism.

On October 28, 1922, Mussolini led his "March on Rome", which brought him to power for 23 years.

In late 1937, Mussolini visited Germany and pledged himself to support the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. 

In 1938, he introduced his ‘reform of customs.’”  Hand-shaking was suddenly banned as unhygienic: a salute was to be used instead - the right forearm raised vertically.  He imposed a new march on the Italian Army which was simply the goose-step of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.  According to the book “A Concise History of Italy” by Christopher Duggan, these reforms were introduced mainly to underline ideological kinship with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and to impress it’s leader. 

The so-called “Roman salute” (saluto romano) is as much of a fiction as is the so-called “Roman step” (passo romano) as is the idea that the National Socialist German Workers’ Party emulated Mussolini and not vice versa.  

The most notorious instance of Italy imitating the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was in the racist laws imposed in November 1938. 

Before and during it all (from 1892), children in the U.S. attended government-schools where racism and segregation were mandated by law, and where they performed a straight-armed salute to the U.S. flag, and were forced to robotically chant a pledge written by a national socialist who wanted to produce an “industrial army” for totalitarian socialism as popularized worldwide in a best-selling novel.  

There is only one place on the web that has Francis Bellamy’s original speech that accompanied the first pledge of allegiance.
 Http://rexcurry.net/pledgespeech.html

THE MILITARY SALUTE
 MADE THE NAZI SALUTE

The pledge of allegiance was the origin of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) because Francis Bellamy was a self-proclaimed national socialist who  promoted “military socialism” (a Bellamy term).  To promote militarism, Bellamy's pledge of allegiance began with a military salute. 

The military salute was held for the phrase “I pledge allegiance” and then the right arm extended straight outward toward the flag for the rest of the chant.  Historic photographs are linked at
http://rexcurry.net/pledge1.html
 http://rexcurry.net/pledge_military.html

The first description of the pledge had the palm of the hand turned upward for the straight-armed gesture.   The gesture changed in use, growing into the "Heil Hitler" (the Hitler Greeting or Hail Hitler) appearance because of the military salute (palm down) extended casually straight toward the flag.

James Bailey Upham made a suggestion to Bellamy of the gesture. Upham’s suggested gesture included the palm upward as if saying “Here is the flag.”  It was because of the inclusion of the military salute that the pledge evolved into the Nazi-style.  Bellamy liked the military salute because Bellamy's cousin Edward Bellamy was the originator of "military socialism" as a political philosophy, and Francis was Edward's biggest fan and cohort.

Bellamy even used military groups to promote the pledge, including the Grand Army of the Republic, a group of Northern Civil War veterans.

Upham was also familiar with Bellamy's "military socialism" dogma because Edward Bellamy, cousin and cohort to Francis, had written of it in the international bestseller "Looking Backward" in 1888, and both Bellamys had been openly involved in the national socialism movement and the "Nationalist" magazine.

Edward Bellamy was a bitter West Point failure but he loved Prussian militarism and the educational system. According to Tom Peyser "On his deathbed, he wiled away the hours by arranging tin soldiers along the folds of his coverlet." That would interest all who loathe the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, because Prussia led to the formation of the German empire, and after World War I, Prussia continued to exist as the largest Land (state) within the Weimar Republic and under the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.  After World War II it was dissolved by decree of the Allied Control Council in 1947.

Even with the palm turned upward, people would later see the relationship to the National Socialist German Workers' Party and that is why the straight-arm salute was disfavored in 1942, and the hand-over-the-heart was adopted. (On June 22, 1942, the pledge was included in the U.S. Flag Code, but Congress gave it the modern hand-over-the-heart gesture. There is probably one overriding reason why Congress interfered: to make everyone drop the straight-arm salute, which was becoming very embarassing and very revealing. The US had entered WWII on December 7, 1941 against Japan after Pearl Harbor. On December 11, 1941 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States and the U.S. declared war on Germany and Italy.)

It is interesting to note that Upham's father had operated a school in New Hampshire that included Roman and Greek classics and Upham had attended that school.   It is not clear how this might have influenced the “Roman salute” myth that eventually arose about the straight-armed salute.

