46 ms·

They Thought They Were Free (1955)

• phtrivier 1y ago
  And yet, every government does _not_ stumble into fascism. So, what stops them ?
• josselex 1y ago
  [flagged]
• kleiba 1y ago
  Posted here multiple times before: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 (02/2025, 473 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315 (11/2020, 382 comments) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042304 (04/2022, 239 comments)
  • dctoedt 1y ago
    Spaced repetition promotes learning.
    • JKCalhoun 1y ago
      Seriously though, this is the first time I've seen it (and I visit HN daily).
      • rsynnott 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • slumberlust 1y ago
          That's why I only browse /active these days. Front page is way too sterile.
        • kleiba 1y ago
          None of the previous submissions of this article have ever been flagged.
          • ycombigators 1y ago
            [flagged]
        • dang 1y ago
          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 spent 8 hours on the front page in February. No one sees all the major threads here, not even us. There are too many, and the turnover is too rapid.
      • swed420 1y ago
        Unfortunately a common occurrence here. One very helpful workaround is to browse the HN "front page" displayed at https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com so that you don't have to worry about HN censorship / algorithm fuckery
  • nataliste 1y ago
    I was reading the comments from the past times this was submitted, and I just wanted a reason to draw attention to this comment from 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315#25104589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315#25104589
    • mallowdram 1y ago
      We're seeking narrative to explain how and why these things are happening when narratives are how they are happening. When a species relies on inferior and limited tools, it suffers from their use. When the tool is seamless with the problem, it destroys us without us becoming aware. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lies-haitian-immigrants https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lie... This article is all we need to know about fascism, the candidate admits this is the central tool they use on the path to gain unlimited power, even The Guardian grasps this but can't extricate from their use, the news is addicted to stories financially: "In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio." The central problem is epistemological, the coding of explanations in mythological thought, which is narrative. The myth is the primary causal illusion. That causes that. When we add intent, which is elusive and reduces meaning subjectively, it robs any event of the true meaning load, we create propaganda without knowing it. There's the rub. If we wee the burning bush as just a brushfire, we are sane. See it as the voice of God, we're doomed.
      • slumberlust 1y ago
        That typo made my day. Interesting post overall; good food for thought.
      • qcnguy 1y ago
        The Guardian is misleading you. Vance was referring to story in the news sense, not "admitting" that he makes things up. The original video of what he said is here: https://x.com/HunnyBplus3/status/1835326924597366869 https://x.com/HunnyBplus3/status/1835326924597366869 JD Vance: "Dana, [stories about Haitians in Springfield] come from first hand accounts of my constituents. I say that we're creating a story meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it. I didn't create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield, Kamala Harris' policies did that, but yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story." > The central problem is epistemological Yes!
  • toxic72 1y ago
    It becomes more important with each repost
  • Forgeties79 1y ago
    It’s been 7mo and we’re not all here every day. It’s fine. I appreciate the post and discussion it sparked. Why does it bother you?
    • teraflop 1y ago
      Why are you interpreting it as a complaint, or an expression of being bothered? Occasional reposts are well within HN's norms, and when something is reposted, it's common to link to past discussions for comparison.
    • kleiba 1y ago
      Why do you think it bothers me? I wrote the original comment because previous discussions might be interesting reads.
      • alashow 1y ago
        Maybe prefixing with "Previous discussions" instead of "Posted here multiple times before" will not sound like complaining
        • falseprofit 1y ago
          The phrasing was matter of fact. And there is nothing inherently wrong with reposting. Certain other websites have developed a culture opposed to it, but I have yet to see that here.
        • kleiba 1y ago
          Agreed, I actually tried and go back to change the wording to exactly that, but unfortunately it was already past the editing grace period. But lesson learned for next time.
        • dang 1y ago
          It's really hard to find a phrase for this that people don't interpret as a complaint or criticism. It took me years before I hit on "Related", which seems just neutral enough to mostly avoid that misunderstanding (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20related&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• inquirerGeneral 1y ago
  [dead]
• brightball 1y ago
  I wonder how many people interpret this based on “the other side” rather than objectively?
  • tobias3 1y ago
    As a German outside observer I can tell you there is only one side going down the facist path. The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.
    • Amezarak 1y ago
      Perhaps you are not aware that the “other side” declared Constitutional amendments by fiat, assassinated American citizens with drone strikes, lied to the courts to imprison influential Twitter users, used intelligence agencies to spy on Congress, dramatically expanded the surveillance state, declared by EO they simply wouldn’t enforce some laws on favored demographics, ordered social media companies to censor and ban users, locked people down unless they were protesting for approved causes, and engaged in politically motivated prosecutions of their enemies. Authoritarianism is not a “one side” problem in the US and until we collectively figure that out each side will continue increasing it, all in the name of stopping the other sides’ extremists.
