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

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471–480 of 536 posts

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

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You make some really good points in your comment. One of the most unfortunate (that I believe to be true) is:

> don't even know what it does and by extension, don't care.

Apathy is a problem in so many different social, political, and even technological systems - for instance, if people cared just a little bit more about digital privacy, the entire adtech scene probably wouldn't exist.

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

#472
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditiona…

The anti mask, anti vax, anti chromosomal expression, anti 'tariffs are taxes' are beyond "anti-expert" These positions are flatly anti-base-reality. If you want to frame them in terms of authority rejection, you could call them anti-first graders

> anti chromosomal expression

What's this? I've literally never heard this phrase before in my life.

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

#473
post #70

HackerNews is suddenly getting political content at the very top, right after PG slams the "woke" agenda. Is the HN crowd finally waking up to what a danger to the US the "most successful startup entrepreneur of all time" is?

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

A 20 something is hardly a teenager. Alexander Hamilton was like 21 years old at the start of the American Revolution

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

#474
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No laws were broken. But it's very much in line with what the article is talking about: > What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the peo…

What information was withheld? I hadn't heard national security invoked in this context before.

Maybe they weren't at the end of that sentence yet, but they were definitely at the start of it. "governed by surprise" yes. "receiving decisions deliberated in secret" very much yes.

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

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The current Hamas charter states that they fight Zionism, not for them being jews but for their own stated goal of stealing their land, which they have and are continuing to do. Why are you trying to pretend that Israel have not had far right forces within it for a very long time, they're currently in power. I'm not saying that Hamas is good by saying that Israel is also bad, both are bad, but only one of them came t…

Apparently, it is true that the Likud manifesto of 1977 called for only Israeli sovereignty “from the river to the sea”, but this is already de facto the case as Israel are occupying the West Bank. And they don’t appear to have killed all the Arabs of the West Bank in fact. Hamas changed their charter in 2017 from a struggle against Jews to a struggle against Zionists for cosmetic reasons, by which they are presumably referring to all Jews in Israel at least, as I stated; and they have not repudiated their old charter which targets Jews not Zionists. And as a matter of fact, Hamas spent several years and used all their resources to carry out the October 7 attach in which they brutally massacred all the Jews, sorry Zionists, they could get their hands on; including deliberately targeting babies, pregnant women and families. This shows what Hamas would do if they had the wherewithal - they would murder all Jews in Israel to the last one. They have shown themselves to be literally genocidal.

Israel is responding to an attack on its people according to, above the standards of even, international law. I don’t see you calling the Ukrainians bad for fighting back against Russia. This stance is pure anti-semitism, though you may not realize or intend it.

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

#476
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all saw the Nazi salutes with our own eyes You all decided to interpret his gesture as the nazi salute. Big difference.

Yes when he did not comment afterwards that it wasn't a Nazi salute, I decided to interpret it as one. It's not something that happened in isolation. I allow for the possibility that in the moment he didn't mean for it to be that salute. Now if he's too weak to clarify it wasn't? Then he did a Nazi salute in all ways that count. Being an accidental Nazi is very much on topic for the text we're commenting on.

> when he did not comment afterwards that it wasn't a Nazi salute

No reason for him to do that in the first place. It would set a precedent of having to defend himself every time people who dislike him deliberately malinterpret anything he does.

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

#477
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is not a response worthy of HN. Calling the parent poster names, saying they support "baby murderers" with no possible justification - please keep this kind of comment off this site.

The Palestinians are in the situation they are in because of their own choices, not because of some Greater Israel plan which the poster seems to think is the reason. The German people and the Japanese people suffered similar privations in WW2 - shouldn’t have attacked Poland and Pearl Harbor then. Choices have consequences. Do you see this rather simple point now?

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

#478
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The Arabs of the Western half of the Palestinian mandate refused to accept a state in 1948 A state that was imposed on them. And which state are you even talking about ? If it is the U.N proposition for the partition of Palestine, Israel also never accepted it and disregarded it entirely. > That is not genocide. Mass displacement of a population, destroying their civil infrastructure, kill civilian on mass is the d…

The state was not as a fact imposed on the Palestinians. After centuries living under empires, they were offered a state for the first time ever by the UN in 1947 but turned it down. Instead they decided to go to war to destroy Israel and have been trying to do so ever since. That was their choice. It has worked out very badly for them because they keep making the same stupid mistakes driven by Jew hatred.

The current war was started by Hamas and they knew exactly what the outcome would be - thousands of deaths of their own people. They sacrificed their own people to use it as a political tool by which they aim to get the political support of useful idiots like you against Israel. It is a sick policy carried out by sick people. This is not genocide; it is a war, started by Hamas who wanted the results we see.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The current Hamas charter states that they fight Zionism, not for them being jews but for their own stated goal of stealing their land, which they have and are continuing to do. Why are you trying to pretend that Israel have not had far right forces within it for a very long time, they're currently in power. I'm not saying that Hamas is good by saying that Israel is also bad, both are bad, but only one of them came t…

Almost all Israeli land was granted by the UN or won in wars started by the Arabs, not stolen. You can criticize Israel for building settlements on the West Bank in contravention of international law. And because Israel is a democratic state with the rule of law, and free speech, many Israelis do express opposition to the building of illegal settlements on the West Bank.

Meanwhile, the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza have chosen people to govern them whose only goal is to destroy Israel and murder all Jews there. These people are possessed by an extreme Islamist ideology which has driven them insane.

The Arabs and Jews of Palestine were in essentially the same position in 1947. Look at them now. The Jews have built a successful modern state, while the Arabs are using all their resources to build tunnels to try to get in to Israel and murder Jews randomly. Clearly, the Arabs of Palestine have made stupid mistakes and should have just accepted the state in 1947.

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

#480
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a response worthy of HN. Calling the parent poster names, saying they support "baby murderers" with no possible justification - please keep this kind of comment off this site.

The Palestinians are in the situation they are in because of their own choices, not because of some Greater Israel plan which the poster seems to think is the reason. The German people and the Japanese people suffered similar privations in WW2 - shouldn’t have attacked Poland and Pearl Harbor then. Choices have consequences. Do you see this rather simple point now?

> Do you see this rather simple point now?

There's no need to talk to me in this way, either.

Whether or not you're right, you're not doing your arguments any favor by being mean to other commenters with no reason.

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