Upham was the head of the premium department of the Youth’s Companion Magazine and was also a junior partner in its firm, the Perry Mason Company of Boston, which was owned by Daniel S. Ford, uncle-by-marriage to Upham.

Ford had supported churches where Francis Bellamy preached socialism. Ford was attracted to socialism and was interested in the Social Gospel which, to his friend Francis Bellamy, meant Christian Socialism.  At his death Ford bequeathed almost one million dollars to the Baptist Social Union of Boston, and that money was used to build Ford Hall, the meeting place of the Ford Hall Forum, which still exists.  In leaving money to the Forum, Ford said that the Social Union and the nation should foster closer personal relations between Christian businessman and the workingman because of the latter's "religious indifference, his feverish unrest and his belief that businessmen and capital are his enemies.”

Before Bellamy worked for the Youth’s Companion, Upham had promoted the use of the Flag in government schools.  In 1891 and 1892, Upham coordinated a national celebration of Columbus focused on government schools and a flag ceremony with the as yet unwritten pledge (Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" in 1492). Upham  wrote many drafts of a pledge and asked for comments from the magazine’s staff.  He was never happy with his drafts and he asked Bellamy to take over.

The only well known flag salute at that time was Colonel Balch's salute, written in 1889.  That salute went as follows: "We give our heads and our hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one Flag."  During the speel, the youngsters would point at their heads, their heart and then at the flag.  Thus, Balch’s chant ended with a straight arm pointing at the flag.  Balch had first used his pledge on Flag Day, June 14th, in his free kindergarten for New York City's poor and immigrants where he served as a principal. It seems to have become a daily salute in the classroom for all of his students.

Bellamy and Upham wanted a better pledge.

When Bellamy finished writing the pledge in August, 1892, he showed it to Upham.  The pledge still did not have a salute.  Upham came to attention, snapped his heels together and chanted, "I pledge allegiance to my flag," and he stretched out his right arm and hand with palm up while he recited the rest of the pledge.

Later, the first program for the pledge stated: “At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil give the Flag the military salute - right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all." At the words, "to my Flag," the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation.; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.

Because of Bellamy’s military socialism and his addition of the military salute, the pledge’s salute evolved into the Nazi-style salute.

Government schools teach that the pledge was created to sell flags to schools and Francis Bellamy is described as an advertising pioneer.  That is a whitewashed piece of the whole story.  A better description is that Bellamy was a propaganda pioneer, comparable to Leni Riefenstahl.

Germans learned bad American behavior via old films, via WWI, and via the widespread use of the straight-arm salute by German-American groups (including the German American Bund) in the USA, and from Germans who were educated in the USA or resided in the USA, and vice versa. It  led to its adoption later by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party).
 http://rexcurry.net/pledgebund.html

Even if Hitler (or anyone else) misunderstood the salute to be an old Roman salute (and it is not clear that Hitler believed it to be an old Roman salute), that would not alter Hitler's (or anyone else's) knowledge that the salute was in widespread use in the USA (from 1892).   Anyone who thought it was an old Roman salute, also thought that it was an old Roman salute used throughout the USA. The part that was correct was that it was a salute used throughout the USA.

Bellamy believed that government schools with pledges and flags were needed to brainwash children to embrace nationalism, militarism, and socialism.

Bellamy wanted the government to takeover everything and impose the military’s “efficiency,” as he said.   It is the origin of the modern military-socialist complex.

Bellamy wanted a flag over every school because he wanted to nationalize and militarize everything, including all schools, and eliminate all of the better alternatives. During Bellamy’s time the government was taking over education.

Bellamy wanted government schools to ape the military.  Government schools were intended to create an “industrial army” (another Bellamy phrase, and the word “army” was not metaphorical) and to help nationalize everything else. 

That is one of many reasons why Francis Bellamy and his also-famous cousin Edward Bellamy are known as the "American Hitlers" and as the first "American Nazis." http://rexcurry.net/pledge1.html

Germany and the entire world is owed an apology for the horrid influence that government had inside the U.S. in promoting socialized schools, military socialism within government schools, the creation of industrial armies, and daily robotic pledges of allegiance in military formation with the infamous straight-arm salute.
 http://rexcurry.net/pledgeapology.html