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They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

149 points by wsc981 5y ago

nonrandomstring 5y ago
The title itself and the fact that it's posted here almost implicitly contains every comment within its seed. > "Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better." I have since about 2010, sensed better. Snowden helped me trust my instincts. At this time I am left with no moral choice whatsoever but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create. It now seems like a Pascal's wager. If I'm wrong it won't matter and I'll simply look like a fool. I am really, really praying that I end up looking a fool.
- new_stranger 5y ago
  The sad thing is that most often, the actual villains trick everyone into thinking it's a different party. When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    Yes, of course, that’s what it’s like for the other side. Those people are all bad. We on the correct side don’t have that problem.
    - Jiro 5y ago
      You're being sarcastic, but I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. You can't reduce politics to a game of pattern-matching where every time someone says something which pattern-matches to "you called someone bad people!" you should react just like the last time someone said it. Sometimes people are bad, sometimes they're not, and there's no shortcut to figuring it out other than by taking the time and effort to actually figure it out, (Which isn't really a shortcut at all.)
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        Of course, no one is arguing that all sides are equally bad or that when one side says that that the other side is evil they are always wrong… the problem is that it is hard to know if you are being tricked or told the truth.
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        >I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. The problem is that if you place yourself in a random time and party, you are more likely to be a Nazi than a Jew, because a crucial element of evil is the power to do it, which is associated with having greater numbers, and that rigs the odds so that your random insertion will be among them rather than their heroic enemies.
        michaelmrose 5y ago
        In early 30s the Nazis only got 33-37% of the vote not too much unlike the portion of the electorate who support ending democracy in favor of our own would be dictator. "Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule..." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-r... If you place yourself at a random time of trouble you will 2 to 1 find yourself behind the eyes of someone indifferent or scared neither victim nor victimizer.
      - teddyh 5y ago
        You seem to be arguing in favor of the ability to declare one side entirely bad, while I (using sarcasm) argued against it. I am still not entirely convinced that the ability to completely denounce one side as entirely evil is somehow an important freedom which must be preserved, even if it is sometimes true. Regarding your examples, I couldn’t possibly comment, for obvious reasons.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted Marx. Those that weren't simply marched off to be killed--often beaten to death to save on bullets--were made to farm rice despite not knowing how and with no plans made to actually feed them. So most of the rest worked 16+ hour days and simply starved, because you could get shot for high crimes like catching a fish to eat when it was swimming between your legs.
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      > I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted This! Absolutely. Technological backlash is one of the grave dangers I address in Digital Vegan. Anti-intellectualism lies just beneath the surface in a technological society that is out of touch with itself and has alienated its members through the very technology that could unite it. It grows prone to regressive catastrophes like Mao's brutal projects and of the Khmer Rouge you mention. "Strong Leaders" attach themselves easily to ruralism, "back to basics" and other regressive ideologies. In many ways I think Putin may be one of them. Technological cults beget anti-technological cults. A problem is that nuanced (but 'inconvenient') tech critique gets labelled as precisely that regressive anti-intellectualism by those who profit from technologically mediated alienation. Simply count the allusions to Luddism in responses to my comments. That "shutting down" and trying to place reasoned technological critique as beyond discussion is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and is the road to trouble.
  - qiskit 5y ago
    > When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. No. When times get tough, everyone is naturally drawn to their own. Visit any prison. > The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well. Nobody is tricked. The person who appeals to the masses' self-interest will become leader.
- boppo1 5y ago
  What do you sense about technology? Can you describe what you're worried we are creating? Obviously there are unintended negative effects, but I think it's not certain how they'll play out.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    That's literally the point of the quote and their statement, I think. Any specific thing can be convincingly shot down in a forum of relative experts like this one. We don't know where it's going or how it'll play out. But we can feel that it is already bad and is going to get worse. Some day people will try to say "we didn't know" but that will be a lie. Some of us did and tried to convince y'all. But because we aren't able to convincingly predict the future in minute detail we've been ignored.
    - ls65536 5y ago
      The worst part is whenever bringing up such points others are often quick to dismiss them as wacky "conspiracy theories" or even just unfounded pessimism about the state of things as they are today. Merely bringing up comparisons of certain observations about society today to those of Nazi Germany (or other reprehensible regimes throughout history) risks getting oneself cancelled or targeted in other ways. "How dare you compare the horrors of World War II with the relative ease of things today! It's nowhere near as bad today as it was back then!", cry the detractors. And they may be right about that in some sense, but those who don't learn from history and apply its lessons to the present are doomed to repeat certain mistakes, or at least to make history rhyme, as the saying goes. The chilling effect caused by the stifling of open discussion about how things are today and where they could risk going wrong in the future is how we all end up sleepwalking into the well-known horrors of the past that we'd otherwise all wish to avoid.
      - BlueTemplar 5y ago
        We can thank Snowden for giving us a pretty good example of what has gone wrong and how conspiracy theories cannot all be dismissed - all the more effective, probably, because of the discontinuity it represented in this slow "boiling the frog" business.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- paganel 5y ago
  > but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create Shot in the dark here, but maybe it's worth asking: how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? I'm asking because I assume (this being HN) that you're somehow employed in a technology-related field and, as such, you can't/didn't just "quit" technology cold-turkey. I'm also asking because I'm sensing that I'm in the same both as you, i.e. I'm a computer programmer that has started to see more and more clearly the way technology is going and what bad things it does to our society (for me it started about 4-5 years ago, when I actually got to read Ellul first-hand, and before anyone starts asking, no, I'm definitely not a fan of what Ted Kaczynski did). Later edit: Seen your other comments on this thread after I had written down my comment above, saw that you also mentioned Ellul and some other very interesting stuff/authors that I didn't know about, so thanks a lot "from a distance" for all those suggestions, comments/inputs like yours is what still keeps me active on this website.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? Thanks for asking. Definitely one for a personal email which I'd be delighted to chat about (follow my book site).
newaccount2021 5y ago
I have read this and own it; if such a book were written today, the author would be instantly cancelled for presupposing to even investigate their motivations today, the press would simply declare America's enemies to be cartoon villains who were born evil and as a result incapable of understanding what contemporary America understands about Nazis is basically the vision presented in Raiders Of The Lost Ark
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  If there are any „cartoon villains“ in this story, it’s your characterization of „the press“.
jandrese 5y ago
[flagged]
- sidewndr46 5y ago