      • immibis 1y ago
        The "same side" does all of that but also a bunch more bad stuff. The equlibrium that is always reached in a first-past-the-post voting system is two parties that are mostly the same, and you vote for a party that's only slightly more of what you want (because those are the options) and your vote tells both parties which direction to move in, to chase more votes. If the party that drone strikes its own citizens and imprisons Twitter users consistently gets more votes than the party that drone strikes its own citizens, imprisons Twitter users, and builds concentration camps, then the latter party will quickly figure out that the only way to win is to drone strike its own citizens, but not imprison Twitter users, or build concentration camps. And then the former party (now losing) figures out that doing none of the above is the way to win, but maybe they still tap all communications. And so on... We got to the point we're at today step by step, with people voting for one new measure at a time, and parties taking notice of what measures people consistently vote for. The current parties did not spring fully-formed out of Zeus's forehead.
• JKCalhoun 1y ago
  "…it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time." Well, that resonated just a bit. Oh well, back to doomscrolling.
  • jackstraw42 1y ago
    Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line. I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany" that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do. another edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.
• Hilift 1y ago
  No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening. Germans were acutely aware of the reality of the day to day situation and their previous history in WW1.
  • giorgioz 1y ago
    Seems unlikely Germany owned 66% of the world books in 1935. I'm not counter claiming the rest, but that fact seems off.
  • brabel 1y ago
    You don’t know and you can’t know what it was like. The least you could do is try to listen to the people who were there and perhaps do at least a little bit of introspection and consider what you could’ve done differently, knowing what the consequences for troublemakers were. But that seems to be beyond you?
    • foldr 1y ago
      I think OP is talking about the rise of the Nazis rather than the period where the Nazis were already in control and resistance was much more difficult. Although, in fairness, Hitler was already chancellor ‘90 years ago’.
  • osobo 1y ago
    Did you even read the article? They explicitly point out that it was the learned class that was so busy with their other important things that they missed all of it. The whole thing is about how that played out.
  • csomar 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • Dumblydorr 1y ago
      Hitler didn’t do well by the people. Real wages declined throughout Nazi reign. Their lands were destroyed. They were responsible for allowing genocide. Source: Rise and Fall of the Third Reich The article shows how he lulled them step by step and diverted them from knowing this was worse than before. Sound familiar USA?
• adriand 1y ago
  If you’re interested in this topic, I really recommend reading How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley. [1] It’s a remarkable book - slim, easy to read, and enlightening. What was most astonishing to me was that there is a playbook: ever wonder why these regimes always target LGTBQ people, for example? It’s explained here, along with everything else you need to know about the mechanics of prosaic, predictable type of government. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Fascism_Works https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Fascism_Works
  • mallowdram 1y ago
    [dead]
  • leobg 1y ago
    To save some people a click: > According to a New York Times review, Stanley's book—a "slim volume"—"breezes across decades and continents" and says that Donald Trump "resembles other purveyors of authoritarian ultranationalism."
• ajuc 1y ago
  Look at Russians right now. The vast majority of them do their jobs, pay their taxes, and consider themselves patriots and good people because they help their families and motherland, and are polite and well-meaning. While their jobs help the military machine that murders thousands of innocent people every week, their taxes fund that machine, and their complacency keeps the system stable for decades, costing not only their enemies, but also themselves and their own kids their futures. When starvation, war, and political terror come, they will consider themselves innocent victims of another unearned, unavoidable political tragedy - not understanding their own decades of inaction brought it on them. And America isn't that far behind. Not thinking objectively, living unconsciously, engrossed in short-term matters - is the worst sin that leads to all the other sins. It's how it happened in Belarus, Russia and it's how it's going to happen in US.
  • cadamsdotcom 1y ago
    While I see what you’re saying I think it’s taking the “outside view” of things. It’d be great for those people to down tools and protest, but what would they gain? It’s difficult to know when to down tools and make noise. If they avoid the almost certain ruin of dissidence and just keep working and living, there’s a chance things blow over, and their families get a better future.
• heresie-dabord 1y ago
  > They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966, 2017 by the University of Chicago. Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free. And if freedom begins to disappear, even those who believe themselves safely conformist are not safe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
  • hagbard_c 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • immibis 1y ago
      First they came for those who thought the sky was pulsating green, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the blue sky narrative. Then they came for those who thought the earth was flat, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the round earth narrative. Then they came for those who thought the internet was carried by little elves, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the fiber optic narrative. Not all narratives are equal.
      • FrustratedMonky 1y ago
        Also in 1933, people saying 'not all narratives are equal' to diminish any outcry against what was happening.
        • immibis 1y ago
          In 1933, lots of people were saying Hitler was a fascist and was gonna be really bad, and they were ignored.
      • roenxi 1y ago
        But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis. I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on YouTube through COVID was definitely a net loss though; the censors weren't anywhere near as qualified to decide what to talk about as the censored were in my experience.
