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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)

#371

Post by bsenftner »

taurknaut wrote: post #342
bsenftner wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is just who we are as a people. I do not believe that. I believe this situation is engineered, and we have some very long game playing manipulators being very successful today. Society engineering is real, and there are many players active in that game.

Societal engineering is not mutually exclusive with either confusion over what fascism is nor the many fascist traits that have always been in this country. But yes, I think I would probably just call the societal engineering "for-profit media". Manufacturing Consent should be read by every adult in this country.

Do not overlook the largest player in this game, who is not "for-profit", well not directly, they are pure "for-power" players. That player is religion, primarily the manipulating faiths of Christian and Muslim religion, which is at the seat and center of anti-intellectualism.

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

#372

Post by yodsanklai »

wiether wrote: post #263
yodsanklai wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, I remember we read several classic allegories on that theme at schools. Rhinoceros by Ionesco (even watched it in the theater as a school trip), also The Plague (Albert Camus). I didn't think much of it when I was a teenager, but I'm looking at them on the light of these recent events. Especially Rhinoceros on ideological contagion.

Yes we did, but I think that the people who needed it the most, were the ones who either didn't had to read it (the ones not in a "lycée général") or whent through because it was required but didn't tried to understand the meaning. More broadly, as teenagers, most of us didn't had the maturity to truely grasp the meaning ; and the ones who did probably already where sensitive enough to don't fall in the same traps. I…

I don't think I was enlightened at that time, but at least, we discussed these topics and they are part of the collective knowledge in Europe. It's probably why Musk nazi salutes resonate differently in Europe vs the US. That being said, populism is raising in Europe too.

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

#373

Post by mandmandam »

eigart wrote: post #316
mandmandam wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What about all the voters you lose by dropping support for Israel? Nonsense. As can be plainly seen in the posted links, far fewer Democrat votes would have been lost by support for an arms embargo. What would have been lost was the support of many Democrat funders - fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, Zionist billionaires, and a vast swathe of complicit corpo…

> What would have been lost was the support of many Democrat funders - fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, Zionist billionaires, and a vast swathe of complicit corporate media. As in, the people perverting the party against the interests of their base. This could have cost many seats in congress. I acknowledge you might be completely right, but they were never gonna get the campaign and all of D congress to…

> they were never gonna get the campaign and all of D congress to that position in the first place in a high stakes election.

If true, that would be just one of many reasons why they don't deserve our support.

The Democrats have repeatedly proven to be unable and unwilling to give anything more than token support to the existential crises of our time; be it forever wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing, free speech, surveillance, torture, climate change, housing, healthcare, justice reform, election reform, etc etc.

By your logic above, all that would be justified.

Don't you get tired of being shepherded? Isn't the last 200 years of lesser evil voting [0] wearing kinda thin?

0 - https://pleasuretoburn.substack.fcom/p/lesser-evils-are-the-... - "Beginning in 1824, people made the “lesser evil” arguments in every single presidential election year I reviewed"

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

#374

Post by suraci »

kuschku wrote: post #355
suraci wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this mean american must select one from two genocide participant to support? can this topic be negotiatable? like migrants and abortion, one party supports it, one party againsts it, let people choose which party to vote for

Or you could switch to a different voting system which allows more than two parties, allowing people to make more nuanced choices? There are even voting systems which are perfectly representative (as a popular vote would be) and ensure all states get a voice (the goal of the electoral college). Say, a bicameral system. One chamber allocating each state a fixed number of voices, ensuring each state has a voice, and a…

sounds perfect, how to change to this system? who should people vote for to make it happen?

> In fact, it was actually this system, designed by the US, that the allied countries chose for Germany after World War II.

is there any other way to get this system besides a WW III?

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

#375

Post by pushcx »

Waterluvian wrote: post #173
ookblah wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things wo…

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. I have absolutely no evidence to support this (but I would welcome any for or against it), but I have a loose theory that there is pretty much always a subset of people who are physiologically predisposed to be driven by a fear response more than the average person, and…

This is pretty much the premise of Bob Altemeyer's work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer His book The Authoritarians is the one that most elaborates on it, so works that cite or respond to it would probably be exactly what you're looking for.