  Do you not realize it was possible to join the armed forces without being a member of the Nazi party? Only the SS required Nazi party membership.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    In fact Wehrmacht members were barred from NSDAP membership. I remember one case of a u boat commander that joined the navy to avoid NSDAP membership. He was later sentenced to death for defatism, despite intervention from senior Navy leadership. After that it took decades for him to be rehabilitated post WW2. Calling all Germans, 33(39) - 45 Nazis is strong. The truth is as well, so, that the Wehrmacht supported, enabled and perpetrated war crimes and genocide. As an organization, not every individual soldier did so. EDIT: A lot of the, especially young, officer corps was heavily Nazi influenced. Up to a third joined the NSDAP. In that case it is a clear sign of being a Nazi. As contrasted by practically forced NSDAP membership, e.g. teachers. That's one of the reasons de-Nazification was such a mess, but far from the only one.
    - sidewndr46 5y ago
      I also have heard stories of young men from that era convicted of relatively minor crimes, such as property theft. They would be given the option between a jail sentence or military service. Unsurprisingly, many chose military service.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    If two men are fighting side by side, carrying out the same acts, and one has a card in his pocket that says nazi and the other doesn't. I'm meant to understand that we're talking about one nazi, not two? Sorry I do not accept this contortion.
    - 5y ago
just_steve_h 5y ago
This is one of the most important books I've ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Also recommended: the long documentary by Marcel Ophuls, "The Sorrow and the Pity," about ordinary French and German people who lived through WW II.
duxup 5y ago
I recall a German solider interviewed in some documentary. He was young, got into the Nazi party. Fought with his parents who knew he was being brainwashed in a way. Later on the eastern front he had some event that made him think of what his parents had been saying. He said something like "I realized they were right... but by then it was all too late." Those choices that close our ears to things and choices that lead us to irreversible paths seem to be the ones that are the worst.
- dijit 5y ago
  This is hard for me to admit, but it's unfortunately true. in the UK I voted for UKIP to go to the European Parliament in 2008~ and I voted conservative in the general election of that year. I was completely bought in by the populist talking points that Farage and Cameron were touting, and I was warned not to buy into populism but my mind at the time thought: "Well, if it's popular, what's the problem? They're supposed to work for us right". The reality is that people will tell you what you want to hear. I started watching a British series called "Hustle" (about a fictitious band of conmen and grifters which we follow as they rip off comically awful people) but I noticed some patterns in the way that the cons were set up and how people like Farage speak. I noticed that it's all deflection, indirection, 10 lies a minute so that when you refute one of the lies (usually the most outrageous) the others kinda fade into the background and are assumed to be true. I think what made me snap was when I started looking into the things that were claimed much more closely: the EU regulations on "bendy bananas", and I realised it was all fluff. Farage himself being chair on the fisheries committee of the EU but constantly complaining about fishing rights of the UK. I felt betrayed, like I'd been grifted. but it's much too late, and the damage is done. Not at my hand directly perhaps; but by many people being taken in by dangerous confident grifters. Why is this relevant: because I don't think I stick out particularly, if I can be taken in, anyone can -- we like to think we make our own choices, but usually that is not the case.
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    Its like a wave in the ocean, each water molecule only moves a tiny bit, and contributes a fractional amount of energy to the wave, but in aggregate it can move fast and cause lots of damage
RobertRoberts 5y ago
The problem we face today is that the protest groups of yesterday that protested for freedom is the opposite of the protest groups today that protest in favor of oppression.
- johng 5y ago
  I feel exactly the same way. And the worst part is, they think they are in the right and are morally superior.
- hh3k0 5y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - RobertRoberts 5y ago
    Protests in the past were against something that even if you disagreed with the people, their philosophical foundation was likely agreeable. The core of these were "freedom", freedom from being forced _to do_ something, freedom from being prevented from doing something, freedom from having something taken from you without just cause, freedom to have your day in court. Now protests seem to be "I don't want _you_ to be able to say something", "I don't want you too be able to do something","I want to force you too do what I want." It's like protesters today are working directly for our oppressors and doing their work for them, and they don't even realize it.
- pastor_bob 5y ago
  - logicchains 5y ago
    Or maybe the elections really were illegitimate, and you'd never know because you've never looked at sources that weren't on the same side as the party allegedly rigging the elections?
    - pastor_bob 5y ago
watwut 5y ago
Germany did not slowly slipped into dictatorship after Hitler took power in 1933. It jumped right in with crackdown on democracy supporting parties, first concentration camps (for political opposition), arbitrarily search house searches and arrests. Within few months, all political parties except one were banned. The first measures against Jews were also taken instantly. Meaning, whether you felt free or not severely dependended on who you were - generally you needed to be pro Hitler to feel free.
- grumple 5y ago
  Sounds like something easily repeatable in the US, or that almost happened here recently...
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
- liuyipei 5y ago
  America lucked out. It would be hard to credit any single feature when the stakes were so high and the results so close.
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    If anything, those four years showed how poorly the system holds up against bad actors simultaneously in all branches. I'm not sure how you can solve that, though.
    - altacc 5y ago
      And those 4 years are not over yet, the echoes continue.
    - 1270018080 5y ago
      Yeah, it's an extremely fragile system and it only takes a few dozen people out of 350 million to end democracy in this country. - You only need a few dozen state reps in a few swing states to override the popular vote and choose their own electors. - 51 senators to reject the election results. - A rigged Supreme Court that could choose a case from a lower court related to elections and rule whatever they want. We think we have a robust and stable democracy, but we're already halfway there in most of these events.
    - titzer 5y ago
      Corruption is a rot, slow, like a corpse decomposing. It's an ongoing process that is only opposed by daily actions of cleaning off barnacles. America collected a lot of barnacles from those four years, and the rate at which they've been purged is probably too low. The recent spate of anti-voter laws and gerrymandered districts just shows the steal is ongoing.
    - hackyhacky 5y ago
okeuro49 5y ago
I like to think if I were alive during the Nazi era, I wouldn't have become a Nazi. But I know, chances are, I would have most likely ended up as one of those German citizens who would have gradually become part of the Nazi machine. I think it's perhaps safer to recognise the line between good and evil runs through every person, and not be presumptive to think of oneself as being part of a select group of virtuous people. I can think of many recent occurrences where people who think they are acting virtuously, are in fact the perpetrators of harm, without knowing it; so convinced they are of their own virtue.
- caiob 5y ago
  [dead]
- trhway 5y ago
  Just look at Russia - a real Nazist regime while most Russians conveniently believe they are fighting world Nazism. The truth is actually available to them, yet it is so scary and inconvenient that they instinctively choose to ignore it. Their propagandists on state TV even stated recently discussing Ukraine that Nazism = political nationalism + totalitarism. Which obviously doesn't apply to Ukraine, yet absolutely describes Russia.
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    If you hate something about yourself, maybe it affords some reassurance to see that thing in someone else and then try and destroy them. I wonder if thats what's going on with some of these Russians.
  - skissane 5y ago
    I support Ukraine and oppose Putin - but Putin isn’t a Nazi. His ideology, in its details, is quite different from that of Nazism. Russian propaganda that “Ukraine is a Nazi state” is stupid, but you have to understand that “Nazism” means something quite different to Russians than to most Westerners. Most Westerners focus on the Nazis’ genocidal Antisemitism; in Russia, the focus is more on the Nazis’ genocidal Russophobia. That different focus makes the propaganda seem not quite as ludicrous as it does in the West, especially when one considers the language policy issue (encouraging the use of Ukrainian language over Russian), which the Russian government paints as Russophobic discrimination.
jmclnx 5y ago
