They Thought They Were Free (1955)

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

by nataliste • 10 months ago

602 397 10 months ago

press.uchicago.edu

kleiba4• 10 months ago

Posted here multiple times before:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 (02/2025, 473 comments)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315 (11/2020, 382 comments)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31042304 (04/2022, 239 comments)

dctoedt• 10 months ago

Spaced repetition promotes learning.

JKCalhoun2• 10 months ago

Seriously though, this is the first time I've seen it (and I visit HN daily).

nataliste• 10 months ago

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

mallowdram3• 10 months ago

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 this is the central tool they use on the path to gain unlimited power, even The Guardian grasps this but can't extricate from their use, the news is addicted to stories financially: "In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio."

The central problem is epistemological, the coding of explanations in mythological thought, which is narrative. The myth is the primary causal illusion. That causes that. When we add intent, which is elusive and reduces meaning subjectively, it robs any event of the true meaning load, we create propaganda without knowing it. There's the rub. If we wee the burning bush as just a brushfire, we are sane. See it as the voice of God, we're doomed.

skrebbel• 10 months ago

Wow that was one hell of a read!

toxic72• 10 months ago

It becomes more important with each repost

Forgeties79• 10 months ago

It’s been 7mo and we’re not all here every day. It’s fine. I appreciate the post and discussion it sparked.

Why does it bother you?

teraflop• 10 months ago

Why are you interpreting it as a complaint, or an expression of being bothered?

Occasional reposts are well within HN's norms, and when something is reposted, it's common to link to past discussions for comparison.

kleiba4• 10 months ago

Why do you think it bothers me? I wrote the original comment because previous discussions might be interesting reads.

dang3• 10 months ago

Linking to past threads with comments (i.e. actual discussions) is a longstanding convention here. There's no implied criticism, as other users have already pointed out.

We do treat reposts as duplicates when a story has had significant attention in the last year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), but that's a separate issue.

brightball4• 10 months ago

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

tobias33• 10 months ago

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.

Amezarak2• 10 months ago

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 ban users, locked people down unless they were protesting for approved causes, and engaged in politically motivated prosecutions of their enemies.

Authoritarianism is not a “one side” problem in the US and until we collectively figure that out each side will continue increasing it, all in the name of stopping the other sides’ extremists.

brightball4• 10 months ago

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.

nerdponx6• 10 months ago

This line of reason is actually becoming more frequently used to justify things. For years, the right wing propaganda machine has been establishing the concept that conservatism and America as a whole is besieged by authoritarian leftists and their smug out-of-outch enablers the liberals.

THEY are the authoritarians and they are seeking to destroy America. WE are its defenders, and in the face of existential threat, our methods are justified. THEY have been doing this to us for years, now this is our chance to fight back.

thomassmith656• 10 months ago

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.

FridayoLeary• 10 months ago

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.

microtonal3• 10 months ago

Also see Umberto Eco's 14 characteristics of fascism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

twodave• 10 months ago

I have come to conclude that there are both reasonable and unbalanced individuals on the extreme ends of both sides. When Obama was elected I had paranoid relatives telling me he was going to pilfer their 401k and bankrupt the country. Well, that never happened. When Trump was re-elected it was, “He is going to tear down democracy! He’s going to put gay people in concentration camps!” Last I checked we still have free elections, and nobody cares whether you’re gay. And we see political violence targeting both major parties. This also is not new. So I think this isn’t a result of anyone’s politics, but rather individual temperance; the voices we choose to amplify and listen to.

JKCalhoun2• 10 months ago

"…it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

Well, that resonated just a bit. Oh well, back to doomscrolling.

jackstraw426• 10 months ago

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 attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line.

I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc

The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany"

that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do.

another edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s

The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.

HK-NC• 10 months ago

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

themgt• 10 months ago

The number of different national and international situations that get compared to Nazi Germany seems to reflect a paucity of historical imagination and desire to collapse every conflict into an manichaean analogy with modern civilization's foundational battle of good vs. evil.

It might make at least as much sense to compare to Erdoğan's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, Syria's Assad and al-Julani, Chile with Allende and Pinochet, Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil, the Spanish Civil War, Maidan and the Ukraine war, Cerén and Bukele in El Salvador, etc etc etc.

The point is, if you drew up a few dozen historical parallels that were at least as close to the current American predicament as is Germany in the 1930s, you might draw (and implicitly suggest your audience draw) more tentative and complex conclusions regarding the correct course of action. Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis", other historical analogies might caution against encouraging everyone escalating into a violent conflict as the only imaginable course of action.

nosianu• 10 months ago

and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.

I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it).

There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troops.

Not to mention that the new administration did some cleanup among the ranks already.

The chances for enough, or any, troops breaking away from the command are very low, no?

So who is going to fight that "civil war"? It looks to me like the government has overwhelming power. At most I see some troops refuse orders to shoot at the American people, or at other troops.

Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.

Hilift• 10 months ago

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.

giorgioz• 10 months ago

Seems unlikely Germany owned 66% of the world books in 1935.