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

#376

Post by yostrovs »

stantham wrote: post #179
isaacremuant wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But what is happening right now is not really the same as to what happened the last four years, is it? If we forget about partisan wars for a second, are there precedents to what Trump is trying to do? Genuine question, I'm not a USA citizen and I can't keep up with everything.

Lawfare against political opponent, arrest and imprisonment of people who were trespassing as though they were insurrectionists, a president that was actually dysfunctional and the executive powers was in the hands of unknown and unaccountable individuals, the hiding of the state of the president, selection of candidate for president without going through democratic process of primaries, many billions of dollars of loans forgiven without authority and against court judgement, pressuring with threats private institutions to censor themselves and their users and customers, using spy agencies to spy on political opponents, lying and misleading the public regarding scientific knowledge of matters of health. This is just what came to mind.

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

#377

Post by Dalewyn »

aisenik wrote: post #192
Dalewyn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what you should takeaway is that misoverusing the term Nazi as an insult patently no longer works precisely because noone cares about being called a Nazi anymore due to its misoveruse. In a different timeline, Trump being called a Nazi or any of the vicinity terms should have been an immediate termination of his campaign chances. What actually happened is Trump ignored it (as he should) and the American people sh…

Trump is a neonazi, openly aligned with American white supremacist militias, attempted a violent coup in 2021, and "the American people" who shrugged "OK" are neonazis. It is the inescapable reality of our present moment, and it has been visible for a very long time. Godwin himself openly endorsed calling Trump a Nazi. My takeaway is exactly the opposite, that not only were people right to call out radical fascist el…

I sincerely thank you for perfectly demonstrating my point.

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

#378

Post by simianparrot »

etchalon wrote: post #106
asdasdsddd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president is fascist because he's, checks notes... , relinquishing governmental power by shutting down agencies? I think the only thing people have been habituated to is the enormity of the government; go back to any other point in history, was the government this big in terms of independent agencies, employee/contractor count, budget/debt as percentage of gdp? Sure the spoils system was bad, but the current iter…

He's not shutting down agencies to relinquish governmental power. He's shutting them down to strengthen his own power.

Explain how shutting down USAID due to documented fraudulent spending strengthens the president’s power. I can’t think of a single way myself, but maybe I’m overlooking something?

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

#379

Post by almostdeadguy »

isaacremuant wrote: post #291
smackeyacky wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has transcended “both sides are bad” sorry mate. Elon is evil, full stop.

Yes. That is a common narrative from democrat leaning people. The same ones who called me a terrorist sympathesizer for not wanting to invade libya. The same ones that now think Trump/Musk are more evil than Bush who illegally invaded Iraq because that's what the narrative tells them. Forgive me if I laugh at your "full stops" and other absolutist statements. Cried wolf/nazi/evil too many times.

Lots of people on the left who believe Bush was the worst president this country has seen in recent history, that Obama largely continued Bush’s foreign policy, and that Trumps co-conspiracy with billionaires may end up similarly to a Boris Yeltsin in the US, with large amounts of the state apparatus sold to the highest bidder or most loyal, trampling on the rights and safety net offered by the govt in the process (and likely will be no better on foreign policy, given he wants to turn Gaza into "The Riviera of the Middle East"). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don’t really sympathize with the whining about hypocrisy or how you claim to be personally victimized by people who are hypocrites.

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

#380

Post by praptak »

mandmandam wrote: post #252
9dev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…and the YC CEO defending the hostile takeover of government agencies by (smart, I give you that, but still) teenagers.

I hadn't seen that, and am not finding it.. Have you got a link?

Closest I found is this one: ```I'm generally sympathetic to what you're doing. But I hope you will take your time and do it carefully. This isn't just a company," Graham wrote on X during a back-and-forth with Musk on Tuesday.```

While not technically defending it's still pretty disgusting.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tech-investor-paul...

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