• Waterluvian 1y ago
  > "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 read this book a few years ago and I can't stop thinking about this line of discourse (there's more of this subject in the book). I've felt this exceptional frustration and disgust towards the (in my opinion) wildly underreacting non-fascist millions in the States, more so than the fascists themselves, which seemed contradictory. The closest I've come to communicating why is that one group is on script while the other isn't. For example, a deadly airborne disease is awful, but the truly scary thing to me would be witnessing doctors and immunologists just kind of shrugging their shoulders. I grew up with this belief that for all their loud, obnoxious quirks and faults, Americans do not fuck around when it comes to their principles of liberty and freedom. I always admired that. I remember thinking it was a feature that they're so quick to protest and make a scene. I had, without any doubt in my heart and soul, anticipated total disaster. I was expecting to see protests and riots and fires and further uncelebrated but deemed necessary violence in response to the slow ablation of freedom and liberty. It's quite possible that I'm wrong and that total disaster is premature. But never before have I felt this certain about an "everyone else is wrong" belief. It's scary and somewhat lonely. Reading this book made me feel much less lonely, and much more scared.
  • Loughla 1y ago
    The right in the US has convinced people that the only way to protect their own freedoms is to let them take the freedom from everyone, and allocate out appropriate permissions to the right people afterwards. There's also a spirit of "I don't care as long as they get hurt more" that's stronger than ever. The party of self-sufficiency and pulling yourself up into a better life with minimal oversight from government has become the party of cutting off your nose to spite your own face. It's ridiculous.
  • mallowdram 1y ago
    It's basic primate psychology, status is the key. It divides the society well-enough that if a majority are not inconvenienced, then the doublespeak creates a denial at all scales. Even things that are obviously absurd like vaccine denial aren't about across the board policy, the exclusive high status can still gain them. The policy and others are used as a political wedge to create eugenics, racism, whatever the underlying status-bias curve that gains them the weird pluralities to maintain a semblance of power. Humans are dark matter communicators. We code all the top-down biases seamlessly in news stories, speech, novels, movies, always as a by-product of social and virtue signaling. Even altruism comes with a handicap principle. Ultimately we are followers, not leaders, or adventurers, that would be chaos. If the leaders can fool the populace by mixtures of narratives, and sleight of hand oppress on behalf of enough pluralities status, the audience id placated and inert.
• jleyank 1y ago
  Free societies are not ruled by decree.
  • zetanor 1y ago
    Free societies are not ruled through masses.
    • ethical_source 1y ago
      Who gets to rule, then, and why? Your position that the masses shouldn't rule is at odds with a government legitimized by the consent of the government. Why should I or anyone else obey a government I don't consider legitimate?
      • analog8374 1y ago
        A ruling technology maybe. Open source, auditable.
      • ezekiel68 1y ago
        Those who watch the Watchers.
      • Supermancho 1y ago
        The problem is one of scale, at the macro level. The upside to large countries is that they are economically and militarily stronger, on average. This is leads to a high resistance to outside influence. The downside is large enough (arbitrary) populations encompass multiple ideologies and understandings of the world, which lead to infighting and ultimately destabilization. Note the 3.5% rule, among cultural drift and competing economic incentives. On the flip side, a small concentrated population is more stable internally, but is fragile to outside influences. The short answer is the masses are precisely who should rule. The long answer is that they can't if you want the nation to be independent. I posit, there is no optimal balance. There are only different choices that ultimately lead to ruin.
      • iterance 1y ago
• big_jimmer 1y ago
  Reading this, you can see how the political ideology of trumps supporters was so easily manipulated, and how effective the radicalisation of the right has been.
  • larrydag 1y ago
    "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy" -James Madison
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • 47392725292 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
• 4bpp 1y ago
  The problem is that essays like this are always written, preserved and propagated with the benefit of hindsight, producing the mistaken feeling that an actionable lesson is contained within. "A bad thing happened. We had been a little uneasy, but did not act on it. Well, of course it was hard to act on mere unease. Still, if only we had acted on it sooner...". And thus, what we take away is a simple lesson and call to action - are you feeling uneasy now? If so, it is time to stop and work to derail society from whatever track it is on. Something that never makes it into these essays are all the times when people felt uneasy and overwhelmed, and yet nothing happened that in our backward-looking perspective ought to have been prevented. Were those feelings of unease distinguishable, to those who had them, from those experienced by the protagonists of this essay? Something that is discussed even less are all the instances where people experienced the same unease and alienation and did act on them. The story of Nazi Germany is told as one of evil purpose-driven agitators, their evil enabling cronies, and a whole host of good people who were vaguely uneasy but did nothing. A parallel story unfolded throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, though. Germany had lost an existential war, and was under crushing pressure from the victors which wanted to be paid their dues in flesh. Society was tearing at the seams, the massive country to the East had fallen to a totalitarian revolution and rumours of repression and atrocities were trickling in every day even as their sympathisers engaged in street violence and made no secret of wanting to establish the same system at home. First the global financial crisis destroyed whatever semblance of stability and prosperity was left, and then government was paralysed due to lack of majorities even as a repeat loomed. Then, too, good people were vaguely and then increasingly uneasy - and then they decided to actually do something about it. That something was a last-ditch stabilising effort by setting aside factionalism and forming a unity government of anti-communist parties. The rest is history. As far as more modern comparisons are concerned, I find it difficult to read this essay and not draw a comparison to the COVID years. "Receiving decisions deliberated in secret"? "Believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand"? "or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security"? "Demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before"? Unfortunately, for the Terminally Online, that period has now receded into history as a cute extended staycation that normalised remote working. This obscures the extent to which, right now, the US may be experiencing the results of good "big men" (on the other side) having decided to act on their increasing sense of unease.
