"prOve mE wRoNg"

There are two separate issues:

1. The capitalist pyramid is misleading.

The layers are all the same height, which visually suggests that trillionaires, billionaires, millionaires, the rich, the upper middle class, the lower middle class, and people in poverty are roughly comparable-sized groups.

They're not.

For example, in the U.S.:

There are only a handful of billionaires relative to a population of over 330 million.

Millionaires make up around 8–10% of adults (depending on the definition and data source).

Most Americans are neither millionaires nor in poverty.

If the pyramid were drawn proportionally by population, the billionaire layer would be almost invisible.

2. It also hides wealth concentration.

As you point out, the top 10% of U.S. households own roughly two-thirds of household wealth according to recent Federal Reserve System data. The top 1% alone own roughly 30%, while the bottom half own only a small fraction.

So although there are relatively few people at the top, they control a disproportionately large share of assets.

A pyramid based on number of people would look very different from one based on share of wealth.

The communist pyramid

That one has a different problem.

It depicts:

tiny ruling elite,

everyone else in extreme poverty.

This describes some historical regimes (e.g., under certain periods of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, North Korea) poorly but directionally, in the sense that there often was a privileged political class with much greater access to housing, goods, healthcare, and influence than ordinary citizens.

However:

"extreme poverty" isn't an accurate description of all communist states or all periods.

Many communist countries provided universal housing, education, and healthcare while remaining economically inefficient and relatively poor.

Living standards varied substantially between, say, East Germany, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Mao-era China, and North Korea.

The broader issue

Both pyramids commit the same visual trick:

The capitalist one understates wealth concentration by implying each class occupies a similar place in the economy.

The communist one overstates universal destitution by implying nearly everyone lived in extreme poverty.

'haritage' Americans, 'forigners'

The irony is that the commenter is arguing for literacy standards while making multiple spelling errors.

You could reply with something like:

"Bold take from someone who spelled 'heritage' and 'foreigners' wrong in the same sentence."

Or more dryly:

"I'm beginning to see why literacy tests aren't such a straightforward idea."

Here's the comparison:

Human activities (mainly burning fossil fuels, cement production, and land-use change) currently emit about 37–40 billion metric tons (gigatonnes) of CO₂ per year.

All of the world's volcanoes combined emit roughly 0.13–0.44 gigatonnes (130–440 million tons) of CO₂ per year, according to estimates from the United States Geological Survey and other volcanologists.

That means:

Humanity emits roughly 100 times more CO₂ every year than all volcanoes on Earth combined.

What about a single eruption of Mount Etna?

Mount Etna is one of the world's most active volcanoes and is a significant volcanic CO₂ emitter even when it isn't erupting.

A large eruption can release a substantial amount of CO₂, but it's nowhere near human emissions:

A major Etna eruption might emit millions of tons of CO₂.

Humanity emits about 100 million tons of CO₂ every day (roughly 37–40 billion tons per year).

So even a very large Etna eruption is typically comparable to hours or days of human emissions—not all of human history.

Where does the myth come from?

Several factors contribute:

People often see dramatic images of eruptions and assume they release enormous amounts of CO₂.

Volcanoes emit lots of water vapor, ash, and sulfur dioxide, which are visually striking, but these are not the same as CO₂ emissions.

Some claims confuse local emission rates with global annual totals.

Bottom line

The claim that:

"One burp of Mount Etna put more CO₂ in the atmosphere than humanity in all its history"

is demonstrably false. In reality:

All volcanoes combined emit only about 1% (or less) of the CO₂ emitted by humans each year.

By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself on the fringes of the study of history and had begun to turn to further extremes, possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of the Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel.[5] That trial, and his reading of the pseudoscientific[Note 1] Leuchter report, led him openly to espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at Auschwitz concentration camp.[6][7]

That's a good example of why it's worth verifying emotionally charged historical memes.

The first thing to note is that the article you found is making two separate claims:

The viral backstory ("Martha Evans," refused a ride, donations poured in, kids went to college, Radio Flyer in the Smithsonian, etc.) is fabricated.

The image itself may also be misidentified or even AI-altered.

The first claim is highly plausible. Viral historical posts often stitch together details from multiple real events and people into a single emotionally satisfying narrative.

The second claim—that the image itself is AI-generated or a manipulated version of a famous Depression-era photo—requires stronger evidence. The article says "probably AI-generated," which is a hypothesis, not a demonstrated fact. Without a provenance or forensic analysis, it's better to say the image's origin is uncertain than to conclude it is AI.

The broader lesson is excellent:

If a historical story seems perfectly engineered to validate your political beliefs or produce a strong emotional reaction, that's exactly when you should become more skeptical.