Google Cache, I could not get into it https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UlZ7DCSNIkQJ:https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UlZ7DC...
- agumonkey 5y ago
  secondary mirror https://archive.ph/TQMZc https://archive.ph/TQMZc
giardini 5y ago
Reads like a description of today's social media.
- watwut 5y ago
  If that is honest take away, then it means the article is badly written. Edit: I don't mean it as a joke. If you read just a little about how Germany post 1933 functioned, it was nothing like social media today. The level of threat and risk and associated violence is nowhere similar. If the article makes honest impression that it is the same, it is not representing Germany well at all.
aaroninsf 5y ago
- quacked 5y ago
  I'll address some of your point to explain at least some of the Right's departure from Democracy. Most left-leaners seem at a loss to understand it, so although I expect I'll be downvoted to hell, I may be able to add some context to what seems like an impenetrable problem. I vehemently dislike the GOP; however, I dislike the American left to an even greater degree, and what I disagree with the American left most over is the issue of immigration, which is central to the issue of Democracy. In speaking to left-leaners, I always find that they support increasing immigration. Some say that they'd be fine with millions more every year; some say that they think there should be billions of Americans; some think that borders should be removed entirely. Immigrants moving to a new country are primarily concerned with their own way of life, and the way of life of that of their compatriots. I know and speak to many immigrants, and their primary questions are: (1) how can I make more money so I can send it to my family; (2) how can I get my family over here? These are often intelligent, creative, brilliant people--humans, all--but their allegiance to their families and their culture is much higher than their allegiance to "Ameria", whatever that means. For many of them, the U.S. exists as an economic zone for them, not as a nation. What to me is an eye-offending megastore and parking complex laid across a prior wetland is to them a safe, predictable, policed place to acquire goods and services. What to me is a tyrannical surveillance practice is to them a connection to the police that could never be trusted in their home country. They will vote to protect these conveniences over any esoteric desires about my own country and culture that I have. Furthermore, in the cases of overtly left-leaning immigrants, I find that they actively dislike me--they mock the food I like, the music I like, the history I'm proud of, etc. Now, there are usually between 200,000 and 1M new immigrants added to the country every year, worsening the already nasty housing problem. So, now, I ask myself: how to deal with this social and political issue? How can I make my voice heard? The answer in the US is Democracy, the One Moral Form of Government, the Bringer of Human Rights to the World. In the US, this means that myself and a proportionally dwindling set of conservatives (who are often even worse than the immigrants whose viewpoints I disagree with) will set our votes against a constantly-expanding group of left-leaners and brand new immigrants, each of whom will be emboldened to participate in Democracy, inevitably tilting the balance of control further and further left. This will happen in business as well as in politics; as an exmaple, land and institutions are increasingly captured by Chinese investors (farmland, manufacturing, real estate, etc.), and the legislatures continue to allow it to happen. So--I am now not so interested in Democracy as I was when I was a child; now I am more interested in Power, who owns it, and how they're going to get it. What is the point of voting if your political opponents will ally with all of the other subcultures in your pluralistic Democracy, vote against you, and permanently change your country into something you don't like? (To head off the normal comments: no, I do not think that "conservatives" are "oppressed"; no, I did not vote for Trump; no, I don't think the Capitol invasion was smart and I think the Capitol Police would have been justified in using more live ammunition than they did; yes, I understand that my ancestors were immigrants, it may have been a better idea to stay in the Old Country; yes, I agree that many immigrants are smarter, more ethical, and more virtuous than "classical" Americans; and yes, I agree that Native Americans are logically correct to be upset about my continued occupancy of the land their ancestors lived on.)
Animats 5y ago
For the US, next time will be worse. There is an announced Russian plan to destabilize the US political system.[1] "Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Host Evgeny Popov says it's time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change "the regime in the U.S." before its term expires "and to again help our partner Trump to become President."[2] [1] https://news.yahoo.com/russia-airs-ultimate-revenge-plan-180320569.html https://news.yahoo.com/russia-airs-ultimate-revenge-plan-180... [2] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1508943310483767302 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/150894331048376730...
- adventured 5y ago
  Russia is extraordinarily weak and is being put into a sandbox for containment purposes. They're a non-issue (other than the nukes). Trump wasn't elected because of Russia. He was elected because the voters were and are upset and he represented an opportunity to stab the establishment in the eye (whereas Hillary fully represented the establishment). Trump won for the same reason Bernie Sanders came so close to winning his party's nomination, and the establishment detests Trump for the same reason they dislike Sanders (even though he's far more palatable to them than Trump is, they still don't want him in power either). * please also note: just because the voters are upset and choose someone like Trump, that obviously doesn't mean they're acting rationally toward their own well-being, don't confuse the two things. They can be upset, they can be choosing something that isn't in their best interests in terms of solving their various problems (eg healthcare costs), and they can be throwing a voter tantrum (perceived anti-establishment), all in one.
  - loudmax 5y ago
    Actually a lot of Americans detest Trump because he literally tried to stage a coup d'état on January 6th, 2021 to overthrow a democratically elected president.
    - radicaldreamer 5y ago
      He/she was referring to the 2016 election...
SigmundA 5y ago
Watching various Russian interview youtube channels reminds me of this [1]. Its very scary you basically have a lot of apathy and denial. People really just want to get on with their normal day and not think about it, they believe only what lines up with their safe world view, nobody wants to be the bad guy, Ukraine is fake news. These people look like came out of the US Midwest just speaking a different language, it could definitely happen anywhere. Made me think about how the allies made Germans face the atrocities that they where in denial about after the war, making them go to the camps, dig the graves, watch the footage [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel/videos [2] https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/german-soldiers-react-to-concentration-camp-footage-photo.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/german-soldiers-rea...
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I think you might be misinterpreting the Russian comments that are along the lines of "I don't follow politics" or "I don't know enough to have an opinion". Those are "safe" answers. It's a euphemism, of sorts. They can't say "No, I don't want the current President to remain in power" so they say "I don't have an opinion on the President". They can't get in trouble for giving that answer. I get the impression the vast majority of the people giving those dismissive answers can't share how they really feel on camera because it would be dangerous. It's not that they're apathetic, they're just aware of the risks that come along with speaking their mind.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > it could definitely happen anywhere. It does happen everywhere. European countries in NATO have been responsible for more deaths than the russians. It's hilarious. People are pretending ukraine is the only war that ever existed. Ukraine is the tamest ongoing war right now. The least civilian deaths of any serious war since the turn of the century. > Made me think about how the allies made Germans face the atrocities that they where in denial about after the war, making them go to the camps, dig the graves, watch the footage That is literally post-war indoctrination/propaganda. Had the germans won ww2, they would have made the british, americans, russians, etc confront their own war crimes.
adventured 5y ago
Book recommendation: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L Shirer Goes into excellent, albeit sometimes boring, detail about the culture of the greater German region at the time and how it made Nazi Germany possible, and then obviously the rise and fall of the Nazi Party.
ben7799 5y ago