• DavidPiper 1y ago
  I listened to the audio book a few months back - probably the last time it appeared on HN, I'm not sure how else I would have stumbled across it. It's well worth the time. I remember particularly the teacher's statement that (paraphrasing, it's been a while) "if I could not resist, it means that anyone else of my station or below could also not resist". The idea that an admission of impotence is not just a personal note, but also an observation of an actionable waterline that anyone with fewer means will also be unable to rise above... "If I am unable to do X, who else is unable to do X?" is such a powerful question to consider.
  • ProllyInfamous 1y ago
    >"if I could not resist, it means that anyone else of my station or below could also not resist" "All ten of my friends gladly confess this crime of having been Germans in Germany." —p164 Related quote, with the teacher and the taylor (opposite ends of "Nazi spectrum") in agreement that the pro-Nazi mentality was pervasive. >"Adolf Hitler was good for Germany—in my [ten] friends' view—up until 1943, 1941, or 1939, depending upon the individual" –p69
• moomin 1y ago
  I’ve read the book. It’s genuinely interesting. It’s very interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years. It also contains a) passages that are very much quoted out of context and b) an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. I highly recommend actually reading it and understanding what it is and isn’t. Mostly I learned that there’s no simple answers, but also that people and even political movements were just as slippery then as they are now. But you may come away with something completely different. It’s an odd but interesting book.
  • jebarker 1y ago
    > an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. Yes! I recently read this book and was pretty shocked by how much was chalked up to the German character. I came away feeling neither comfort nor increased panic relating to the current US situation. I read the book because I was hand-wringing about how complicit I am just by getting on with my privileged and comfortable life right now. I didn’t really come away with any resolution to that question or clear ideas about how I should change my behavior.
    • simpaticoder 1y ago
      Anecdotally, having lived in Germany for a couple of years recently, there is a perceptible national character. The best way to understand it is to ponder the difference between a drag race and a rally race - in one, success means going as fast as possible; in the other success means getting to navigation points within a window of error. Or, with beer: in America success is discovering a new beer with a different flavor profile. In Germany, success is figuring out a way to even more precisely and consistently conforming to a centuries-old brewing standard. This, along with a kind of blunt speech that presupposes the listener to have little in the way of vanity or ego (or challenges them to not express it), is the "German character" as far as I can tell. I suspect in part this was because they were burned very, very badly by the outward striving into the unknown that Hitler represented, and still having creativity and effort to apply turned inward to asymptotically approach perfect execution of the known.
• m0llusk 1y ago
  This is a very intense piece, but misses some critical points. Germany after WWI was suffering terribly under reparations that European Allies and the US insisted on. Previously wealthy professionals went broke and begged in the streets for scraps. When Hitler swept aside reparations there was a great economic updraft as Germans rebuilt their economy and got back to work. The politics of the time was driven by the economy. The US appears to be entering into a period of stagnation and a breakdown of global trading upon which it had become dependent and that is a very different situation with economic factors hitting politics in ways unlike past crises.
  • Hikikomori 1y ago
    The German economy was a house of cards waiting to fall, there was no real economic boom that could be sustained. When they annexed Austria they looted their gold reserves and continued to do so through Europe to sustain their economy.
• motoboi 1y ago
  > "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might. The experts, people that have dedicated their lives to understand authoritarianism have already given the alarm. Well, a specialist has even moved to Canada for god's sake. And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. High profile figures started saying out loud that "maybe democracies are overrated. maybe democracies cannot deal with the world as it is now". Just listen to what people are actually saying instead of what you think they meant when they say it and you'll hear they saying that an authoritarian leader is what america needs now.
  • ants_everywhere 1y ago
    > And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. Yup. I've see it a few times a week on HN at this point
    • padjo 1y ago
      By all means criticise the implementation but definitely don’t criticise the idea! America’s democracy would be greatly improved by being made more representative through electoral reform.
      • motoboi 1y ago
        Yeah, but this is not what they are saying. They are saying that debate stiffle innovation. They are saying that we should get rid of all this mess and let the wise man govern.
