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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#511

Post by immibis »

UncleMeat wrote: post #405
analog8374 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first criticism is the unity of popular opinion. (Ironic, yes). I see this majority, holding the exact same opinion, offering the exact same arguments in support of that opinion, implementing that opinion in exactly the same way. In lockstep. There's a definite lack of natural chaos. That's fishy. That reeks of a finely crafted propaganda campaign.

I have no idea what is going on here. The claim above seemed to have been that professors who went against particular narratives regarding transgender affirmation and public health efforts surrounding covid were silenced or even expelled from the academy. This is just observably not the case. Some sense that the academy demands absolute conformity to left wing positions is something people often say but it is ill sup…

"they require conformity to a certain wing positions" is always an interesting angle because like, one wing could just separate from reality and go off to la la cuckoo fairytale land, and then blame everyone for being biased if they don't meet them halfway.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#512

Post by bobalob »

nobody9999 wrote: post #508
scandox wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reality of what has gone on has several faces which are all worth thinking about: 1. A group of people that want to be different without harming anyone and be left alone 2. A group of people demanding certain specific and new legal rights with respect to how they are different 3. A group of people advocating for new social and linguistic norms around said difference 3. A group of people socially shaming p…

8. A tiny (less than 1% of the population) group of people who you are (somehow) imbuing with enormous power and clout in our society, even those these are people who have been loudly derided, shamed, beaten and even killed by a sizable group of folks in our society. Leave those folks alone, for heaven's sake. If you don't like them, stay away from them. If you don't want to give them simple human respect, it's legal…

> People don't just "choose" to be transgender.

You may be surprised. Have you heard about "transmaxxing"? This involves men deliberately transitioning, with the end goal of passing themselves off as women, because they feel it's better than inceldom.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#513

Post by dredmorbius »

anigbrowl wrote: post #477
qcnguy wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Taliban lost immediately and was suppressed indefinitely until the US decided to leave. It's a good demonstration of how well the US military can suppress even decentralized and suicidally fanatical movements for as long as it wants.

Suppressing them didn't cause them to stop fighting, though. In every guerrilla war the conventional army is nominally in charge, and generally never loses any sort of pitched battle. The whole military theory of guerilla warfare is to avoid shootouts in favor of hitting the enemy and running away.

A/K/A the Fabian Strategy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy>

Old as the hills ... of Rome, that is.

Also exemplified in the Fabian Society's philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society>.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#514

Post by thomassmith65 »

nerdponx wrote: post #510
thomassmith65 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A country doesn't become fascist solely because of one man. If my previous comment implies that, I worded it poorly. If I blame anyone it's the American electorate. It's tempting to continue and discuss which phenomena I blame for the poor judgment of the average American, but that would triple the length of my comment.

The American electorate, especially the group that voted for Trump, has been abused by their federal and often also state governments, sometimes for decades. Not everyone is a good person and not everyone can be "saved" for lack of a better term. But by and large their support for Trump is rooted in desperation, and they have been cruelly manipulated by a powerful propaganda machine. Many of Trump's supporters alread…

Maybe desperation is warranted, or maybe social media has distorted reality.

Either way, it's beside the point: if there is one lesson to remember from the 20th Century it is 'never support an authoritarian'.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#515

Post by [deleted] »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #514
nerdponx wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American electorate, especially the group that voted for Trump, has been abused by their federal and often also state governments, sometimes for decades. Not everyone is a good person and not everyone can be "saved" for lack of a better term. But by and large their support for Trump is rooted in desperation, and they have been cruelly manipulated by a powerful propaganda machine. Many of Trump's supporters alread…

Maybe desperation is warranted, or maybe social media has distorted reality. Either way, it's beside the point: if there is one lesson to remember from the 20th Century it is 'never support an authoritarian'.

[deleted]

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#516

Post by arp242 »

mallowdram wrote: post #95
nataliste wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading the comments from the past times this was submitted, and I just wanted a reason to draw attention to this comment from 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315#25104589

We're seeking narrative to explain how and why these things are happening when narratives are how they are happening. When a species relies on inferior and limited tools, it suffers from their use. When the tool is seamless with the problem, it destroys us without us becoming aware. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lie... This article is all we need to know about fascism, the candidate admits…

> even The Guardian grasps this but can't extricate from their use, the news is addicted to stories financially

The dilemma that The Guardian faces is that it neither wants to draw attention to the lie, but also doesn't want to let it stand without some counter-argument. After all, if you just ignore everything then no counter-argument is ever offered and that's not good either.