I used to have an original copy of this book. I had a relative who was a career officer in the US Army including WWII who had died and the book came to me from his wife when he died. Interesting book but Milton Mayer was an interesting character (he opposed the US entering WWII IIRC for example) and there was a lot of weird stuff in the book where he showed how willing he himself was to go along with the same kind of things that led to the Nazis coming to power. For example he sometimes came off as having a blind side because he was nearly McCarthyist in his treatment of communism. With 60 years of hindsight you could see he made comments that made you think he would have gone along with a corrupt regime if it was able to contain communism, no different than Germans were taken in by the Nazis. I don't think things are that different today. All governments are shades between good and evil, and we all subconsciously ignore things governments do if it is obviously far more personally convenient to tolerate that kind of behavior. Self preservation can easily take precedence over being against evil if you are already in the "in group" that is protected by the evil.
ltbarcly3 5y ago
[flagged]
- watwut 5y ago
  [flagged]
codeflo 5y ago
It's unfortunately a very human tendency to shift baselines, to judge each individual step only relative to the last one, without considering the situation in the absolute. This applies in much lower stakes environments as well: the workplace, relationships. It's surprising how reliably someone's attitude can flip from "if ever X, I'll quit" to "X isn't that much worse than X-1, this isn't worth making a fuss about" if the change happens slowly enough.
- derefr 5y ago
  > The history of the world isn't the history of evil people with glowing red eyes doing evil things; it's the history of throngs of average people, out of touch with their own faults, betraying themselves and others by heading up the wrong set of stairs—usually with the help of a handful of truly bad people. https://viruscomix.com/page519.html https://viruscomix.com/page519.html
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Nobody ever wants to believe that they're the bad guys, and unless someone forces them to face facts, they're going to ignore it. See: the United States of America. The brutality of slavery? "Not my problem. I had nothing to do with it. CRT is the real problem dividing us anyway" The absolutely evil treatment of indigenous people? "Christopher Columbus was a hero for discovering the New World" The Confederacy? "Oh, it was just a state's rights issue." Japanese internment during WWII? "But did you hear about the Nazis?" The treatment of refugees at our borders? "Here's why separating children from their parents is actually a good thing!"
- Jtype 5y ago
  Simple takes.
fdr 5y ago
It's a good book. I thought these passages were memorable: it shows you how quickly a situation can deteriorate, especially under an all-consuming pressure...like total mobilization for war. In its issue of November 11, 1938, the Kronenberger Zcitung carried the following report, at the bottom of page 4, under a very small headline reading Schutzhaft, “Protective Custody”: “In the interest of their own security, a number of male Jews were taken into custody yesterday. This morning they were sent away from the city.” I showed it to each of my ten friends. None of them—including the teacher—remembered ever having seen it or anything like it. 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939—until September 1, when, as the Head of the Government told them, Poland attacked their country—the little lives of my friends went on, under National Socialism as they had before, altered only for the better, and always for the better, in bread and butter, in housing, health, and hope, wherever the New Order touched them. “No one outside Germany seems to understand this,” said an anti-Nazi woman, who had been imprisoned in 1943, ostensibly for listening to the foreign radio but actually for hiding Jews (which was not technically illegal). “I remember standing on a Stuttgart street corner in 1938, during a Nazi festival, and the enthusiasm, the new hope of a good life, after so many years of hopelessness, the new belief, after so many years of disillusion, almost swept me, too, off my feet. Let me try to tell you what that time was like in Germany: I was sitting in a cinema with a Jewish friend and her daughter of thirteen, while a Nazi parade went across the screen, and the girl caught her mother’s arm and whispered, ‘Oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren’t a Jew, I think I’d be a Nazi!’ No one outside seems to understand how this was.”
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  This is similar to why Russians like Putin as much as they do. Life under the Putin regime has improved material standards a lot, compared to the disasters that preceded it.
  - sydthrowaway 5y ago
    How was Yeltsin bad?
- watwut 5y ago
  > 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939 Jews were running away from Germany in those years. Quite desperately. 1938 is Kristallnacht alias November pogrom. Jews were restricted in civil service and schools since 1933. The second wave of segregation laws was in 1935. And other Germans characterized living in Germany as "you did not knew what is fear unless you lived there" - because you could actually get to prison for a joke someone overheard. My point here is that Nazi Germany did not became totalitarian as the war started. It was very oppressive and totalitarian long before.
Barrera 5y ago
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. I remember reading this long before the Internet and thinking that it made sense. The world was literally going insane around the author but nobody noticed. It happened through an accumulation of no-crisis baby steps, year after year. The mass adoption of the Internet has caused me to reconsider. Every crackpot I've ever encountered thinks exactly the same thing, namely that we're all asleep while <major issue> continues unabated. How can we be so blind to it! This is not to dismiss the author, who clearly saw some shit, but rather to point out the very fine line between crackpot and prophet, at least when viewed on the surface.
- gdsimoes 5y ago
  The difference between a crackpot and a prophet is their reason for believing what they do. And their thinking couldn't be more different.
  - new_stranger 5y ago
    Yes, but I think people sometimes confuse the criteria for 'good reasoning' in the moment. It's easier to paint a prophet as a crackpot if everyone else is putting time and energy into finding fault with them. You can vilify anyone, especially those that look different.
at_a_remove 5y ago
A casual trawl through Voluptuous Panic made me a little less shocked at the reactionary angle. Anyone who wanted to capitalize on that could have.
thinker403 5y ago
I've almost finished "The Coming of the Third Reich", by Richard J. Evans, and the one thing that stands out is how much Germany's economic collapse before 1933 laid the seeds for the Nazi's rise. This is why it's hard for me to relate it to anything America has recently experienced or Putin's Russia. As bad as the Jan. 6 riots were they would have been a heck of a lot worse if every rioter had no job to go back to. When loaves of bread cost a wheelbarrow of money and you have a family to feed even the most draconian political structures become attractive.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
I think anyone on this thread who hasn't already, needs to go read Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. "PREFACE This is the third and final volume of a trilogy describing the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin- Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany. Each of these events introduced some variant of socialism into a major country — i.e., Bolshevik socialism in Russia, New Deal socialism in the United States, and National socialism in Germany. Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. On the other hand, it is understandable that universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics. The bravest of trustees is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds his organization. It is also eminently clear from the evidence in this trilogy that "public-spirited businessmen" do not journey to Washington as lobbyists and administrators in order to serve the United States. They are in Washington to serve their own profit-maximizing interests. Their purpose is not to further a competitive, free-market economy, but to manipulate a politicized regime, call it what you will, to their own advantage. It is business manipulation of Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. ANTONY C. SUTTON"
- aklemm 5y ago
  What exactly do you find interesting in that excerpt?
  - arminiusreturns 5y ago
    I really don't find too much in the preface, I just thought it was a decent introduction (after all, written by the author) to the book. If I had to be specific though: > the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin- Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany. > Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. > universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics > business manipulation of Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler I think just those four things offer plenty of intellectual red-meat that is very interesting to explore.

