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Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

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Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#31

Post by [deleted] »

wildmusings wrote: post #17
tdeck wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the resource be in the case of BLM?

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimi…

[deleted]

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#32

Post by hodwik »

Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany.

She also said:

"No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#33

Post by wildmusings »

arrrg wrote: post #27
wildmusings wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimi…

You can apply this to literally every political belief someone fights for. As such the explanatory power of your theory seems to be quite poor. If something is a political belief you do not share it is easy to call it a myth. If something is a political policy you think is wrongheaded or unfair you can always claim that someone benefits unfairly from that policy. As such your theory really doesn’t tell you anything,…

It's not my theory, but it is an interesting framework to view politics through. Myth doesn't necessarily mean false. Even though that's the way the original poster used it, I think the framework is actually stronger with the more general definition of myth. Answering whether the handing out of resources is fair or not is also not necessary for this framework to be insightful.

And of course we should engage the content of political beliefs. But we should also seek to understand politics as a phenomenon in itself. Our understanding of the beliefs is otherwise hollow.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#34

Post by pjc50 »

wildmusings wrote: post #17
tdeck wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the resource be in the case of BLM?

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be. When you see it as just part of the broader identity politics movement, it's easier to identify the resources: moral vindication and reassigned blame for their troubles, handouts from other people's pockets, and discrimi…

The myth is easier to identify: that there's campaign of murder by police officers targeting blacks. It's part of the broader myth that minorities in the US are being kept down by the powers that be

There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#35

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pinewurst wrote: post #25
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #12

I was surprised by the relatively clear description of a psychopath as being ideal Nazi material. I'm not sure if it was a widely known concept at the time or if they were just going by instinct.

Mr C? "He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism." I didn't read him as psychopath so much as someone nursing serious grudges about his perceived exclusion from the top rank of society. Enough that he'd delight in "setting things right" even Nazi style. That was, for me, the…

I meant Mr D:

"He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others."

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#36

Post by sandworm101 »

hodwik wrote: post #32

Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany. She also said: "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally…

>> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.

She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism.

So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the dictator coming is too easy. The people must be held to account for the leaders they create, else the cycle repeat.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#37

Post by Animats »

Who goes Nazi? These guys.[1] The Republican establishment donors who used to think Trump was a nut, but now that he's leading, are coming around to supporting him. They're terrified that he might win and they'd be out of power, on the outside looking in.

Hitler had a lot of supporters like that.[2] Krupp (arms manufacturing), Thyssen (arms), Kridoff (coal), and others all contributed funds before Hitler took over. National Socialism wasn't anti-industry, it was "industry and the state working together".

[1] http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/266389-donors-changing-... [2] http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/tom-perkins-wrong-ger...

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#38

Post by fleitz »

Riod wrote: post #10
batz wrote: post #5

The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they…

Way to shoehorn BLM and feminism (both movements seeking equal rights) into the same frame as ISIS and Trump.

Their objectives may differ but their recruitment methods are the same, disaffected people who believe they have nothing, and won't ever amount to anything because the world is against their group.

If you want to see how racist america is and how you can't succeed look at how poorly the Japanese have done after interment, if it wasn't for affirmative action ivies would be all Asian.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#39

Post by mc32 »

cstross wrote: post #8
batz wrote: post #5

The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they…

how feminism annexed academia ... why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially No axes to grind here, hmm? (Hint: there's a huge difference between civil rights movements -- those demanding equal respect -- and the fulminations of the privileged who think life's a zero-sum game and anyone else making up ground means that they're losing out. Alas, you don't seem to get it.)

More people than just the right believe things to be a zero-sum game, else you would not see the kinds of things expressed in the Github diversity slide-show you saw in this article [1]. This is the main slide [2]. And, one could argue it is, for every man hired, that's potentially one fewer woman hired and for every one white woman hired that's one fewer minority woman or man hired, if you look at things from an individual company PoV. If you look at it in a broad economic sense, it may not be zero sum, however.

The bullet points hint at the issue being interpreted as a zero sum game. Imagine this slide show from a different ethnic group or gender and how it might be interpreted.

[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...

[2]http://imgur.com/QevylxY

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#40

Post by conistonwater »

Animats wrote: post #37

Who goes Nazi? These guys.[1] The Republican establishment donors who used to think Trump was a nut, but now that he's leading, are coming around to supporting him. They're terrified that he might win and they'd be out of power, on the outside looking in. Hitler had a lot of supporters like that.[2] Krupp (arms manufacturing), Thyssen (arms), Kridoff (coal), and others all contributed funds before Hitler took over. N…

I think that's not the kind of thing she was aiming for in the article. She's talking more about personal decisions about whether you as a person would join them, not these kinds of generic political deals. In other words, her point is that if you know someone on a personal level, that alone is enough to tell if they would make the personal decision to go Nazi. It's not even anything specifically to do with wealth or power, per se.
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