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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)

#441
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, this wave of US policy change is inspired by a combination of white supremacy and US exceptionalism. But rest of the world is effected by few different things, for example, xenophobia in the case of EU and UK, expansionism in Russia, zionism in Israel, nationalism in China (and Japan, really) etc. It looked the same if you stand far, but they're all different, so I wouldn't call it "global". There…

The right wing of the US is not driven by white supremacy. It's driven by a belief in a variety of mostly false grievances, about immigration, the economy, the wealth gap, etc. Those bogus beliefs are held by white and non white people. Consider that Trump won almost 50% of Latino male voters. As a percentage of the vote, Trump did better with racial minorities and women in 2024 than 2020, and much better compared to…

I see the overwhelming emphasis on DEI and “woke” as very clearly white supremacy.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the current thing is a little bit different, though. It has gone from "academics are bad" to "anyone who knows how to do a thing is unsuitable to do that thing", which is a far more extreme viewpoint.

I got a little carried away with this response and it's a little off-topic, but I figured it might be worth posting anyway. I think this has to do with the nonlinear growth in the human-facing complexity of the world over the past 30 years. Humans aren't getting more intelligent (they may not be getting dumber either, but at the very least, the hardware is the same), but the complexity of the world that we have to en…

You assume that people have the bare requisite knowledge to even accept a simplified explanation of complex things. For example, I said something like, "I can't believe they're shutting down USAID" to someone the other day and their response was, "what's USAID?"

This was an American. This caused me to think back to my schooling and you know what? I don't think I ever did take a class that went over all the divisions and (larger) programs of the US government. It was like you suggest, a simplified explanation (three branches and that's about it).

Clearly, that wasn't enough. Even something as simple as, "USAID provides humanitarian aid to foreign countries in order to give the US a strong influence in those places" would've been better than nothing.

Right now we have a critical US foreign influence apparatus in a non-working state and most Americans don't even know what it does and by extension, don't care.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this still true as it used to be? I of course see what you refer to, but I also know many highly intelligent and culturally literate people who are devout muslims and christians. Furthermore a lot of anti-intellectualism today is secular: flat earthers, people who call sugar "basically poison", anti-vaxxers, etc. I think this comes from a very different place: these theories/viewpoints distract people with a feeling that they're getting a look behind the curtain on how the world "really" works. And there is a good deal of overlap (think: tiktoker talks about the "secret code" they cracked in the bible) but I think these are distinct phenomena. I think the latter phenomenon is caused by low trust in society, I think, plus a hodgepodge of stuff like crappy faux-marxism ("every problem is just rich people", which although there is a grain of truth, does certainly not literally describe reality), laundered anti-semitism ("the world is actually run by lizard people cabals who are coincidentally jewish"), and new age speculation about stuff like mass psychosis. In fact i'd argue that "new age spirituality" seems to be a nexus for all of this (and curiously still overlaps with christianity), attracting both marks and conmen in crowds.

Or to put it another way, I don't see how Q Anon theories can be tied back to religion in any direct way, even if many posts do draw from antisemitism. I'd even put the "russiagate" stuff in this category—it's true that many of the allegations seem substantial, but feels highly disingenuous when AIPAC wields such naked influence over both parties. Surely by any metric that Trump is controlled by Russia, Israel's influence outstrips it by many orders of magnitude.

Tbh, some of it is also just inability to interpret media. Particularly coverage of politics. Watching cable or reading opinion columns you'd think the parties were diametrically opposed and represent two wildly different aspects of america—when it takes about half an hour of reading a sampling of how politics works in other countries to realize how similar our parties are compared to basically every other party system on earth (excepting Britain, I guess?). Interestingly, for a country that prides itself on voting and political opinions, we're actually quite terrible at ceding the conversation to "experts" who are often even worse-informed and less educated than many of us.

Chomsky has this great bit about how Americans will call into a baseball show as an expert to criticize everything. The coaches, tbe players, etc. most of these people don't play baseball at all but feel very confident and passionate. He then points out how those same people will not have opinions about how government should work and leave criticism and demands to "pundits" even though they are much better equipped to figure out if they are being represented well than they are to judge the performance of a professional athlete. I think the internet cracked that open and now everyone has opinions. I'm curious how much anti-intellectualism just comes from democratization of public discourse and little has actually gotten worse, we're just more aware than we were before.

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

#444
Comparing this to the current situation in America, both Hitler and Musk/Trump largely said what they wanted to do before hand:

>Mein Kampf, in essence, lays out the ideological program Hitler established... Hitler's revolutionary goals included expulsion of the Jews, and the unification of German peoples into one Greater Germany. Hitler desired to restore German lands to their greatest historical extent, real or imagined. (Wikipedia)

On the other hand Musk/Trump are mostly about reducing government bureaucracy, excessive wokeness, illegal immigration and the like which is quite a different thing.

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

#445
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We all saw the Nazi salutes with our own eyes, the man and his ex girlfriend both follow and interact with avowed white supremacists and Nazis on his own platform. The lie is coming from Musk and his cult of supporters.

> We all saw the Nazi salutes with our own eyes

You all decided to interpret his gesture as the nazi salute. Big difference.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide. > Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves. Do I understand that while the United States is undergoing a radical neonazi revolution lead by the tech indus…

Well, I think so. Because many didn't understand they were fascists too. The fascism was always in the vast majority of us, if we wanted to look at it. Just look at the structure of our workplaces, which accounts for half our waking lives. There's no free speech in them. With few exceptions, they're intensely hierarchical, people passing orders downward. Those "unlucky" enough to make it inside one of them, often sle…

Excuse me, I forgot a 'not': Those "unlucky" enough NOT to make it inside one of them

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything. Come on. A "hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy" is completely orthogonal to the size of government, before or after the takeover.

How do you clean up a corrupt organization?

> How do you clean up a corrupt organization?

1) The US government isn't "corrupt." It might be inefficient, it might be bloated, but it isn't generally corrupt.

2) You definitely don't try "clean up corruption" by out-doing it in corruption and lawlessness.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything. Come on. A "hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy" is completely orthogonal to the size of government, before or after the takeover.

How do you clean up a corrupt organization?

[deleted]

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

#449
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably best to start by not appointing a serial liar, convicted felon and conman to head it. But if for some insane reason you do, you probably want to keep him and his cronies accountable to the law of the land. The conduct expected from someone with that history should be unimpeachable . Instead, what we got is the conduct of someone who is unimpeachable. None of the rules apply to him or his friends, and ne…

He's a rapist too, isn't he?

IANAL, but if you're asking for a technically-correct answer, it depends on which place's laws you're using for the statement.

If the crime can be done with hands and objects, yes.

If the crime requires an actual phallus, no. (It'd still be something else, like sexual assault.)

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

#450
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

From the outside, it continues to surprise me when people bring this up, as if they're either too ignorant to know about the Dixiecrat schism or want to pretend that everyone else is. What's the point? It's so easy to look up.

[flagged]
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