        • ants_everywhere 1y ago
          I think about least 3/4 of the anti-democracy rhetoric I've seen here has been from people opposed to this administration. So I wouldn't conflate opposition to democracy/embracing authoritarianism with one particular man if that is what you mean by "let the wise man govern." It's broader than that and more worrying because there are multiple authoritarian factions who agree mainly on democracy being the enemy. In that sense it's a similar sort of set up heading into WWII
• ryeats 1y ago
  I think it has been happening for a while now cancel culture had a very negative effect on academia Jordon Peterson and Warren Smith being examples of that. I much appreciate Dr. Sam Richards who walks the fine line of trying to be centerist but he did comment recently how he does gets hate from both sides. Now I know this is going to be down voted because some will say I am both sidesing this when it's clearly one side right now. This is true I think that's however not a great argument to start a conversation. the founding fathers gave us a great foundation to work with it just takes open dialogue to convince enough of the other side that their is an actual good counter argument. The violence we have seen in the past couple months is only going to entrench positions because each side will want the result of that violence to have been meaningful furthering solidifing the separation. Currently I think American agree on the vast majority of things social media just does it's best to highlight our differences but the average person has mostly the same culture and the same day to day issues so I actually am hopeful.
  • herval 1y ago
    The US has always been a very moralistic country. From banning alcohol and burning witches to its long struggle to accept differences (in skin color, gender or even the definition of freedom). “Cancel culture” is part of America since its foundation. It’s a moral tug of war. It’s a different thing altogether to have the government itself weaponize “cancel culture”, however. As much as right wing people like to scream that “democrats are the same”, there’s little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse and disregard for institutions in the name of revenge (“if the left cancels, I can cancel too”). It’s a flight from moral infighting to authoritarian rule.
    • throwawaymaths 1y ago
      > there’s little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse and disregard for institutions in the name of revenge If you think that, you've not been paying attention. Both sides doing it is disgusting and I think the right does it more than the left (at this point in time), but the left DOES do it.
      • deleted 1y ago
• shrubby 1y ago
  https://youtu.be/Sfekgjfh1Rk?feature=shared https://youtu.be/Sfekgjfh1Rk?feature=shared Bonhoeffer got a lot of things right.
• evantbyrne 1y ago
  I have it on my shelf. Fascinating to read the perspective of regular citizens who organized themselves to do something terrible. Likely to remain relevant for as long as people can read it.
• silexia 1y ago
  The common ground Republicans and Democrats can find is that neither wants the power of government used against them or their rights. The best way to stop the government from being used against either party is to shrink the government until it is a threat to neither party. Lower taxes, less spending, and no regulations infringing on rights or freedoms.
  • nathan_compton 1y ago
    This is one solution to the problem. But it isn't as if its the only solution or one that has no downsides. I mean from a very trivial point of view, government spending constitutes a large amount of GDP. What this comes down to, in my opinion, is the question of democratic allocation of resources and labor. Most people believe that there is a role for democracy in the allocation of resources and labor, which is to say that we think that certain societal goals (for example, defense, the care of the elderly or the poor, etc) should not be allocated to by markets but by democratic will. This seems to be something almost all Americans agree on (though what things should be handled this way and how is contentious). But to simply shrink the government away has the effect of decreasing the power of democracy to allocate resources, transferring that power to (in an ideal case, anyway) markets. The fact is, most people do not want to live in a pure free market society, as far as I can tell. They want government services, they want safety nets, they want the air they breathe to be clean and safe. They want the power to decide that sometimes its worth spending money on stuff even if no one accumulates profits in the process.
    • silexia 1y ago
      The system you describe is majority rule, which often abuses minority rights. It is better to have a constitutional democracy with very limited government powers.
      • nathan_compton 1y ago
        Isn't it quite difficult to know what is better, even if the question weren't subjective? It is very hard to conduct randomized controlled and double blinded trials on forms of government. I don't think people can even agree on how to measure how good a government is.
• brainwad 1y ago
  Everyone in this thread is reading this in relation to the current US government. But some other interesting parallels are the current Israeli government, and more speculatively, A(G)I.
  • morkalork 1y ago
    Sort of pertinent for any boiling the frog or salami tactics situation where something profoundly negative is gradually introduced into society so as not to raise alarm.
  • 1oooqooq 1y ago
    IR is more complex. They know very well what it's leading to, since it's part of their founding history. Half the population do go out on streets to rotest, while the other half go out to protest the protests. So it is the opposite of the lack of awareness/too busy with life and changes etc the article talks about. meanwhile, this is very pertinent to USA current climate. But interestingly, people will repost this, comment, vote, but nobody will ever think of discussing impeachment.
    • stevenwoo 1y ago
      He’s been impeached twice already and the GOP has chosen party over constitution and country twice. The handful of token GOP senate votes for conviction don’t matter. With a GOP house, an impeachment stops there without going to the Senate, there’s already been a House vote to impeach this year that failed. A bunch of Democrats voted against it.
      • macintux 1y ago
        One man had the chance to make the Jan 6th impeachment stick. If McConnell had maintained his integrity, I have no idea who would be president now, but it wouldn’t be Trump.
