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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#51

Post by _9ptr »

HK-NC wrote: post #39
jackstraw42 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attem…

Wasnt Germany better off in the decades following WW2 than the British that defeated them?

You probably only mean economic growth, otherwise that's hard to imagine

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#52

Post by thomassmith65 »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #35
thomassmith65 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post from 2003 has made the rounds several times in recent years... "The 14 Characteristics of Fascism" https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html ...and I recall people reading it and saying they don't see how Donald Trump ticks the boxes. It's all very tedious to complain about when half the electorate supports it. It makes one feel like a nag and a broken record.

There are clearly very many countries that tick most of those boxes. Including some that i wouldn't necessarily define as fascist. Prominent examples are China, Russia, Iran North Korea and other middle eastern countries. I'm not saying this list is incorrect, per se, but it is vague to the point of uselessness.

1930s fascism can never occur again. It was a product of its time.

But the psychology behind fascism stems from deep human quirks and is something eternal.

All those nations, except perhaps China, share the DNA. If we didn't already have names for their systems, we probably would describe them as fascistic.

What Trump has turned the American government into is closer to Fascism than to Liberal Democracy, no?

In future highschool textbooks Trump Fascism will have its own name ("Trashism" perhaps?) but it will be placed in the same chapter as the others.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#53

Post by mallowdram »

Waterluvian wrote: post #34

> "Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.[...]" I read this book a few years ago and I can't stop thinking about this line of discourse (there's more of this subject in the book). I've felt this exceptional frustration and disgust t…

It's basic primate psychology, status is the key. It divides the society well-enough that if a majority are not inconvenienced, then the doublespeak creates a denial at all scales. Even things that are obviously absurd like vaccine denial aren't about across the board policy, the exclusive high status can still gain them. The policy and others are used as a political wedge to create eugenics, racism, whatever the underlying status-bias curve that gains them the weird pluralities to maintain a semblance of power.

Humans are dark matter communicators. We code all the top-down biases seamlessly in news stories, speech, novels, movies, always as a by-product of social and virtue signaling. Even altruism comes with a handicap principle. Ultimately we are followers, not leaders, or adventurers, that would be chaos. If the leaders can fool the populace by mixtures of narratives, and sleight of hand oppress on behalf of enough pluralities status, the audience id placated and inert.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#54

Post by _9ptr »

immibis wrote: post #44
HK-NC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasnt Germany better off in the decades following WW2 than the British that defeated them?

Mostly because the Allies took over and invested a bunch of money into them developing in ways that didn't involve fascism.

That's not even remotely what happened

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#55

Post by brightball »

tobias3 wrote: post #18
brightball wrote: post #5

I wonder how many people interpret this based on “the other side” rather than objectively?

As a German outside observer I can tell you there is only one side going down the facist path. The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.

I think the sane alternative has long been modeled by the US Constitution.

The real test is how any model handles corruption and expunges it because no matter the ideology, people are in charge and people are corruptible.

The only real model that can work is one that minimizes the power of those in charge.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#56

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

Waterluvian wrote: post #34

> "Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.[...]" I read this book a few years ago and I can't stop thinking about this line of discourse (there's more of this subject in the book). I've felt this exceptional frustration and disgust t…

Americans do not fuck around with loud proclamations but actions are harder. Don’t doubt that there are actions, though. But our media landscape is extremely fragmented and successful organizations of people are not covered. There are plenty of loud, mass protests happening everywhere in the country. But also understand that successful organizations that do get media attention are cracked down on. Not so long ago Los Angeles had mass demonstrations against ICE raids and the federal government literally sent in the military against its own people. Particularly conservative media covered these protestors as anti-American for their protesting, and this narrative made it so far as brought up repeatedly in spaces like Hacker News. Somehow optics of the protestors matters more than the actions of the government.

The people are fractured, the people who are trying to fight for their fellow Americans are depicted as anti-American and enough Americans are buying it that the fractures continue.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#57

Post by nativeit »

hagbard_c wrote: post #42
heresie-dabord wrote: post #25

> They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966, 2017 by the University of Chicago. Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free. And if freedom begins to disappear, even those who believe themselves safely conformist are not safe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#58

Post by jackstraw42 »

delichon wrote: post #48
jackstraw42 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Allies defeated Germany, not the British.

It turns out that the British were one of the allies and about 380,000 of them died fighting the Nazis, so they have a good claim to having defeated Germany, with help from their friends.

Yes, I am not downplaying the role of the British and hoped no one would take it that way. The British were the first on alert as far as I know, and without them it would have been a whole lot worse.

USA swoops in towards the end (a large cost as well, but not as much of it and not on their doorstep) and takes a big role in creating the new world.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#59

Post by immibis »

Amezarak wrote: post #46
tobias3 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German outside observer I can tell you there is only one side going down the facist path. The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.

Perhaps you are not aware that the “other side” declared Constitutional amendments by fiat, assassinated American citizens with drone strikes, lied to the courts to imprison influential Twitter users, used intelligence agencies to spy on Congress, dramatically expanded the surveillance state, declared by EO they simply wouldn’t enforce some laws on favored demographics, ordered social media companies to censor and ba…

The "same side" does all of that but also a bunch more bad stuff.

The equlibrium that is always reached in a first-past-the-post voting system is two parties that are mostly the same, and you vote for a party that's only slightly more of what you want (because those are the options) and your vote tells both parties which direction to move in, to chase more votes.

If the party that drone strikes its own citizens and imprisons Twitter users consistently gets more votes than the party that drone strikes its own citizens, imprisons Twitter users, and builds concentration camps, then the latter party will quickly figure out that the only way to win is to drone strike its own citizens, but not imprison Twitter users, or build concentration camps. And then the former party (now losing) figures out that doing none of the above is the way to win, but maybe they still tap all communications. And so on...

We got to the point we're at today step by step, with people voting for one new measure at a time, and parties taking notice of what measures people consistently vote for. The current parties did not spring fully-formed out of Zeus's forehead.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#60

Post by thrance »

hagbard_c wrote: post #42
heresie-dabord wrote: post #25

> They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966, 2017 by the University of Chicago. Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free. And if freedom begins to disappear, even those who believe themselves safely conformist are not safe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

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