This is really the "democracy hack" they're using: you don't want to draw attention to it, but you also can't really ignore it. In a healthy system, people that employ these kind of shameless dirty tricks would be excluded by the sense of civic duty of other people of their own party, as well as enlightened self-interest because in the end this will be bad for everyone. Yet here we are.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#517

Post by arp242 »

watwut wrote: post #307
Foreignborn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color. For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be hea…

Based on history books I read (mostly from Richard Evans), they knew. Nazi violence and concentration camps were public knowledge, because the regime needed to generate the fear. Germans prior war were in fact scared a lot. This particular book is a out what nazi sympatizants and nazi themselves were saying after the war. It is what it is, but there was real motivation to not have own culpability in destruction of Ge…

It's a contentious issue and many historians disagree. However, even many Jews at the time didn't really know what was going on, as evidenced from letters and diaries of the time. Many Jews genuinely thoughts they were Ghettos or concentration camps, which were surely horrible and surely people needless died there, but are far removed from outright extermination camps. So based on that I'm somewhat inclined to believe many didn't really "know" about the extent of the Holocaust.

Of course it's easy to say in hindsight they "knew" or "could have known", but in hindsight everything is easy, right? There were rumours about Jimmy Saville going back to the 70s, but did the British public really "know" what he was up to? Evne Mark Lawson, one of the few people who actually did stop and report a sexual assault (in 2006, see [1]) didn't really know the full extent of things, not really. He may have suspected, but that's not the same.

Another thing is that during the first world war there was a lot of (mostly British) propaganda about atrocities Germans were supposed to have committed, from raped and crucified nuns to Germans killing children for sport to the infamous "German Corpse Factory". This was widely reported and believed during the war, but after the war this all turned out to be a huge load of bollocks. It severely undermined the trust in the media.

There was 21 years between the wars – that's less time than the start of the Iraq war and today. Imagine what your response would be if the US government would say "we found weapons of mass destruction in $country, here as some vague satellite photos as evidence, we have no choice but to invade".

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/01/the-day...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#518

Post by dghlsakjg »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #485
dghlsakjg wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my problem with a lot of literature and movies. The Nazis are always unfathomably evil, when in reality, most of them were just people doing their jobs. I read Eichmann in Jerusalem recently, and the reality is that what Eichmann did was incredibly mundane for the most part. There is someone in ICE right now doing exactly what Eichmann was doing: Coordinating roundups of people made "illegal" by law, and then…

>Eichmann presents that he didn't like it at all, but really had no choice in the matter if he didn't want to be made a pariah or face severe personal repercussions Which by the way was largely false, for both low and high-ranking Nazis. It was usually possible to slowly or even quickly distance yourself from directly committing atrocities (or coordinating them) and get fobbed off into some low-key administrative pos…

> Which by the way was largely false, for both low and high-ranking Nazis. It was usually possible to slowly or even quickly distance yourself from directly committing atrocities (or coordinating them) and get fobbed off into some low-key administrative position without fearing anything like serious punishment. The Nazi machinery was harsh towards openly voiced disobedience and discontent, but surprisingly tolerant of a "weak stomach" or a lack of what their fanatics called moral fiber (being able to protect the race by butchering innocent others).

Totally agreed. I can see how Eichmann, and many other government functionaries committing evil acts willingly (historical and modern) are perfectly able to believe the lie wholeheartedly. That is all that really matters. The state supports the lie, the culture supports the lie, and the person believes it, despite proof otherwise.

That is the banality of evil. Just follow orders, and you will be fine. There are monsters (historical and modern) who do not see the issue with separating children from parents (or whatever evil you choose) over trivial paperwork, but the ugly reality is that most of the people doing the work know that what they are doing is wrong on some level, but feel shielded by the authority of the institution issuing the orders.

The examples abound (modern and historical).

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#519

Post by scandox »

nobody9999 wrote: post #508
scandox wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reality of what has gone on has several faces which are all worth thinking about: 1. A group of people that want to be different without harming anyone and be left alone 2. A group of people demanding certain specific and new legal rights with respect to how they are different 3. A group of people advocating for new social and linguistic norms around said difference 3. A group of people socially shaming p…

8. A tiny (less than 1% of the population) group of people who you are (somehow) imbuing with enormous power and clout in our society, even those these are people who have been loudly derided, shamed, beaten and even killed by a sizable group of folks in our society. Leave those folks alone, for heaven's sake. If you don't like them, stay away from them. If you don't want to give them simple human respect, it's legal…

I'm not attacking anyone. I am describing what I observed as a relative outsider of the social process that has occurred in the last ten years or so. Broadly I would like people to be able to live as they want and identify themselves as they like. I don't really understand your comment.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#520

Post by qcnguy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #493
qcnguy wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it didn't, but the US military isn't going to get bored of the US and leave.

Indeed not, but they could well get bored of who's ordering them around and make those persons leave.

You're admitting you're wrong? You're now agreeing that the US army could suppress an insurrection indefinitely and could only be stopped by a split within the military itself. A scenario that has nothing in common with what happened in Afghanistan.
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