    • brainwad 1y ago
      The part I found relevant for Israel was the bit about how war is a catalyst that lets the leaders justify anything on the basis of necessity, including things they wanted all along for ideological reasons. > Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong.
• morkalork 1y ago
  >But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes
• megamike 1y ago
  history does not repeat itself it rhymes
• non_aligned 1y ago
  I think this is interesting, but perhaps for reasons other than intended. I think it shows the formation of the post-war mythology that Germans used to explain to themselves how their family members or parents were good people, and did not deserve any punishment, despite the involvement in the most genocidal movement in modern history. When you read these accounts, it always feels like no one had any agency or knowledge what's going on, that Hitler was basically a lone wolf who installed himself in power against the wishes of the nation, that had some outlandish ideas that no good German believed in, and that then he and a small band of his supporters somehow forced everyone to comply. And to be clear, it was a totalitarian state, but it also wasn't North Korea and no Soviet Union. If nothing else, you could always leave. Many countries wouldn't take fleeing Jews, but as a dissenting German, you'd be welcomed with open hands almost everywhere. So yes, of course there were people who hated the regime, and just decided they didn't want to or couldn't rock the boat. But a significant portion of the population approved of what was happening. Hitler was wildly popular. Millions of people enthusiastically bought into what he was selling. Germany perceived itself as a wounded lion after WWI. They felt they had a rightful claim on their "living space". And antisemitism in Europe needed no marketing. Tellingly, purges of Jews continued even after the war in the Soviet sphere of influence. My point is, for every person who genuinely had no choice, there were ten who definitely had it, who more or less approved what was happening, and who would have been proud of it had Germany won the war.
  • BlueTemplar 1y ago
    > Tellingly, purges of Jews continued even after the war in the Soviet sphere of influence. How much of that was specifically because of Stalin ? (Noticeable changes after his death ?)
• User23 1y ago
  This has been true in the USA since approximately 1965, at least. Analysis has shown the general public has absolutely no say in policy making; literally everything is for this or that influential “special interest.” This is borne out in the erosion of what we now euphemistically call the middle class along basically every dimension that matters. Some of the heat here is on account of members of this community are, or at least are used to being, special interests that have had a powerful voice in previous administrations and less of one in the current one. But let’s not pretend this is some sort of creeping fascism, it’s just a different faction of elites making their own plays.
• devopsthrowaway 1y ago
  [flagged]
• noobermin 1y ago
  I know this is made to be an analogy with America, but people there still think much about politics at least at this moment, despite the recent chaos slowly becoming expected and mundane. I think the point of the passage is not to allow things to slip and not to simply accept the chaos, but the good news is there's still time, for the most part.
  • someguydave 1y ago
    no the point is to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about their perceived political enemies
• arrowsmith 1y ago
  Will we ever get a second analogy?
  • whoamii 1y ago
    We’re working on it as we speak
  • DenisM 1y ago
    Caesar?
• AfterHIA 1y ago
  There really needs to be a Second American Revolution. It should be bloodless and as simple as 90% of the country showing up to take back the wealth that was stolen from the middle classes during the neoliberal assault. The popular momentum exists for this project in both the MAGA camp and lefties that support Sanders. It seems like the only alternative is liberal authoritarianism which we're seeing from Vance and Peter Thiel. We still have a chance. Let's use it. This isn't a drill. Let us assemble the Rebel Alliance.
  • Nasrudith 1y ago
    Ah yes, the syllogism of thieves strikes again. - You have it. I want it. Therefore you must have stolen it from me and I am justified in taking it "back". Have you read history at all? "Revolutions" by entitled thieves who feel that every transaction they agreed to is somehow retroactively unfair because somebody else has more money is the surest way to kill an economy. Nobody wants to do trade with cannibals.
    • anonymousDan 1y ago
      You talk like it's the case that people with wealth never actually stole it. Yes I've read history thanks, and there are plenty of cases where it turns out for the better for the majority of people. Judge each case on its merits instead of citing fatuous truisms.
      • AfterHIA 1y ago
        It's not a myth. This is a report from the RAND Corporation which is more than reputable which details the the effects of a massive wealth transfer that's been occurring since the early 1970's. With all due respect you haven't, "read" history beyond watching YouTube videos about the Roman Empire kiddo. https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html
      • bdangubic 1y ago
        with a comment like this we can tell you’ve “history books” as much as I’ve went on a date last night with Taylor Swift :)
• ck2 1y ago
  and remember there was a NAZI RALLY AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 1939, twenty-thousand attended while all that was going on, it was normalized in the end took 15 million military killed 38 million civilians killed to stop it finally when in 1930 it simply started by making all other political parties illegal making all jews illegal immigrants so they could not have jobs, healthcare or even shop eventually group after group made illegal so they could be disappeared https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/artifact/chart-of-prisoner-markings https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/artifact/chart-of-...
• ycombigators 1y ago
  Tremendous. People say to me, "Donald, I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say." And they're right! They right! They said nothing, they thought of nothing to say.
• ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  This book's cover/spine features swastika — definitely controversial on a bookshelf, but can lead to some aggressive questioning ["why own this?" e.g.]. Unfortunately this detracts from the truths within this book (that National Socialist Ideology is attractive to the majority in a fascist regime change-over; you cannot fault ill-informed "nazi citizens" for their patriotism). Instead of me rambling on about this for the dozenth time, I'm just going to provide some of my favorite passages from the book: >"My faith found that of God in my ten Nazi friends ... they were each of them a most marvelous mixture of good and bad impulses, their lives a marvelous mixture of good and bad acts. I liked them. I couldn't help it." —xiii >"Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, 'the democratic part.' The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it." —p47 >"In good times, you work with reward. But in bad times and good, you work. These are good times. The regime?—the regime promised the people bread, and I bake the bread." —p32, quoting a 51 baker, Nazi party manager, in 1933 >"When I asked Herr Wedekind, the baker, why he had believed in National Socialism, he said, 'Because it promised to solve the unemployment problem. And it did. But I never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did.' " —p47 >"The lives of my nine friends—and even of the tenth, the teacher—were lightened and brightened by National Socialism as they knew it. And they look back at it now—nine of them, certainly—as the best time of their lives; for what are men's lives? There were jobs and job security ... what does a mother want to know? She wants to know where her children are, and with whom, and what they are doing ... so things went better at home, and when things go better at home, and on the job, what more does a husband and father want to know?" — p48 >"...'in 1938, during a Nazi festival ... the entusiasm, 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 outisde seems to understand how [attractive Nazi ideology] was.' " —p51, quoting an anti-Nazi German imprisoned for hiding Jews >"The German community—the rest of the seventy million Germans, apart from the million or so who operated the whole machinery of Nazism—had nothing to do except not to interfere." —p56 >"You look every man in the eye, and, though your eyes may be empty, they are clear. You are respected in the community. Why? Because your attitudes are the same as the community's. But are the community's attitudes respectable? That's not the point." —p60 >"Adolf Hitler was good for Germany—in my friends' view—up until 1943, 1941, or 1939, depending upon the individual" –p69 >"All ten of my friends gladly confess this crime of having been Germans in Germany." —p164 >" 'Many of the students—the best of them— understood what was going on in all this. It was a sort of dumb-show game that we were all playing, I with them. The worst effect, I think, was that it made them cynical, the best ones. But, then, it made the teachers cynical, too. I think the classroom in those years was one of the causes of the cynicism you see in the best young men and women in Germany today ... the young people, and yes, the old, too, were drawn to opposite extremes in those [earlier] years ... it is a very dangerous mistake, to think ... that Germans came to believe everything they were told, all the dreadful nonesense that passed for truth' " —p192, a teacher reflecting on students >" 'Understand, I was proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged ... still—I didn't want those Jews from our town to see me wearing my insignia ... it hurt me to have Jews see me wearing them.' " —p200 >" 'It is easy these days to say anti-Nazi and even to believe it. Before 1933 I certainly was, but then—only again after the war.' " —p201 >" 'You say Totalitarianism. Yes, totalitarianism; but perhaps you have never been alone, unemployed, sick, or penniless, or, if you have, perhaps never for long, for so long that you have given up hope; and so it is easy for you to say, Totalitarianism—no. But the other side, the side I speak of, was the side that the people outside Germany never saw, or perhaps never cared to see. And today nobody in Germany will say it. But believe me, nobody in Germany has forgotten it, either.' " —p223 >"The six [most] extremists all said of the extermination of Jews, 'That was wrong' or 'That was going too far,' as if to say, 'The gas oven was somew2hat too great a punishment for people who, after all, deserved very great punishment.' My ten friends had been told, not since 1939 but since 1933, that their nation was fighting for its life." —p183 >"Men under pressure are first dehumanized and only then demoralized, not the other way around. Organization and specialization, system, subsystem, and supersystem are the consuqence, not the cause of the totalitarian spirit. National Socialism did not make men unfree; unfreedom made men National Socialists." —p277 >" 'It doesn't matter whether you call it a democracy or dictatorship or what, as long as you have discipline and order.' The sensitive cabinetmaker ... and the insensitive bill-collector ... said the same thing. Neither morality nor religion but legality is decisive in a state of perpetual siege. And the attest of legality is order; law and order are not two things but one." —p284 >"There were only people, all of them certainly guilty of something, all of them certainly innocent of something, coming out from under the broken stones of the real Thousand-Year Reich—the Reich that had taken a thousand years, stone by stone, to build ... how could they understand the world of broken stones that once were houses? Houses mean people. The war against houses was a war against people. 'Strategic bombing' was one of war's little jokes; the strategy was to hit ... houses" —p296 ---- There're dozens of typos above, typed while drinking my morning coffee.I hadn't skimmed through they thought they were free [author's styling] since first reading this extremely challenging book, six year ago. ---- Whenever I've recommended to IRL friends (seeing "the book on your bookshelf with a swastika on it!"), nobody wants to read about Nazi's... but this book is about why such ideologies are so attractive, and why ought be avoided. Read this book, but if the topic interests you Ordinary Men by Chris Rush expands much further on this topic, following a geriatric brigade of conscripted laymen "Nazis." ¢¢
• amai 1y ago
  "when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late." Remember that, then they attack the immigrants, the woke people, the trans gender and the leftist...
