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> Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to w
by darthrupert 4y ago
> Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
> Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.
It's like nothing has changed in 100 years.
- cafard 4y agoIf one takes enrollment in the Nazi party as contradictory to goodness (and I am happy to), then the first sentence is true to that extent. I have my doubts on the happy, secure, and gentlemanly ones, even among the committed, let alone the time-servers. And was Heidegger frustrated and humiliated in the early 1930s? It seems to me that there were quite a few von Thises and zu Thats with names in the Almanach de Gotha who signed up. If she had wished to say "good people don't go Nazi", well and good. To say "nice people" is to bring the argument to the level of esthetics.