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Part of the obsession with the Nazis is because so many people don't understand what they were about and why. For instance, this article implies that they were

by MCRed 12y ago

Part of the obsession with the Nazis is because so many people don't understand what they were about and why. For instance, this article implies that they were just racists. Racism is a consequence of their ideology, not the reason for it. Worse, we even have used them to short circuit discussion and close off self criticism with the "Godwins Law" trope. (godwin never said that those who use nazis as an example are wrong, he merely said eventually they would come up.) We've (the USA) become a nation of holocaust denying racists because we believe that only germans (genetically) can be fascist and thus what happened in germany could never happen here, and anyone who brings up parallels automatically loses the argument. Just because some people do so poorly, does not mean there are not parallels. Many of the propaganda pieces you see against muslims in the USA are similar to the ones against the jews in Nazi germany. The ideology of "you tell people they are being attacked and then you get your war" rings true here as it did in Nazi Germany. Even the precursors to the rise of fascism in german have existed here and had some similar consequences - high monetary inflation, economic problems with a lack of jobs, a lack of self esteem combined with a "we're the best country' form of nationalism. etc. The nazis were never really properly studied in my schooling and my understanding is that history teaching has gotten only more superficial since. A lot of understanding of what's happening in the USA and the world at large came out of an initial early interest in german history (because I lived there) and the consequent study of economics (Ludwig von Mises, a jew, prominent among them, who was scoffed at when he told other jews that they would have to leave austria because the nazis were going to invade.) Anyway, the superficial understanding of the nazis and nazi era germany expressed in this very article is why we need to actually study the subject, obsessed or not.

closetnerd 12y ago
This is exactly it. It's as if Hitler was uniquely vile. There is no other person's name so well known, while the person himself so unknown. I think historians are scared that if he was better known, that he might have sympathizers. But this is ridiculous. Even in the biblical narrative, Lucifer was once God's favorite. Yet that doesn't take anything away from him being the Devil. It's important to know about the atrocities committed. But even more so to understand that he was not the only, and furthermore will not be the only. There are people like him hellbent on similar outcomes. We can't avoid repeating history if we examine them at the superficial level, rather than on an abstract, psychological, human level.
baddox 12y ago
> Racism is a consequence of their ideology, not the reason for it. Can you explain that? It seems unlikely to me, given that racism is extremely widespread and is presumably just a consequence of the tribalist origins of human civilization. I suspect that specific parts of their formal ideology were chosen to explain or justify their much more deep-seated racism.
stannol 12y ago
I'm German but spend a lot of time in the US. I don't mind Nazi/WW2 jokes (even though I've heard all of them a hundred times), I don't mind that as soon as I mention that I'm from Germany someone will eventually bring up the Nazis/WW2 in conversation, I don't even mind that (very few) people think I'm a Nazi. What gets me every time though is how many people think that it could have happened only in Germany because the US is somehow different (as you said "genetically"). It's really unsettling.
- Tycho 12y ago
  'That it could have happened only in Germany' is an open question IMO. Or at least, if it isn't, then it's not obvious why (bearing in mind most people are not historians).
  - ajuc 12y ago
    There's no question at all. It happened in many countries outside Germany, just with less publicity. For few pre-WW2 examples: Even Hitler refered to genocide of Armenians in Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide Just before WW2 there was ethnic cleaning of Poles in USSR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_%281937%E2%80%9338%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_%2... > The NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books in order to speed up the process and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names. In Leningrad alone, they rounded up almost 7,000 citizens. A vast majority of such "suspects" were executed within 10 days of arrest. Just 100 000 people, not during war against west, so nobody knows about this. It was really common in history to kill the inconvenient people. We only hear about this when it's convenient for someone else to bring this up (and he wins the PR battle). Today Holocaust stand on its own and it's evil to even try to compare it to anything other. I think it's bad for humanity.
    - Tycho 12y ago
      Armenian genocide seems like a similar phenomenon, although interestingly not very far removed from Nazi Germany in time and space. So while it might show that such things could happen 'elsewhere' it doesn't really prove that they could happen 'anywhere.' The example of the NKVD seems a totally different matter. The wikipedia article describes it as a top secret operation. And obviously against a backdrop of numerous other political murders by the same regime.
weeksie 12y ago
The article delved into the forces and influence at work, mentioning Bismarck's genocide, Ataturk's national identity, as well as the Reich being a solid part of the colonial era (if the English can run India, why can't Germany march over Eastern Europe?) > high monetary inflation, economic problems with a lack of jobs, a lack of self esteem combined with a "we're the best country' form of nationalism. etc. I agree with some of your critiques of the US (mostly the propaganda stuff), however you're reaching pretty hard on these comparisons. Lack of national self esteem? Laughable if you're comparing it to post WWI Germany. Inflation? That's outright wrong, inflation has been flat ever since the financial crisis. And jobs are back.
disputin 12y ago
I was thinking this comment sounds a bit alarmist and paranoid, and Alex Jones came to mind. Lo and behold, you mentioned von Mises. Racism and fascism are not equivalent to the holocaust. Even apartheid era South Africa was not equivalent to the holocaust. There are many degrees of shit between happy and holocaust.
mc32 12y ago
It's obviously untrue that only Germans could have been fascists as we had Italian and Japanese fascists, among many others, and, moreover the did execute their fascist beliefs to the extent they could resulting in some horrible things.