I'm not counter claiming the rest, but that fact seems off.

brabel• 10 months ago

You don’t know and you can’t know what it was like. The least you could do is try to listen to the people who were there and perhaps do at least a little bit of introspection and consider what you could’ve done differently, knowing what the consequences for troublemakers were. But that seems to be beyond you?

foldr• 10 months ago

I think OP is talking about the rise of the Nazis rather than the period where the Nazis were already in control and resistance was much more difficult. Although, in fairness, Hitler was already chancellor ‘90 years ago’.

osobo• 10 months ago

Did you even read the article? They explicitly point out that it was the learned class that was so busy with their other important things that they missed all of it. The whole thing is about how that played out.

Foreignborn• 10 months ago

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 heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.

Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.

Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.

—

not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.

i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

lukan2• 10 months ago

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.

victorbjorklund2• 10 months ago

No shit they claim to not have known. No one would say "oh yea I knew they were killing children but i didnt care"?

BDPW• 10 months ago

What I took away from the book was that all these people were very eager to say variants of 'das haben wir nicht gewusst' when at the same time they also describe how the jews were systematically removed from their society and every part of civil society was taken over by the nazi's.

I would add to your statement that almost everyone should read it. It's unnerving to read how 'normal' all these people were in some way and how 'easily' it all happened because the population generally disliked jews.

watwut4• 10 months ago

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 Germany in the open. (Which is what they have seen as tradegy, not the holocaust itself all that much)

FrustratedMonky5• 10 months ago

"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.

adriand• 10 months ago

If you’re interested in this topic, I really recommend reading How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley. [1] It’s a remarkable book - slim, easy to read, and enlightening. What was most astonishing to me was that there is a playbook: ever wonder why these regimes always target LGTBQ people, for example? It’s explained here, along with everything else you need to know about the mechanics of prosaic, predictable type of government.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Fascism_Works

leobg• 10 months ago

To save some people a click:

According to a New York Times review, Stanley's book—a "slim volume"—"breezes across decades and continents" and says that Donald Trump "resembles other purveyors of authoritarian ultranationalism."

ajuc2• 10 months ago

Look at Russians right now.

The vast majority of them do their jobs, pay their taxes, and consider themselves patriots and good people because they help their families and motherland, and are polite and well-meaning.

While their jobs help the military machine that murders thousands of innocent people every week, their taxes fund that machine, and their complacency keeps the system stable for decades, costing not only their enemies, but also themselves and their own kids their futures.

When starvation, war, and political terror come, they will consider themselves innocent victims of another unearned, unavoidable political tragedy - not understanding their own decades of inaction brought it on them.

And America isn't that far behind.

Not thinking objectively, living unconsciously, engrossed in short-term matters - is the worst sin that leads to all the other sins. It's how it happened in Belarus, Russia and it's how it's going to happen in US.

cadamsdotcom• 10 months ago

While I see what you’re saying I think it’s taking the “outside view” of things. It’d be great for those people to down tools and protest, but what would they gain?

It’s difficult to know when to down tools and make noise. If they avoid the almost certain ruin of dissidence and just keep working and living, there’s a chance things blow over, and their families get a better future.

heresie-dabord2• 10 months ago

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

throwawaymaths6• 10 months ago

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first. Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

IshKebab• 10 months ago

I don't know why you think financial independence would free them from government meddling. That happens to be an easy tool that Trump has used, but it isn't the only one available. Ultimately the government can simply pass laws to make Universities do whatever they want.

1oooqooq2• 10 months ago

you're historically wrong.

monasteries were financialy independent. when the "government changed" and the new rulers had no use for the church, all of them were raided and plundered.

it's very dangerous to have resources and not be politically positioned. you become a target more than a fortress. it's the one thing preppers don't get.

universities are facing the same problem as monasteries faced. they are huge bags of money already. excluding the UCs they are already rich and take government money more for the associations than the actual money.

JeremyNT• 10 months ago

What a strange assertion.

It's not the case that the government is necessarily run by authoritarians cracking down on speech they disapprove of at colleges by threatening to withhold other funding. This is a novel development.

We can surely go back to funding schools without such strings attached.

robwwilliams2• 10 months ago

Worth drawing a distinction between governmental support for science and for the humanities.

The first does a lot of relative low mark-up contract work requested by governmental agencies. Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured.

The request for “bids” (aka grant applications) from NIH, DoD (now DoW) and NSF is what has greatly expanded research-focused universities and msde the USA the greatest source if cutting-edge science since WW2 (now relative success is shifting rapidly to China).

The recipients of these small but numerous contract to big medical schools usually are totally agnostic about politics—at least at work.

Turns out even autocratic-leaning politicians and the public are almost universally interested in learning how to live a long healthy life.

In contrast, the humanities are not a bread winners for universities. These faculty are ultimately paid by tuition or red or blue state support. These much more socially saavy and interested faculty mainly teach, and if they are lucky, have some modest time to think, read, and write. They are not beholding to government funds. They can speak truth to power.

