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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)

#401

Post by Ste_Tokyo »

Hikikomori wrote: post #343
Ste_Tokyo wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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It can be a genocide before they're all dead you know. If we go by your definition the holocaust wasn't one either.

The stated objective of the Final Solution was to murder literally every Jew in Europe, thus the “Final”. The stated objective of Hamas, voted into power by the Arabs of Gaza, is to murder literally every Jew in Israel. I don’t think that anywhere in the Likud manifesto for the democratic elections of the democratic state of Israel it states that genocide of the Gazans is a policy. Do you see the difference between a democratic state with the rule of law and a gang of self-declared genocidal terrorists? Obviously not.

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

#402

Post by illwrks »

cocoggu wrote: post #176
illwrks wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve not watched it yet, but a recent film called the Zone Of Interest sounds like it aligns to this. It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp. Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.

Point to be noted is that Rudolf Hoss wasn't the leader of a random Nazi camp. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, making him one of the biggest mass-murderer of the last century.

Apologies, I’m not tuned into the details of the film as it’s on still my witch list. I didn’t want to overstate it just in case I was incorrect.

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

#404

Post by JeremyNT »

ookblah wrote: post #134
noduerme wrote: post #73

"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so after the war, by an American Jewish journalist. It shows, in first hand accounts, the banality of evil and how easily it can prevail if people do nothing. It is an account of modern tyranny and everyday collaboration. The parallels in the feeling of what's h…

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…

> it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose.

I think this is probably correct. It's inevitable. It's who we are - we (some percentage of?) humans simply want to hurt each other.

Nobody in the history of humanity has had it as good (by any material metric) as Americans living in 2025, yet here we go again.

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

#407

Post by mandmandam »

praptak wrote: post #380
mandmandam wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Huh, weird exchange [0].

It's unbelievable that Paul Graham wouldn't understand how this forever and utterly compromises the Treasury. Nor is it remotely believable that he thinks Musk is capable of doing something like this "carefully" (as if there's a careful way to illegally tamper with the Treasury's innards).

Seems like he is just tweeting so that later he can say "Well I tried; I told him to be careful". Doesn't look smart tho.

Btw, afaik Paul G isn't CEO of YC, and hasn't had an "active leadership role" since 2014.

0 - https://x.com/paulg/status/1886741943050211408

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

#408

Post by Timon3 »

derangedHorse wrote: post #391
zyx321 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems alarmist until you consider that Musk is a Nazi. He did the Hitler salute, live on national television. His followers tried to downplay it, but his own answer to the question "Are you a Nazi?" was "I bet you did Nazi that coming!" People joke that he went from being the Henry Ford of our generation to being the Henry Ford of our generation. I don't know whether I would say that Trump is a Nazi*, but the fact…

[flagged]

You're asking the wrong question. If it wasn't a Nazi salute, why doesn't he say so?

I've seen enough gleeful comments by real, actual, self-proclaimed Nazis to know that they saw it as a Nazi salute. If I ever did any gesture that could be interpreted this way, I wouldn't hesitate a second to denounce them and apologize for the gesture.

Why has Musk still not done any of this, even though he knows that Nazis consider his gesture a Nazi salute? Why not come out and say "it wasn't meant to be a Nazi salute"?

> If it was, why wouldn’t he just say so? What would be the point in doing it in the first place?

Because he wants Nazis to support and like him, while giving non-Nazis "plausible deniability". He gains support from the base of the president he's working with while not really losing much.

Again, let's turn the question around: if it wasn't a Nazi salute, why wouldn't he just say so? He'd lose the support of Nazis and gain the respect of everyone else. Seems like an absolute no-brainer.

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

#409

Post by antisthenes »

acadapter wrote: post #358
noisy_boy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. Social media took away the hesitation of crowing about stupid things. If many people are saying it, maybe I am not stupid after all. The legitimisation and amplification of dumbness is a big contributor to the current state. Among other things of course.

Social media no longer represents "many people are saying it". The early internet could give an overview of what's being said in general on a particular topic - but today's content is often manipulated to support or attack a particular viewpoint.

You don't need to explain with malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types.

The longer I live the more I am convinced that the average person has next to 0 ability for critical thinking. They just sort of stumble between local maximas until they end up wherever they are.

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

#410

Post by Ste_Tokyo »

maeln wrote: post #306
sfn42 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't followed the conflict closely and I'm not in any way trying to say Israel is blameless. However your claims here seem very one-sided. For example I've read about how Israel has been trying to provide aid to Gaza but most of the resources have been controlled by Hamas who have been constructing elaborate tunnel systems, militias and weapons rather than improving the lives of civilians. From my understanding…

The Hamas only exists since the first intifada in 1987. The Nakba, which displaced many Palestinian goes way back to 1948.

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