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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#71

Post by lukan »

Foreignborn wrote: post #28
Hilift wrote: post #7

No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening. Germans were acutely aware of the reality of the day to day situation and their previous history in WW1.

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…

Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly.

There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open.

His views towards jews likewise.

So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#72

Post by roenxi »

immibis wrote: post #47
hagbard_c wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

First they came for those who thought the sky was pulsating green, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the blue sky narrative. Then they came for those who thought the earth was flat, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the round earth narrative. Then they came for those who thought the internet was carried by little elves, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question t…

But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis.

I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on YouTube through COVID was definitely a net loss though; the censors weren't anywhere near as qualified to decide what to talk about as the censored were in my experience.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#73

Post by FrustratedMonky »

Hilift wrote: post #7

No, they noticed. 90 years ago, 2/3 of the world's books were in Germany. They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening. Germans were acutely aware of the reality of the day to day situation and their previous history in WW1.

"They were educated and literate and knew what they were doing and what was happening"

can be hard, it's happening right now, and a lot of people are really all in, love it. or ignoring it, or sinking into streaming services to distract themselves.

Take your average house frau today, and they think Trump rounding people up is just good old law and order.

People aren't thinking everything through, that's how the overwhelming distractions work.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#74

Post by Archelaos »

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?

East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1] It had catched up at around 1970. Since 1970 the two were roughly equivalent: some years one was ahead some years the other.[2] However, Germany is now considerably ahead of the UK in terms of per capita GDP measuered in PPP (ie. adjusted to local prices: aprox. 20% now, or 10 to 15 years (depending on your reference point).[3]

[1] https://i.sstatic.net/azSk3.png

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#75

Post by FrustratedMonky »

lukan wrote: post #71
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…

Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly. There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open. His views towards jews likewise. So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening a…

Yes.

Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals.

People just don't want to bother with it.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#76

Post by roenxi »

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?

That is largely irrelevant, they weren't in control of their own destiny at that point. What we learned in the 50s/60s was that the US leadership in the 40s/50s had a really good idea of how to build a country up and score diplomatic wins. They did amazing things in Japan and Germany.

Unfortunately, those people appear to all be dead. Now we have whatever Afghanistan and Iraq was meant to be.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#77

Post by _9ptr »

madaxe_again wrote: post #62
_9ptr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even remotely what happened

History disagrees with your bold statement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

No it doesn't. They didn't "invest", they took everything that wasn't bolted to the ground, and then they took that too. A third of the country was taken away and millions of Germans displaced.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#79

Post by anal_reactor »

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…

> I grew up with this belief that for all their loud, obnoxious quirks and faults, Americans do not fuck around when it comes to their principles of liberty and freedom.

This is exactly the problem. Americans see their own country as perfect example of freedom and liberty, and the idea that they might be wrong never crosses their minds. When you try to explain to them that their culture has elements actively hostile to personal freedom, you get a syntax error at best.

One of the things that Trump is doing is pointing to general "wokeness", "cancel culture", and so on, and labeling them as censorship. The trick is that he's not exactly wrong. Most Americans have their entire livehoods tied to their employers, which usually are emotionless corporations that can fire said Americans at will. This means that, if you express an undesirable opinion, you can and will be fired, and self-censorship is a vital element of American culture. Many Americans celebrated this as a feature that allowed them to maintain social cohesion. Now that the tide has shifted and the list of socially acceptable opinions has changed, same Americans are suddenly very upset because they cannot voice their opinions.

It's not that Americans suddenly stopped valuing freedom and liberty. They never did, but you never noticed, because you never tried to cross the boundary. You can interpret this in two ways - either be sad that your vision of America isn't real, or be happy that for all bad things that Trump is doing, it's not a fundamental change in American society.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#80

Post by thfuran »

Amezarak wrote: post #32
alecst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To help me take this argument seriously, could you give a specific examples of when the shoe was on the first foot? Like > a few years ago when people were being sentenced to prison for memes are you talking about the guy whose memes tricked thousands of people (of one political party) into thinking they could vote by texting a number?

You may want to read the Appeals Court ruling that overturned his conviction 3-0 because the government lied. But also consider the point that everyone has a reason why their exact situation is different than the other sides when the outcome is the same. They would say for example that Kimmel was simply deplatformed because he also spread misinformation. There’s no way out until everyone agrees it is the outcome that…

>They would say for example that Kimmel was simply deplatformed because he also spread misinformation.

Okay, but they would be either misinformed or lying.

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