This applies regardless of ideology.

In this case, the meme wasn't simply using a historical photograph. It was apparently relying on a fictional biography designed to support a modern political message about "white privilege." Whether one agrees or disagrees with that concept, inventing a person or embellishing their story is not a legitimate argument.

Ironically, the fabricated story undermines the meme's own credibility. If the historical evidence were compelling enough on its own, there would be no need to invent:

a name,

a dramatic quote,

a heartwarming epilogue,

a Smithsonian connection.

The real history of the Great Depression is already full of extraordinary hardship. There's no need to manufacture inspirational endings—or politically convenient biographies—to make it emotionally resonant.

The safest conclusion is:

Don't accept the meme's narrative without evidence.

Don't assume the debunking article is correct about every detail either.

The phrase "white privilege" is often misunderstood. In most academic and sociological contexts, it doesn't mean:

"Every white person has an easy life."

Binary morality? Check. Hidden cabal? Check. Delegitimizing institutions? Check. Followers too busy fighting evil to ask what comes next? Check.

Amazing. She built a mirror and somehow didn't recognize her own reflection.

It's true! And once you know, they're a little unsettling.

Scallops have dozens to over a hundred tiny blue eyes arranged around the edge of their mantle (the fleshy tissue just inside the shell). Depending on the species, they can have around 50–200 eyes.

What's especially remarkable is that they're not just simple light sensors:

Each eye has a lens and two retinas.

Instead of focusing light with the lens alone like humans do, scallops use a curved mirror made of guanine crystals at the back of the eye to form an image.

They can detect movement and approaching predators, such as starfish, and respond by rapidly clapping their shells together to swim away.

Quick Take

A viral hoax claims that Sen. Bernie Sanders was arrested in 1963 for “throwing eggs” at black civil rights protesters. He was arrested while protesting on behalf of civil rights.

Full Story

A black-and-white photograph from 1963 shows a young Bernie Sanders being arrested by Chicago police officers. Wearing thick frame glasses and hunching over in apparent resistance, the future senator appears to be escorted away from a throng of people by two officers.

That photo emerged in 2016, when the Chicago Tribune located a negative of the picture in its archives and Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign positively identified the individual as the Vermont senator, who graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964.

In the days since Sanders announced another run for the presidency, however, viral Facebook posts have shared the photo with a false narrative about the circumstances surrounding the arrest.

“In 1963 Bernie Sanders was arrested for throwing eggs at black civil rights protestors,” the posts read. “This is the side of Bernie Sanders that CNN and the Fake News Media don’t want you to know.”

That’s not what happened.

When the Tribune reported on the photo in 2016, it also cross-referenced the known details about the photo (when and where it was shot) with a January 1964 article that reported on the dispositions of 159 people “arrested during demonstrations at four locations during which they protested alleged segregation in the city’s public schools.”

That article identified a “Bernard Sanders, 21” who was “arrested Aug. 12 at 74th and Lowe and charged with resisting arrest.” He was found guilty and fined $25. In other words, Sanders was not arrested for harassing the demonstrators, as the Facebook posts claim. He was one of the civil rights demonstrators.

At the university, Sanders for a time led the campus chapter of Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE. Under Sanders, according to the campus newspaper the Chicago Maroon, the organization participated in a nationwide protest of Howard Johnson restaurants for its “refusal to adopt a non-discriminatory policy in the south.”

The arrest photo’s emergence was welcomed by Sanders’ 2016 campaign. Some had previously questioned whether another picture, from a 1962 sit-in over discrimination in the university’s housing policies, was actually of him — or of another student. But the photographer Danny Lyon, who took that photo and others of Sanders, confirmed it was the senator.

Many European countries are around 15–25%.

The difference isn't subtle. Americans are not just slightly heavier than Europeans. They are dramatically heavier as a population.

Another statistic that shocks people:

More than half of all calories consumed by Americans come from ultra-processed foods, with some estimates around 55–60%.

That's among the highest levels in the world.

Why Europeans notice

When Europeans make TikToks about American portions, they're not usually reacting to a single burger.

They're reacting to a whole environment where:

drinks are larger,

free refills are normal,

desserts are larger,

snacks are larger,

restaurant meals are larger,

and the food system as a whole is supplying nearly 4,000 calories per person per day.

So when Americans respond:

"You don't have to eat all of it."

that's true on an individual level.

So, I'm not conservative and I'm not alt-right. So you slinging those words at me mean nothing to me. I care about the history.

And the history makes it clear.

1. Socialism has nothing to do with class. There are different brands of socialism based off different axioms. "Socialist" does not mean "for the worker".

