4 ms·

I really feel like my childhood education did me a disservice by fostering the misconception that there was something special or unique about Nazis - there wasn

I really feel like my childhood education did me a disservice by fostering the misconception that there was something special or unique about Nazis - there wasn’t. Not only are there potential nazis everywhere, there are fractional and even full-blown-but-less-institutionally-powerful nazis everywhere. In our own country, in our communities, at work, on the bus, in the government. Wannabe camp guards indeed. It was a sickening and sobering realization as an adult.

peterfirefly 3y ago
Wait till you learn how bad the Commies were! And there was nothing special or unique about them either.
- Snow_Falls 3y ago
  Its always strange to me that as soon as fascism is mentioned, someone absolutely has to bring up communism. It's like clockwork.
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    Read more history.
jacquesm 3y ago
That's exactly it. For me the turning point was to read some 'letters to home' written by the good little Nazi's about how they just incinerated a couple of hundred sub-humans doing them a favor in the process and by the way how is little Helmut and has Heidi's lung condition cleared up, your loving husband and father, Sigmund... It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. The veneer is very thin. You find them in the halls of politics, in the police force, in the armed forces, in the offices of just about any company, at your local soccer club and just about everywhere else. And none of them is going to come out to admit it. I seriously wonder how big a fraction of a society has the subscribe to this kind of ideology before it is unavoidable that it will be expressed but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was well under 50%.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  >It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. The veneer is very thin. You find them in the halls of politics, in the police force, in the armed forces, in the offices of just about any company, at your local soccer club and just about everywhere else. And none of them is going to come out to admit it. I seriously wonder how big a fraction of a society has the subscribe to this kind of ideology before it is unavoidable that it will be expressed but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was well under 50%. This is like saying that people are offended when called racial slurs because there's some truth to what the slur means.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    No it’s not. Racial slurs attack an individual’s personhood - calling out people’s bigotry criticizes their choices and behavior. It is not anywhere near the same thing.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Racial slurs don't always say a person is not a person, I can only think of one that has that implication. They mostly mock a person's choices and behavior by associating them with stereotypes implied by the slur.
- mtrower 3y ago
  > It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. I don't think that follows. Or rather, it might be true, but I'm not sure it's meaningful. I'm a pretty peaceable individual, generally wish good things for others, consider people as individuals, etc. I stay away from political activism. I would still be pretty upset if someone called me a Nazi. I guess what I'm trying to say is, offensive terms tend to be offensive regardless of the underlying reason. When someone gets upset about it, you can't infer that it's because you struck close to home --- it could be utter indignation about the injustice of the situation, or something else entirely.
wolverine876 3y ago
On one hand, what you say is the most important lesson IMHO, but I don't think it goes far enough down that path: You and I are biologically the same as people who became Nazis; we have the same potential in us. When we imagine we are not is when we do wrong. Lots of ordinary Germans; smart, sophisticated people; and other people in many countries supported the Nazis. At the same time, the people who embrace Naziism, or go along, or tacitly allow it, also have good in them. A tactic of such ideologies is a display of aggression, to scare you off; it's a political tactic that solidifies their movement by distancing members from everyone else; it also dehumanizes outsiders (also through disdain from them), allowing violence. In the end, it's a tactic, a display, a barking, scared dog. It may bite, but they are the same as we are, and have the same good inside, and have allowed themselves to be misled. The classic citation is to Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil': https://iep.utm.edu/hannah-arendt/#H6 https://iep.utm.edu/hannah-arendt/#H6
wrs 3y ago
“Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.” — William Pannapacker writing as @WernerTwertzog
- mistrial9 3y ago
  from a psychology point of view, a "warning" with scary words just adds fuel to crisis-mentality, the last thing that anyone wants in a general population. Literally, since the one-third plus one-third plus one-third equals "everyone" .. the quote instills fear. Though it may be insightful in an ugly way, repeating this kind of thing with emphasis is how to start fires IMHO
- krapp 3y ago
  Some Americans are waking up to an awareness that many other Americans have had all along.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I really feel like my childhood education did me a disservice by fostering the misconception that there was something special or unique about Nazis The point of WW2 propaganda was to demonzie Nazis so much, and to distance them so much from the likes of you, me or your neighbour, in order to dehumanzie them in order to justify going to war with them and make killing them easier on the psyche for those who had to pull the trigger or send their sons on the battlefield to die fighting them, becasue in WW1 they discovered humans don't naturally want to kill other humans and will hesitate to pull the trigger making them shit soldiers, but if you demonzie and dehumanize the enemy enough, that hesitation loosens. It's basic war propaganda 1-0-1. You now just realized Nazis are literally everywhere, not just in 1939 Germany.
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  This. The more history you read the more it becomes clear that basically everyone was a Nazi before the 20th century. Even Marx and Lenin were white supremacists and FDR, Woodrow Wilson and other liberals were too or at least appeased Nazis. LBJ was probably the first anti-Nazi president

peterfirefly 3y ago

Wait till you learn how bad the Commies were! And there was nothing special or unique about them either.