149 points by wsc981 5y ago

The title itself and the fact that it's posted here almost implicitly contains every comment within its seed. > "Your 'little men,' your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better." I have since about 2010, sensed better. Snowden helped me trust my instincts. At this time I am left with no moral choice whatsoever but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create. It now seems like a Pascal's wager. If I'm wrong it won't matter and I'll simply look like a fool. I am really, really praying that I end up looking a fool.

new_stranger 5y ago
The sad thing is that most often, the actual villains trick everyone into thinking it's a different party. When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Yes, of course, that’s what it’s like for the other side. Those people are all bad. We on the correct side don’t have that problem.
  - Jiro 5y ago
    You're being sarcastic, but I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. You can't reduce politics to a game of pattern-matching where every time someone says something which pattern-matches to "you called someone bad people!" you should react just like the last time someone said it. Sometimes people are bad, sometimes they're not, and there's no shortcut to figuring it out other than by taking the time and effort to actually figure it out, (Which isn't really a shortcut at all.)
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      Of course, no one is arguing that all sides are equally bad or that when one side says that that the other side is evil they are always wrong… the problem is that it is hard to know if you are being tricked or told the truth.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      >I can think of a number of cases where someone could have expressed that opinion seriously and been pretty much correct, including Jews under the Nazis, and the Ukrainians now. The problem is that if you place yourself in a random time and party, you are more likely to be a Nazi than a Jew, because a crucial element of evil is the power to do it, which is associated with having greater numbers, and that rigs the odds so that your random insertion will be among them rather than their heroic enemies.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        In early 30s the Nazis only got 33-37% of the vote not too much unlike the portion of the electorate who support ending democracy in favor of our own would be dictator. "Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule..." https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-rise-to-power https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-r... If you place yourself at a random time of trouble you will 2 to 1 find yourself behind the eyes of someone indifferent or scared neither victim nor victimizer.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      You seem to be arguing in favor of the ability to declare one side entirely bad, while I (using sarcasm) argued against it. I am still not entirely convinced that the ability to completely denounce one side as entirely evil is somehow an important freedom which must be preserved, even if it is sometimes true. Regarding your examples, I couldn’t possibly comment, for obvious reasons.
- Natsu 5y ago
  I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted Marx. Those that weren't simply marched off to be killed--often beaten to death to save on bullets--were made to farm rice despite not knowing how and with no plans made to actually feed them. So most of the rest worked 16+ hour days and simply starved, because you could get shot for high crimes like catching a fish to eat when it was swimming between your legs.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > I think that when it becomes culty and reality-denying is where the real problems come in. For example, 47 years ago the city of Phenom Penh was forced at gunpoint to march into the wilderness to farm rice because of how some people interpreted This! Absolutely. Technological backlash is one of the grave dangers I address in Digital Vegan. Anti-intellectualism lies just beneath the surface in a technological society that is out of touch with itself and has alienated its members through the very technology that could unite it. It grows prone to regressive catastrophes like Mao's brutal projects and of the Khmer Rouge you mention. "Strong Leaders" attach themselves easily to ruralism, "back to basics" and other regressive ideologies. In many ways I think Putin may be one of them. Technological cults beget anti-technological cults. A problem is that nuanced (but 'inconvenient') tech critique gets labelled as precisely that regressive anti-intellectualism by those who profit from technologically mediated alienation. Simply count the allusions to Luddism in responses to my comments. That "shutting down" and trying to place reasoned technological critique as beyond discussion is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and is the road to trouble.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > When bad people rise to power, they often do so vilifying one or more other groups. No. When times get tough, everyone is naturally drawn to their own. Visit any prison. > The odds are not in our favor, collectively, we will be tricked as well. Nobody is tricked. The person who appeals to the masses' self-interest will become leader.
boppo1 5y ago
What do you sense about technology? Can you describe what you're worried we are creating? Obviously there are unintended negative effects, but I think it's not certain how they'll play out.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  That's literally the point of the quote and their statement, I think. Any specific thing can be convincingly shot down in a forum of relative experts like this one. We don't know where it's going or how it'll play out. But we can feel that it is already bad and is going to get worse. Some day people will try to say "we didn't know" but that will be a lie. Some of us did and tried to convince y'all. But because we aren't able to convincingly predict the future in minute detail we've been ignored.
  - ls65536 5y ago
    The worst part is whenever bringing up such points others are often quick to dismiss them as wacky "conspiracy theories" or even just unfounded pessimism about the state of things as they are today. Merely bringing up comparisons of certain observations about society today to those of Nazi Germany (or other reprehensible regimes throughout history) risks getting oneself cancelled or targeted in other ways. "How dare you compare the horrors of World War II with the relative ease of things today! It's nowhere near as bad today as it was back then!", cry the detractors. And they may be right about that in some sense, but those who don't learn from history and apply its lessons to the present are doomed to repeat certain mistakes, or at least to make history rhyme, as the saying goes. The chilling effect caused by the stifling of open discussion about how things are today and where they could risk going wrong in the future is how we all end up sleepwalking into the well-known horrors of the past that we'd otherwise all wish to avoid.
    - BlueTemplar 5y ago
      We can thank Snowden for giving us a pretty good example of what has gone wrong and how conspiracy theories cannot all be dismissed - all the more effective, probably, because of the discontinuity it represented in this slow "boiling the frog" business.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
paganel 5y ago
> but to speak up about the direction of technology and what we are helping to create Shot in the dark here, but maybe it's worth asking: how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? I'm asking because I assume (this being HN) that you're somehow employed in a technology-related field and, as such, you can't/didn't just "quit" technology cold-turkey. I'm also asking because I'm sensing that I'm in the same both as you, i.e. I'm a computer programmer that has started to see more and more clearly the way technology is going and what bad things it does to our society (for me it started about 4-5 years ago, when I actually got to read Ellul first-hand, and before anyone starts asking, no, I'm definitely not a fan of what Ted Kaczynski did). Later edit: Seen your other comments on this thread after I had written down my comment above, saw that you also mentioned Ellul and some other very interesting stuff/authors that I didn't know about, so thanks a lot "from a distance" for all those suggestions, comments/inputs like yours is what still keeps me active on this website.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > how exactly are you managing your (remaining) relation with technology going forward? How do you see it (in the future, that is)? Thanks for asking. Definitely one for a personal email which I'd be delighted to chat about (follow my book site).

newaccount2021 5y ago

I have read this and own it; if such a book were written today, the author would be instantly cancelled for presupposing to even investigate their motivations today, the press would simply declare America's enemies to be cartoon villains who were born evil and as a result incapable of understanding what contemporary America understands about Nazis is basically the vision presented in Raiders Of The Lost Ark

KarlKemp 5y ago
If there are any „cartoon villains“ in this story, it’s your characterization of „the press“.

