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They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#341

Post by vkou »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #222
vkou wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How quickly people who don't live in Seattle shout nonsense about the CHAZ. Let's break down what actually happened. 1. After weeks of protests, police intimidation, beatings, and frequent gassing of the entire street (much to the delight of people living there, who were unable to breathe inside their own apartments), including a right wing chap driving a car through a crowd, and shooting someone trying to pull him o…

>5. An idiot called Raz, and his boys start providing 'security'. Nobody asked them for it. People who ran the protest didn't ask for it. People living in the area didn't ask for it. Smells like a gang moving into a power vaccumm to me. So you blocked the police out of a whole neighborhood of a few square blocks, and a gang moving into the power vacuum is a surprise ? Come on!

Nobody blocked the police out of a neighborhood. They chose to leave, because they could not handle a peaceful protest outside their precinct, and could not restrain themselves from initiating violence.

And because they ran out of gas.

Contrast the SPD's behavior to how the Bellevue police department handled BLM protests. The police chief met with the protest organizers, treated everyone involved with respect, set some ground rules, and did not start a dozen unprovoked attacks on the public.

When all you have is a warrior cop, every problem looks like an insurgency to be put down. The SPD has an incredibly antagonistic attitude towards the public, and is institutionally incapable of de-escalating. It also seems to not actually be subject to any form of democratic oversight - as city council, despite passing many, many resolutions, is unable to reign them in.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#342

Post by drilldrive »

_lffv wrote: post #311
drilldrive wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference of today is our world's global businesses look up to the major Communist force of our world today instead of seeing it as a competitor, they have noted the methods of censorship and totalitarianism and have taken notes back-home.

China is Communist the same way the third reich was Socialist: in name only.

Just taken a bit off guard: do you not dispute the other claim?

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#343

Post by test1_1234 »

na85 wrote: post #133
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not Democrats per se, but the left (particularly the university left) has had a real problem with free speech over the last several years. Cancel culture, deplatforming, mobs trying to prevent speakers from appearing, getting people fired, and so on. The left is not friends of free speech, at least not the current US left.

But the First Amendment to your constitution is about making laws that abridge the freedom of speech. It's about protecting the freedom of speech from the government, not about protecting the freedom of speech from other people who are free to protest your speaking event at their leisure. Getting fired because of views you espouse is not a violation of your First Amendment rights.

There is a difference between freedom of speech as a cultural concept, and as a legal concept. When most people say "freedom of speech", I doubt they mean it in a specific, literal legal sense, but rather as a vague idea, a general principle. That idea may include corporations being allowed to fire people based on their political views. But when it becomes standard behaviour for people not to mention their political views publicly due to fear of losing their jobs, I doubt that is the kind of society that will have freedom of speech in culture or in working legal sense much longer. Nor do I think that people have such a society in mind when they imagine a "free society".

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#344

Post by mullingitover »

Digory wrote: post #326
mullingitover wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting. Which media are we talking about? There have always been left, neutral, and right-leaning media, but in the last four years the neutral media was painted as being biased against the president because they reported the facts. The facts, they're very unflattering. The president has brought the pro wrestling 'heel' character into…

On media, the NYT predicament seems clear: >“Philosophy schmosiphy,” wrote a researcher at the Times whose Slack avatar was the logo for the hamburger chain Jack in the Box. “We’re at a barricades moment in our history. You decide: which side are you on?” The Times has always been liberal. But among liberals, employees at the Times think norms have eroded to a "barricades" moment, and perceive the old "he kept the pa…

> The Times has always been liberal.

They're liberal in the same way the democrats who endorsed the invasion of Iraq were liberal - that is to say, weakly centrist in right-leaning environment.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#345

Post by gfodor »

dang wrote: post #318
gfodor wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't take HN threads into political flamewar. We want curious conversation here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fair enough. i'd remove the comment, but HN won't let me.

fwiw, it seems obvious to me the reason this article is on the front page is because it's apropos in the current political environment in the US, but I might be misinterpreting.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#347

Post by throwaway1723 »

And today it's absolutely the same situation like the one described in the article.

History taught no one. Once again, no one seems to be willing to resist the beginnings and consider the end.

The beginnings go by the name COVID-19 and include lockdowns, closure of national borders, obligatory mask-or-starve-to-death, social distancing, temp checks, QR codes assigned to people in order to leave home, and other totalitarian bullcrap that would be considered absolutely insane and unacceptable as little as a year ago. Everyone is trembling with terror at dying from the single virus and the single disease as if no millions of other viruses and diseases existed. Everyone is so scared for their dear asses that all critical thinking is blocked, because, to cite the original text of the article, 'there is so much going on around', and so they turn a blind eye to all the manipulation and brainwash backed by absurd amounts of money. All they want is that the great wise men in power come and save them. And the end is clearly a one-world medicine-mediated techno-fascism even Hitler and his creators couldn't dream about.

But instead of thinking, what will my bright contemporaries do now? They'll engage their downvote machineguns and flag me the hell out of existence. And HN will help them by counting their pro-covid downvotes as 3 to 5 regular ones. Start your timers, gentlemen, if any still remain here, and watch this post disappear in no time.

But always mind the end, dear downvoters and especially, flaggers.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#348

Post by watwut »

sonofhans wrote: post #255
awb wrote: post #105

> "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 certa…

> But power corrupts absolutely ... Even accounting for the misquote (no hate :) I disagree. History furnishes us with examples aplenty of people who were powerful yet uncorrupted. I believe Frank Herbert was closer to the truth when he wrote: > “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people…

Out of curiosity, who had unchecked power and was not corrupted by that?

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#349

Post by nostrademons »

triceratops wrote: post #334
nostrademons wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate on aazaa's comment: think of the labels "patriot" and "terrorist" and think of how frequently they correlate with "winner" and "loser". The Founding Fathers were patriots, because America is now the dominant world superpower. But there are a number of groups that attempted to do to America exactly what America did to the British. Daniel Shay, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, the entire Confederacy, the Anarchist…

> How does history remember them now? You've picked a set of figures whose historical legacy spans a very wide spectrum. At one end (largely positive) are Tecumseh and Sitting Bull, and at the other are (largely negative) are Osama and the Confederacy. Shays sits somewhere in the middle, mostly because other than history buffs no one even knows who that is.

That was deliberate. The point of this sub-thread is that historical narratives get written and re-written by the victors, and the "right" side of history depends on when you're located in history.

Tecumseh and Sitting Bull have positive legacies because Native Americans are not realistic threats to the United States at this point. They weren't always viewed as such: see for example the (fraudulent) Speech at Tuckabatchee, which indicates how people might've viewed Tecumseh in 1860:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh#Speech_at_Tuckaubatch...

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#350

Post by dang »

confidantlake wrote: post #322
slg wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one recent example, this past presidential election was a resounding victory for Joe Biden. He has 306 electoral votes and is expected to win the popular vote by some 6 million people. Leaders around the world have all recognized this however the number of Republicans in federal office that have publicly acknowledged this can seemingly be counted on your fingers. A simple norm of acknowledging an electoral defea…

Any non fascist post is being brigaded by the fascists in the thread.

Please don't use HN for ideological flamewar, regardless of which ideology you favor. We ban this sort of account because it destroys the intended use of the site (curious conversation).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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