• Aeolun 1y ago
  This felt so insightful, but then they started going on about jews, and I realized it’s from ‘55.
• bborud 1y ago
  The shocking thing isn't that fascism would come back. The shocking thing is that the people I thought were smart would allow it to normalize so fast and give up without a fight. And that even some people I know are apparently fascists at heart - they just needed "permission" to show themselves. For most of my teens I wondered what side I would have been on in 1930s Germany. If I would have had the courage to stand up to fascists. Even when they emerge among your friends. I used to wonder what side other people would end up on. Who would recognize fascism for what it was. Who would have the guts to call people out. I read extensively about fascism. About the war. About the camp. About where all this came from. Almost everyone has disapponted me in the past year. Not only the shits who turned out to be closeted fascists, but the cowards who do not dare to speak up. Because this time there was no excuse. Our history should have warned about this. And we failed. Almost all of us. Almost everyone makes excuses for themselves. For why they can't stand up to this. The excuses are worse than the stupidity. I do not despise people for being stupid. I despise people for being having had every opportunity to not repeat past mistakes and still
  • creata 1y ago
    > For why they can't stand up to this. How have you been standing up to "this"? How do you expect others to stand up?
    • bborud 1y ago
      I expect people to be decent human beings.
  • senordevnyc 1y ago
    If almost everyone has disappointed you, then perhaps the issue lies with your expectations. Just like the boiling frog, perhaps our evolution has not prepared us to take courageous action in situations like this.
    • bborud 1y ago
      This is not a frog boiling situation. This is much, much faster.
• mrangle 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • goldfish3 1y ago
    You are delusional. Please seek help.
    • exoverito 1y ago
      I'm curious what you believe is the point of your comment. For one, it's remarkably lazy compared to the previous poster's efforts in illustrating the inverted scenario. Two, do you believe he or anyone else is going to be convinced or 'seek help'?
      • goldfish3 1y ago
        Thank you, enlightened hacker. I will only respond to far-right gibberish with voluminous essays from now on. I don't think that would make it any more likely to convince them, and I do not owe anyone my time for their indulgence. The best I can hope for is that they take a look in the mirror at some point, so I'll stick to that.
• SquibblesRedux 1y ago
  The challenge with long form texts is that they are so often picked apart, each piece quoted and analyzed on its own, without regard for how that small piece fits into the whole, often veering from a far more nuanced argument or portrait of life. Something I very much like about poetry, is that so much wisdom can be condensed into such succinct language. We fill the gaps with our own experiences, not relying on the author to lead us step by step. And I see poetry proliferating in modern times in song. (How else is a poet to earn a living?) There frequently are reminders of who we are, where we come from, and whence we always return. Life is a wheel. From Black Sabbath: They say that life's a carousel Spinning fast, you gotta ride it well The world is full of Kings and Queens Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams It's Heaven and Hell, oh well And they'll tell you black is really white The moon is just the sun at night And when you walk in golden halls You get to keep the gold that falls It's Heaven and Hell
• johnnienaked 1y ago
  To add a little nuance, no one was free from 1939-1945, not even in the democracies. Since the organizing principle of the United States has been war, cold and hot, since about that time, one could argue we haven't been free since then.
• dluan 1y ago
  Reading this in China, it's hard not to see the similarities with the cultural revolution, but there seems to be a big difference with how the trauma lasted among those who survived. At least in China, the primary shared memory is that everyone was a common victim, that the cultural revolution was this brutal madness and frenzied state that was exacted on everybody, even if you were also a participant and threw some tomatoes at a struggle session here or there. But in Germany, it's more of a feeling of mass cowardice and shame. That so many people "let" the events unfold, because they had an opportunity to stop it or prevent it from snowballing. I have a gut feeling that in 20 years, Americans will feel like latter. But I also question that because out of the last 30 or so historical examples we have of fascism's rise, there's never been one instance of deposing it non-violently once it's been given power. Germany, France, Italy, Portugal's Estado Novo, Spain's Franco. I think the lone exception might be Finland's Lapua movement. So maybe there is nothing that could've actually been done. I don't know, these days I look around and I feel like it's inevitable.
  • Anamon 1y ago
    Wasn't the end of Estado novo famously low-violence? It's called the Carnation Revolution because there were a lot more flowers than bullets. The overall statistics are undeniable, though. I take some comfort in the fact that no two macropolitical situations are ever really identical, and in my naïve belief that overall, humanity still learns a tiny little sliver from the past.
• sizzle 1y ago
  Anyone else with ADHD struggle to parse this?