by MCRed 12y ago

closetnerd 12y ago

This is exactly it. It's as if Hitler was uniquely vile. There is no other person's name so well known, while the person himself so unknown. I think historians are scared that if he was better known, that he might have sympathizers. But this is ridiculous. Even in the biblical narrative, Lucifer was once God's favorite. Yet that doesn't take anything away from him being the Devil. It's important to know about the atrocities committed. But even more so to understand that he was not the only, and furthermore will not be the only. There are people like him hellbent on similar outcomes. We can't avoid repeating history if we examine them at the superficial level, rather than on an abstract, psychological, human level.

baddox 12y ago

> Racism is a consequence of their ideology, not the reason for it. Can you explain that? It seems unlikely to me, given that racism is extremely widespread and is presumably just a consequence of the tribalist origins of human civilization. I suspect that specific parts of their formal ideology were chosen to explain or justify their much more deep-seated racism.

stannol 12y ago

I'm German but spend a lot of time in the US. I don't mind Nazi/WW2 jokes (even though I've heard all of them a hundred times), I don't mind that as soon as I mention that I'm from Germany someone will eventually bring up the Nazis/WW2 in conversation, I don't even mind that (very few) people think I'm a Nazi. What gets me every time though is how many people think that it could have happened only in Germany because the US is somehow different (as you said "genetically"). It's really unsettling.

Tycho 12y ago
'That it could have happened only in Germany' is an open question IMO. Or at least, if it isn't, then it's not obvious why (bearing in mind most people are not historians).
- ajuc 12y ago
  There's no question at all. It happened in many countries outside Germany, just with less publicity. For few pre-WW2 examples: Even Hitler refered to genocide of Armenians in Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide Just before WW2 there was ethnic cleaning of Poles in USSR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_%281937%E2%80%9338%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD_%2... > The NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books in order to speed up the process and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names. In Leningrad alone, they rounded up almost 7,000 citizens. A vast majority of such "suspects" were executed within 10 days of arrest. Just 100 000 people, not during war against west, so nobody knows about this. It was really common in history to kill the inconvenient people. We only hear about this when it's convenient for someone else to bring this up (and he wins the PR battle). Today Holocaust stand on its own and it's evil to even try to compare it to anything other. I think it's bad for humanity.
  - Tycho 12y ago
    Armenian genocide seems like a similar phenomenon, although interestingly not very far removed from Nazi Germany in time and space. So while it might show that such things could happen 'elsewhere' it doesn't really prove that they could happen 'anywhere.' The example of the NKVD seems a totally different matter. The wikipedia article describes it as a top secret operation. And obviously against a backdrop of numerous other political murders by the same regime.

weeksie 12y ago

The article delved into the forces and influence at work, mentioning Bismarck's genocide, Ataturk's national identity, as well as the Reich being a solid part of the colonial era (if the English can run India, why can't Germany march over Eastern Europe?) > high monetary inflation, economic problems with a lack of jobs, a lack of self esteem combined with a "we're the best country' form of nationalism. etc. I agree with some of your critiques of the US (mostly the propaganda stuff), however you're reaching pretty hard on these comparisons. Lack of national self esteem? Laughable if you're comparing it to post WWI Germany. Inflation? That's outright wrong, inflation has been flat ever since the financial crisis. And jobs are back.

disputin 12y ago

I was thinking this comment sounds a bit alarmist and paranoid, and Alex Jones came to mind. Lo and behold, you mentioned von Mises. Racism and fascism are not equivalent to the holocaust. Even apartheid era South Africa was not equivalent to the holocaust. There are many degrees of shit between happy and holocaust.

mc32 12y ago

It's obviously untrue that only Germans could have been fascists as we had Italian and Japanese fascists, among many others, and, moreover the did execute their fascist beliefs to the extent they could resulting in some horrible things.