jandrese 5y ago

[flagged]

sidewndr46 5y ago
Do you not realize it was possible to join the armed forces without being a member of the Nazi party? Only the SS required Nazi party membership.
- hef19898 5y ago
  In fact Wehrmacht members were barred from NSDAP membership. I remember one case of a u boat commander that joined the navy to avoid NSDAP membership. He was later sentenced to death for defatism, despite intervention from senior Navy leadership. After that it took decades for him to be rehabilitated post WW2. Calling all Germans, 33(39) - 45 Nazis is strong. The truth is as well, so, that the Wehrmacht supported, enabled and perpetrated war crimes and genocide. As an organization, not every individual soldier did so. EDIT: A lot of the, especially young, officer corps was heavily Nazi influenced. Up to a third joined the NSDAP. In that case it is a clear sign of being a Nazi. As contrasted by practically forced NSDAP membership, e.g. teachers. That's one of the reasons de-Nazification was such a mess, but far from the only one.
  - sidewndr46 5y ago
    I also have heard stories of young men from that era convicted of relatively minor crimes, such as property theft. They would be given the option between a jail sentence or military service. Unsurprisingly, many chose military service.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  If two men are fighting side by side, carrying out the same acts, and one has a card in his pocket that says nazi and the other doesn't. I'm meant to understand that we're talking about one nazi, not two? Sorry I do not accept this contortion.
  - 5y ago

just_steve_h 5y ago

This is one of the most important books I've ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Also recommended: the long documentary by Marcel Ophuls, "The Sorrow and the Pity," about ordinary French and German people who lived through WW II.

duxup 5y ago

I recall a German solider interviewed in some documentary. He was young, got into the Nazi party. Fought with his parents who knew he was being brainwashed in a way. Later on the eastern front he had some event that made him think of what his parents had been saying. He said something like "I realized they were right... but by then it was all too late." Those choices that close our ears to things and choices that lead us to irreversible paths seem to be the ones that are the worst.

dijit 5y ago
This is hard for me to admit, but it's unfortunately true. in the UK I voted for UKIP to go to the European Parliament in 2008~ and I voted conservative in the general election of that year. I was completely bought in by the populist talking points that Farage and Cameron were touting, and I was warned not to buy into populism but my mind at the time thought: "Well, if it's popular, what's the problem? They're supposed to work for us right". The reality is that people will tell you what you want to hear. I started watching a British series called "Hustle" (about a fictitious band of conmen and grifters which we follow as they rip off comically awful people) but I noticed some patterns in the way that the cons were set up and how people like Farage speak. I noticed that it's all deflection, indirection, 10 lies a minute so that when you refute one of the lies (usually the most outrageous) the others kinda fade into the background and are assumed to be true. I think what made me snap was when I started looking into the things that were claimed much more closely: the EU regulations on "bendy bananas", and I realised it was all fluff. Farage himself being chair on the fisheries committee of the EU but constantly complaining about fishing rights of the UK. I felt betrayed, like I'd been grifted. but it's much too late, and the damage is done. Not at my hand directly perhaps; but by many people being taken in by dangerous confident grifters. Why is this relevant: because I don't think I stick out particularly, if I can be taken in, anyone can -- we like to think we make our own choices, but usually that is not the case.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Its like a wave in the ocean, each water molecule only moves a tiny bit, and contributes a fractional amount of energy to the wave, but in aggregate it can move fast and cause lots of damage

RobertRoberts 5y ago

The problem we face today is that the protest groups of yesterday that protested for freedom is the opposite of the protest groups today that protest in favor of oppression.

johng 5y ago
I feel exactly the same way. And the worst part is, they think they are in the right and are morally superior.
hh3k0 5y ago
Care to elaborate?
- RobertRoberts 5y ago
  Protests in the past were against something that even if you disagreed with the people, their philosophical foundation was likely agreeable. The core of these were "freedom", freedom from being forced _to do_ something, freedom from being prevented from doing something, freedom from having something taken from you without just cause, freedom to have your day in court. Now protests seem to be "I don't want _you_ to be able to say something", "I don't want you too be able to do something","I want to force you too do what I want." It's like protesters today are working directly for our oppressors and doing their work for them, and they don't even realize it.
pastor_bob 5y ago
- logicchains 5y ago
  Or maybe the elections really were illegitimate, and you'd never know because you've never looked at sources that weren't on the same side as the party allegedly rigging the elections?
  - pastor_bob 5y ago

watwut 5y ago

Germany did not slowly slipped into dictatorship after Hitler took power in 1933. It jumped right in with crackdown on democracy supporting parties, first concentration camps (for political opposition), arbitrarily search house searches and arrests. Within few months, all political parties except one were banned. The first measures against Jews were also taken instantly. Meaning, whether you felt free or not severely dependended on who you were - generally you needed to be pro Hitler to feel free.

grumple 5y ago
Sounds like something easily repeatable in the US, or that almost happened here recently...

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

liuyipei 5y ago
America lucked out. It would be hard to credit any single feature when the stakes were so high and the results so close.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  If anything, those four years showed how poorly the system holds up against bad actors simultaneously in all branches. I'm not sure how you can solve that, though.
  - altacc 5y ago
    And those 4 years are not over yet, the echoes continue.
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    Yeah, it's an extremely fragile system and it only takes a few dozen people out of 350 million to end democracy in this country. - You only need a few dozen state reps in a few swing states to override the popular vote and choose their own electors. - 51 senators to reject the election results. - A rigged Supreme Court that could choose a case from a lower court related to elections and rule whatever they want. We think we have a robust and stable democracy, but we're already halfway there in most of these events.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Corruption is a rot, slow, like a corpse decomposing. It's an ongoing process that is only opposed by daily actions of cleaning off barnacles. America collected a lot of barnacles from those four years, and the rate at which they've been purged is probably too low. The recent spate of anti-voter laws and gerrymandered districts just shows the steal is ongoing.
  - hackyhacky 5y ago

okeuro49 5y ago

I like to think if I were alive during the Nazi era, I wouldn't have become a Nazi. But I know, chances are, I would have most likely ended up as one of those German citizens who would have gradually become part of the Nazi machine. I think it's perhaps safer to recognise the line between good and evil runs through every person, and not be presumptive to think of oneself as being part of a select group of virtuous people. I can think of many recent occurrences where people who think they are acting virtuously, are in fact the perpetrators of harm, without knowing it; so convinced they are of their own virtue.

caiob 5y ago
[dead]
trhway 5y ago
Just look at Russia - a real Nazist regime while most Russians conveniently believe they are fighting world Nazism. The truth is actually available to them, yet it is so scary and inconvenient that they instinctively choose to ignore it. Their propagandists on state TV even stated recently discussing Ukraine that Nazism = political nationalism + totalitarism. Which obviously doesn't apply to Ukraine, yet absolutely describes Russia.
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  If you hate something about yourself, maybe it affords some reassurance to see that thing in someone else and then try and destroy them. I wonder if thats what's going on with some of these Russians.
- skissane 5y ago
  I support Ukraine and oppose Putin - but Putin isn’t a Nazi. His ideology, in its details, is quite different from that of Nazism. Russian propaganda that “Ukraine is a Nazi state” is stupid, but you have to understand that “Nazism” means something quite different to Russians than to most Westerners. Most Westerners focus on the Nazis’ genocidal Antisemitism; in Russia, the focus is more on the Nazis’ genocidal Russophobia. That different focus makes the propaganda seem not quite as ludicrous as it does in the West, especially when one considers the language policy issue (encouraging the use of Ukrainian language over Russian), which the Russian government paints as Russophobic discrimination.