Snow_Falls 3y ago
Its always strange to me that as soon as fascism is mentioned, someone absolutely has to bring up communism. It's like clockwork.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  Read more history.

jacquesm 3y ago

That's exactly it. For me the turning point was to read some 'letters to home' written by the good little Nazi's about how they just incinerated a couple of hundred sub-humans doing them a favor in the process and by the way how is little Helmut and has Heidi's lung condition cleared up, your loving husband and father, Sigmund... It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. The veneer is very thin. You find them in the halls of politics, in the police force, in the armed forces, in the offices of just about any company, at your local soccer club and just about everywhere else. And none of them is going to come out to admit it. I seriously wonder how big a fraction of a society has the subscribe to this kind of ideology before it is unavoidable that it will be expressed but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was well under 50%.

dotnet00 3y ago
>It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. The veneer is very thin. You find them in the halls of politics, in the police force, in the armed forces, in the offices of just about any company, at your local soccer club and just about everywhere else. And none of them is going to come out to admit it. I seriously wonder how big a fraction of a society has the subscribe to this kind of ideology before it is unavoidable that it will be expressed but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was well under 50%. This is like saying that people are offended when called racial slurs because there's some truth to what the slur means.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  No it’s not. Racial slurs attack an individual’s personhood - calling out people’s bigotry criticizes their choices and behavior. It is not anywhere near the same thing.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Racial slurs don't always say a person is not a person, I can only think of one that has that implication. They mostly mock a person's choices and behavior by associating them with stereotypes implied by the slur.
mtrower 3y ago
> It's also why certain groups respond very lively when you call them by their true name: they are utterly in denial about their possible futures give or take an unlucky turn of events or two. I don't think that follows. Or rather, it might be true, but I'm not sure it's meaningful. I'm a pretty peaceable individual, generally wish good things for others, consider people as individuals, etc. I stay away from political activism. I would still be pretty upset if someone called me a Nazi. I guess what I'm trying to say is, offensive terms tend to be offensive regardless of the underlying reason. When someone gets upset about it, you can't infer that it's because you struck close to home --- it could be utter indignation about the injustice of the situation, or something else entirely.

wolverine876 3y ago

On one hand, what you say is the most important lesson IMHO, but I don't think it goes far enough down that path: You and I are biologically the same as people who became Nazis; we have the same potential in us. When we imagine we are not is when we do wrong. Lots of ordinary Germans; smart, sophisticated people; and other people in many countries supported the Nazis. At the same time, the people who embrace Naziism, or go along, or tacitly allow it, also have good in them. A tactic of such ideologies is a display of aggression, to scare you off; it's a political tactic that solidifies their movement by distancing members from everyone else; it also dehumanizes outsiders (also through disdain from them), allowing violence. In the end, it's a tactic, a display, a barking, scared dog. It may bite, but they are the same as we are, and have the same good inside, and have allowed themselves to be misled. The classic citation is to Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil': https://iep.utm.edu/hannah-arendt/#H6 https://iep.utm.edu/hannah-arendt/#H6

wrs 3y ago

“Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.” — William Pannapacker writing as @WernerTwertzog

mistrial9 3y ago
from a psychology point of view, a "warning" with scary words just adds fuel to crisis-mentality, the last thing that anyone wants in a general population. Literally, since the one-third plus one-third plus one-third equals "everyone" .. the quote instills fear. Though it may be insightful in an ugly way, repeating this kind of thing with emphasis is how to start fires IMHO
krapp 3y ago
Some Americans are waking up to an awareness that many other Americans have had all along.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>I really feel like my childhood education did me a disservice by fostering the misconception that there was something special or unique about Nazis The point of WW2 propaganda was to demonzie Nazis so much, and to distance them so much from the likes of you, me or your neighbour, in order to dehumanzie them in order to justify going to war with them and make killing them easier on the psyche for those who had to pull the trigger or send their sons on the battlefield to die fighting them, becasue in WW1 they discovered humans don't naturally want to kill other humans and will hesitate to pull the trigger making them shit soldiers, but if you demonzie and dehumanize the enemy enough, that hesitation loosens. It's basic war propaganda 1-0-1. You now just realized Nazis are literally everywhere, not just in 1939 Germany.

goodSteveramos 3y ago
This. The more history you read the more it becomes clear that basically everyone was a Nazi before the 20th century. Even Marx and Lenin were white supremacists and FDR, Woodrow Wilson and other liberals were too or at least appeased Nazis. LBJ was probably the first anti-Nazi president