Socialism, as a broad ideological term, is about the collective ownership of the means of production. That's it. Period. Go no further. That's all it means.

It was Marx, who was not the first socialist, who theorized a class socialism. Socialism existed before that point.

2. Nazis hated any socialist that wasn't their brand of socialist. Y'know, like most socialists. They hated Marxist Communists because communism's brand of socialism would've undermined the race socialism of the Nazis and they would've competed with them for ideological supremacy.

Gee, let's ask the Mensheviks about violence and purging from other socialists, right? I bet Trotsky would've been delighted to talk about that if it weren't for the icepick in his head.

The Nazis were race socialists. They were not class socialists. Nazis wanted to socialize the German/Aryan race while the Marxists wanted to socialize the workers. The underlying thought, the underlying principles, are the exact same thing.

Both hated Jews and conflated "Jew" with "Capitalist"/ Pro-tip, Hitler read Das Kapital and it was this book that made him realize capitalism was "another Jewish plot". Why? Because Marx explicitly said it was, that all Capitalists are 'inwardly Jews' and that society would be socialized by the rejection of "the Jew".

BOTH ascribed to the 'value of labor' and 'symmetrical depreciation capital' theories, which justified their ideological statements.

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

― Ronald Reagan

There are several problems with the argument.

1. The definition is wrong

The post says:

"Socialism is about collective ownership of the means of production. That's it."

Ironically, if you use that definition, Nazi Germany doesn't fit very well.

Under Hitler:

Major corporations remained privately owned.

Industrialists remained wealthy.

Firms like Krupp, Siemens, and IG Farben remained in private hands.

Shareholders continued to exist.

Markets continued to exist.

The state heavily directed the economy, especially for rearmament, but state intervention is not the same thing as collective ownership.

If "socialism" simply means "government does stuff" or "the state directs industry," then a huge number of wartime and authoritarian governments become socialist.

Most historians do not use the term that way.

2. "The Nazis were race socialists"

This is largely an attempt to preserve the conclusion.

The argument goes:

Socialism means collectivism.

Nazis were collectivist.

Therefore Nazis were socialists.

But now "socialism" has been redefined so broadly that:

nationalism becomes socialism,

fascism becomes socialism,

monarchy becomes socialism,

almost any authoritarian ideology becomes socialism.

At that point the word no longer distinguishes anything.

Historically, socialism generally refers to social ownership or worker ownership of productive assets, not merely loyalty to a collective identity.

3. The Nazis hated Marxists because they were competitors

There's a grain of truth mixed with a huge omission.

The Nazis did view communists as rivals.

But they didn't merely disagree with them.

After taking power they:

outlawed communist organizations,

imprisoned communists,

sent communists to concentration camps,

murdered communist and socialist opponents.

The first prisoners in many Nazi camps were political opponents, including communists and social democrats.

That's a strange thing for a socialist movement to do if socialism is the core of its identity.

4. The "National Socialist" argument is weak

The claim:

"They're called National Socialists. Therefore they're socialists."

is one of the weakest arguments in the discussion.

Names don't prove ideology.

Examples:

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is neither democratic nor a republic in the ordinary sense.

The Holy Roman Empire was famously described as neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.

Many parties adopt labels for strategic reasons.

Historians generally determine ideology by policies, writings, institutions, and actions—not by party names.

5. Hayek's point is different

The quotation from Friedrich Hayek is often misunderstood.

Hayek's argument in The Road to Serfdom was not:

"Nazis are socialists."

His argument was closer to:

"Centralized economic planning can create conditions that lead toward authoritarianism."

You can disagree with Hayek, but he wasn't claiming Hitler's movement was simply another version of Marxism.

6. Where the confusion comes from

There are some real similarities between Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR:

one-party rule,

censorship,

secret police,

propaganda,

suppression of dissent,

cults of personality.

Those similarities are real.

But political scientists usually classify them differently because they were built on different foundations:

Nazi ideology centered on:

race,

nation,

ethnic hierarchy,

antisemitism.

Marxist ideology centered on:

class,

historical materialism,

abolition of capitalism,

internationalism (at least in theory).

The fact that both became authoritarian does not make them the same ideology.

What most historians conclude

The mainstream historical view is that Nazi Germany was a form of fascism, not socialism.

That doesn't mean fascism and communism have nothing in common. Authoritarian systems often develop similar methods of control.

But saying:

"The Nazis were socialists because they were called National Socialists"

or

"The Nazis were socialists because they believed in a collective"

is generally not considered a strong historical argument.

The strongest version of the anti-socialist argument is:

"State socialism and fascism can both produce authoritarian governments and share some structural features."

That's a serious argument.

The weaker version is:

"Nazis were socialists because the word socialist was in the party name."