jmclnx 5y ago

Google Cache, I could not get into it https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UlZ7DCSNIkQJ:https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UlZ7DC...

agumonkey 5y ago
secondary mirror https://archive.ph/TQMZc https://archive.ph/TQMZc

giardini 5y ago

Reads like a description of today's social media.

watwut 5y ago
If that is honest take away, then it means the article is badly written. Edit: I don't mean it as a joke. If you read just a little about how Germany post 1933 functioned, it was nothing like social media today. The level of threat and risk and associated violence is nowhere similar. If the article makes honest impression that it is the same, it is not representing Germany well at all.

aaroninsf 5y ago

quacked 5y ago
I'll address some of your point to explain at least some of the Right's departure from Democracy. Most left-leaners seem at a loss to understand it, so although I expect I'll be downvoted to hell, I may be able to add some context to what seems like an impenetrable problem. I vehemently dislike the GOP; however, I dislike the American left to an even greater degree, and what I disagree with the American left most over is the issue of immigration, which is central to the issue of Democracy. In speaking to left-leaners, I always find that they support increasing immigration. Some say that they'd be fine with millions more every year; some say that they think there should be billions of Americans; some think that borders should be removed entirely. Immigrants moving to a new country are primarily concerned with their own way of life, and the way of life of that of their compatriots. I know and speak to many immigrants, and their primary questions are: (1) how can I make more money so I can send it to my family; (2) how can I get my family over here? These are often intelligent, creative, brilliant people--humans, all--but their allegiance to their families and their culture is much higher than their allegiance to "Ameria", whatever that means. For many of them, the U.S. exists as an economic zone for them, not as a nation. What to me is an eye-offending megastore and parking complex laid across a prior wetland is to them a safe, predictable, policed place to acquire goods and services. What to me is a tyrannical surveillance practice is to them a connection to the police that could never be trusted in their home country. They will vote to protect these conveniences over any esoteric desires about my own country and culture that I have. Furthermore, in the cases of overtly left-leaning immigrants, I find that they actively dislike me--they mock the food I like, the music I like, the history I'm proud of, etc. Now, there are usually between 200,000 and 1M new immigrants added to the country every year, worsening the already nasty housing problem. So, now, I ask myself: how to deal with this social and political issue? How can I make my voice heard? The answer in the US is Democracy, the One Moral Form of Government, the Bringer of Human Rights to the World. In the US, this means that myself and a proportionally dwindling set of conservatives (who are often even worse than the immigrants whose viewpoints I disagree with) will set our votes against a constantly-expanding group of left-leaners and brand new immigrants, each of whom will be emboldened to participate in Democracy, inevitably tilting the balance of control further and further left. This will happen in business as well as in politics; as an exmaple, land and institutions are increasingly captured by Chinese investors (farmland, manufacturing, real estate, etc.), and the legislatures continue to allow it to happen. So--I am now not so interested in Democracy as I was when I was a child; now I am more interested in Power, who owns it, and how they're going to get it. What is the point of voting if your political opponents will ally with all of the other subcultures in your pluralistic Democracy, vote against you, and permanently change your country into something you don't like? (To head off the normal comments: no, I do not think that "conservatives" are "oppressed"; no, I did not vote for Trump; no, I don't think the Capitol invasion was smart and I think the Capitol Police would have been justified in using more live ammunition than they did; yes, I understand that my ancestors were immigrants, it may have been a better idea to stay in the Old Country; yes, I agree that many immigrants are smarter, more ethical, and more virtuous than "classical" Americans; and yes, I agree that Native Americans are logically correct to be upset about my continued occupancy of the land their ancestors lived on.)

Animats 5y ago

For the US, next time will be worse. There is an announced Russian plan to destabilize the US political system.[1] "Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Host Evgeny Popov says it's time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change "the regime in the U.S." before its term expires "and to again help our partner Trump to become President."[2] [1] https://news.yahoo.com/russia-airs-ultimate-revenge-plan-180320569.html https://news.yahoo.com/russia-airs-ultimate-revenge-plan-180... [2] https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1508943310483767302 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/150894331048376730...

adventured 5y ago
Russia is extraordinarily weak and is being put into a sandbox for containment purposes. They're a non-issue (other than the nukes). Trump wasn't elected because of Russia. He was elected because the voters were and are upset and he represented an opportunity to stab the establishment in the eye (whereas Hillary fully represented the establishment). Trump won for the same reason Bernie Sanders came so close to winning his party's nomination, and the establishment detests Trump for the same reason they dislike Sanders (even though he's far more palatable to them than Trump is, they still don't want him in power either). * please also note: just because the voters are upset and choose someone like Trump, that obviously doesn't mean they're acting rationally toward their own well-being, don't confuse the two things. They can be upset, they can be choosing something that isn't in their best interests in terms of solving their various problems (eg healthcare costs), and they can be throwing a voter tantrum (perceived anti-establishment), all in one.
- loudmax 5y ago
  Actually a lot of Americans detest Trump because he literally tried to stage a coup d'état on January 6th, 2021 to overthrow a democratically elected president.
  - radicaldreamer 5y ago
    He/she was referring to the 2016 election...

SigmundA 5y ago

Watching various Russian interview youtube channels reminds me of this [1]. Its very scary you basically have a lot of apathy and denial. People really just want to get on with their normal day and not think about it, they believe only what lines up with their safe world view, nobody wants to be the bad guy, Ukraine is fake news. These people look like came out of the US Midwest just speaking a different language, it could definitely happen anywhere. Made me think about how the allies made Germans face the atrocities that they where in denial about after the war, making them go to the camps, dig the graves, watch the footage [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/1420channel/videos [2] https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/german-soldiers-react-to-concentration-camp-footage-photo.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/german-soldiers-rea...

elliekelly 5y ago
I think you might be misinterpreting the Russian comments that are along the lines of "I don't follow politics" or "I don't know enough to have an opinion". Those are "safe" answers. It's a euphemism, of sorts. They can't say "No, I don't want the current President to remain in power" so they say "I don't have an opinion on the President". They can't get in trouble for giving that answer. I get the impression the vast majority of the people giving those dismissive answers can't share how they really feel on camera because it would be dangerous. It's not that they're apathetic, they're just aware of the risks that come along with speaking their mind.
qiskit 5y ago
> it could definitely happen anywhere. It does happen everywhere. European countries in NATO have been responsible for more deaths than the russians. It's hilarious. People are pretending ukraine is the only war that ever existed. Ukraine is the tamest ongoing war right now. The least civilian deaths of any serious war since the turn of the century. > Made me think about how the allies made Germans face the atrocities that they where in denial about after the war, making them go to the camps, dig the graves, watch the footage That is literally post-war indoctrination/propaganda. Had the germans won ww2, they would have made the british, americans, russians, etc confront their own war crimes.

adventured 5y ago

Book recommendation: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L Shirer Goes into excellent, albeit sometimes boring, detail about the culture of the greater German region at the time and how it made Nazi Germany possible, and then obviously the rise and fall of the Nazi Party.

ben7799 5y ago

I used to have an original copy of this book. I had a relative who was a career officer in the US Army including WWII who had died and the book came to me from his wife when he died. Interesting book but Milton Mayer was an interesting character (he opposed the US entering WWII IIRC for example) and there was a lot of weird stuff in the book where he showed how willing he himself was to go along with the same kind of things that led to the Nazis coming to power. For example he sometimes came off as having a blind side because he was nearly McCarthyist in his treatment of communism. With 60 years of hindsight you could see he made comments that made you think he would have gone along with a corrupt regime if it was able to contain communism, no different than Germans were taken in by the Nazis. I don't think things are that different today. All governments are shades between good and evil, and we all subconsciously ignore things governments do if it is obviously far more personally convenient to tolerate that kind of behavior. Self preservation can easily take precedence over being against evil if you are already in the "in group" that is protected by the evil.

ltbarcly3 5y ago

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watwut 5y ago
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codeflo 5y ago

It's unfortunately a very human tendency to shift baselines, to judge each individual step only relative to the last one, without considering the situation in the absolute. This applies in much lower stakes environments as well: the workplace, relationships. It's surprising how reliably someone's attitude can flip from "if ever X, I'll quit" to "X isn't that much worse than X-1, this isn't worth making a fuss about" if the change happens slowly enough.

derefr 5y ago
> The history of the world isn't the history of evil people with glowing red eyes doing evil things; it's the history of throngs of average people, out of touch with their own faults, betraying themselves and others by heading up the wrong set of stairs—usually with the help of a handful of truly bad people. https://viruscomix.com/page519.html https://viruscomix.com/page519.html
- deleted 5y ago
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MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Nobody ever wants to believe that they're the bad guys, and unless someone forces them to face facts, they're going to ignore it. See: the United States of America. The brutality of slavery? "Not my problem. I had nothing to do with it. CRT is the real problem dividing us anyway" The absolutely evil treatment of indigenous people? "Christopher Columbus was a hero for discovering the New World" The Confederacy? "Oh, it was just a state's rights issue." Japanese internment during WWII? "But did you hear about the Nazis?" The treatment of refugees at our borders? "Here's why separating children from their parents is actually a good thing!"

Jtype 5y ago
Simple takes.

fdr 5y ago

It's a good book. I thought these passages were memorable: it shows you how quickly a situation can deteriorate, especially under an all-consuming pressure...like total mobilization for war. In its issue of November 11, 1938, the Kronenberger Zcitung carried the following report, at the bottom of page 4, under a very small headline reading Schutzhaft, “Protective Custody”: “In the interest of their own security, a number of male Jews were taken into custody yesterday. This morning they were sent away from the city.” I showed it to each of my ten friends. None of them—including the teacher—remembered ever having seen it or anything like it. 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939—until September 1, when, as the Head of the Government told them, Poland attacked their country—the little lives of my friends went on, under National Socialism as they had before, altered only for the better, and always for the better, in bread and butter, in housing, health, and hope, wherever the New Order touched them. “No one outside Germany seems to understand this,” said an anti-Nazi woman, who had been imprisoned in 1943, ostensibly for listening to the foreign radio but actually for hiding Jews (which was not technically illegal). “I remember standing on a Stuttgart street corner in 1938, during a Nazi festival, and the enthusiasm, the new hope of a good life, after so many years of hopelessness, the new belief, after so many years of disillusion, almost swept me, too, off my feet. Let me try to tell you what that time was like in Germany: I was sitting in a cinema with a Jewish friend and her daughter of thirteen, while a Nazi parade went across the screen, and the girl caught her mother’s arm and whispered, ‘Oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren’t a Jew, I think I’d be a Nazi!’ No one outside seems to understand how this was.”

BurningFrog 5y ago
This is similar to why Russians like Putin as much as they do. Life under the Putin regime has improved material standards a lot, compared to the disasters that preceded it.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  How was Yeltsin bad?
watwut 5y ago
> 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939 Jews were running away from Germany in those years. Quite desperately. 1938 is Kristallnacht alias November pogrom. Jews were restricted in civil service and schools since 1933. The second wave of segregation laws was in 1935. And other Germans characterized living in Germany as "you did not knew what is fear unless you lived there" - because you could actually get to prison for a joke someone overheard. My point here is that Nazi Germany did not became totalitarian as the war started. It was very oppressive and totalitarian long before.

Barrera 5y ago

> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. I remember reading this long before the Internet and thinking that it made sense. The world was literally going insane around the author but nobody noticed. It happened through an accumulation of no-crisis baby steps, year after year. The mass adoption of the Internet has caused me to reconsider. Every crackpot I've ever encountered thinks exactly the same thing, namely that we're all asleep while <major issue> continues unabated. How can we be so blind to it! This is not to dismiss the author, who clearly saw some shit, but rather to point out the very fine line between crackpot and prophet, at least when viewed on the surface.

gdsimoes 5y ago
The difference between a crackpot and a prophet is their reason for believing what they do. And their thinking couldn't be more different.
- new_stranger 5y ago
  Yes, but I think people sometimes confuse the criteria for 'good reasoning' in the moment. It's easier to paint a prophet as a crackpot if everyone else is putting time and energy into finding fault with them. You can vilify anyone, especially those that look different.

at_a_remove 5y ago

A casual trawl through Voluptuous Panic made me a little less shocked at the reactionary angle. Anyone who wanted to capitalize on that could have.

thinker403 5y ago

I've almost finished "The Coming of the Third Reich", by Richard J. Evans, and the one thing that stands out is how much Germany's economic collapse before 1933 laid the seeds for the Nazi's rise. This is why it's hard for me to relate it to anything America has recently experienced or Putin's Russia. As bad as the Jan. 6 riots were they would have been a heck of a lot worse if every rioter had no job to go back to. When loaves of bread cost a wheelbarrow of money and you have a family to feed even the most draconian political structures become attractive.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

I think anyone on this thread who hasn't already, needs to go read Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. "PREFACE This is the third and final volume of a trilogy describing the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin- Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany. Each of these events introduced some variant of socialism into a major country — i.e., Bolshevik socialism in Russia, New Deal socialism in the United States, and National socialism in Germany. Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. On the other hand, it is understandable that universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics. The bravest of trustees is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds his organization. It is also eminently clear from the evidence in this trilogy that "public-spirited businessmen" do not journey to Washington as lobbyists and administrators in order to serve the United States. They are in Washington to serve their own profit-maximizing interests. Their purpose is not to further a competitive, free-market economy, but to manipulate a politicized regime, call it what you will, to their own advantage. It is business manipulation of Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. ANTONY C. SUTTON"

aklemm 5y ago
What exactly do you find interesting in that excerpt?
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  I really don't find too much in the preface, I just thought it was a decent introduction (after all, written by the author) to the book. If I had to be specific though: > the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin- Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany. > Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley's Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. > universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics > business manipulation of Hitler's accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler I think just those four things offer plenty of intellectual red-meat that is very interesting to explore.