So if a university like Columbia is brought to heel by the administration it is mainly due to the addiction of university administrators for the relative modest overhead they receive for NIH compared to that any corporation would accept for the same work.

And the ultimate source and cause of that addiction of administrators now willing to bend the knee to retain their federal funding overheads is the hard and intense work of their research scientists.

GuB-422• 10 months ago

This kind of reasoning works for private companies, not for the government.

It is true that if you are accepting money from Coca Cola, it will limit your ability to do work that goes against the interests of Coca Cola. To be independent, just stop accepting money from them.

But it only works because Coca Cola can't do much against an independent group. Of course, you need to be careful, which typically means hiring a good lawyer, but you should be fine. And the reason you should be fine is because the government is there to protect you, at least to some extent.

But you can't be independent from your government, unlike Coca Cola, they can raid your house and put your in jail if you do things they don't want you to do, and they have no one to answer to but themselves. Government censorship doesn't depend on whether you are getting paid or not.

Levitz2• 10 months ago

Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free.

That depends on which are the ways in which they are not free.

Government influence is categorically worse because of its very nature, but I'm trying to think of a more consequential influence in the US than the leftist hegemony in universities and coming up with nothing.

Waterluvian3• 10 months ago

"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 towards the (in my opinion) wildly underreacting non-fascist millions in the States, more so than the fascists themselves, which seemed contradictory.

The closest I've come to communicating why is that one group is on script while the other isn't. For example, a deadly airborne disease is awful, but the truly scary thing to me would be witnessing doctors and immunologists just kind of shrugging their shoulders.

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. I always admired that. I remember thinking it was a feature that they're so quick to protest and make a scene. I had, without any doubt in my heart and soul, anticipated total disaster. I was expecting to see protests and riots and fires and further uncelebrated but deemed necessary violence in response to the slow ablation of freedom and liberty.

It's quite possible that I'm wrong and that total disaster is premature. But never before have I felt this certain about an "everyone else is wrong" belief. It's scary and somewhat lonely. Reading this book made me feel much less lonely, and much more scared.

Loughla• 10 months ago

The right in the US has convinced people that the only way to protect their own freedoms is to let them take the freedom from everyone, and allocate out appropriate permissions to the right people afterwards.

There's also a spirit of "I don't care as long as they get hurt more" that's stronger than ever.

The party of self-sufficiency and pulling yourself up into a better life with minimal oversight from government has become the party of cutting off your nose to spite your own face.

It's ridiculous.

mallowdram3• 10 months ago

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.

SamoyedFurFluff• 10 months ago

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.

mapcars• 10 months ago

Particularly conservative media covered these protestors as anti-American for their protesting

I'm not from US, but isn't this obvious: I pay taxes hoping for police to do their job and handle criminals. Now some people are protesting and disrupting police job - I won't be happy about that.

throw109202• 10 months ago

I saw widespread violence, property damage, and theft (including from immigrant-run businesses) in media coverage of those "protests". What do you think should have been done to stop those things?

anal_reactor2• 10 months ago

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.

kloop• 10 months ago

When you try to explain to them that their culture has elements actively hostile to personal freedom, you get a syntax error at best.

Alright, I'll bite. Mind elaborating more?

As a follow up question, are you talking more about positive or negative freedoms? I e. freedom-to vs freedom-from?

jjani• 10 months ago

I was expecting to see protests and riots and fires and further uncelebrated but deemed necessary violence in response to the slow ablation of freedom and liberty.

To what % are you confident thst you would be one of the first participants in these, were the same to happen to your own country?

Waterluvian3• 10 months ago

I’m not sure that’s all that relevant other than thematically. And I’m not sure anyone can have confidence in that. I suspect most people are very overconfident. But I’ve been to pretty much all the major protests of my life (I’m only 6 hours from Ottawa and 2 from Toronto) (except Québec referendum rally: I was 9), and I’ve given an average of 1% of my income to Ukraine these past 3 years. So I’d like to hope I would be one of the first. But nobody can be sure how they’d actually respond, right?

jleyank• 10 months ago

Free societies are not ruled by decree.

zetanor• 10 months ago

Free societies are not ruled through masses.

ethical_source2• 10 months ago

Who gets to rule, then, and why? Your position that the masses shouldn't rule is at odds with a government legitimized by the consent of the government. Why should I or anyone else obey a government I don't consider legitimate?

victorbjorklund2• 10 months ago

Which unfree society is ruled by the people? (not in name like north korea or soviet). Swizerland?

impossiblefork2• 10 months ago

Switzerland is obviously ruled by the masses, and that is freedom for those masses, so I think what you say here is quite false.

analog83743• 10 months ago

Oh the masses didn't like that.

Keep on like that and you'll be accused of unscientificness.

phtrivier• 10 months ago

And yet, every government does _not_ stumble into fascism.

So, what stops them ?

big_jimmer• 10 months ago

Reading this, you can see how the political ideology of trumps supporters was so easily manipulated, and how effective the radicalisation of the right has been.

larrydag2• 10 months ago

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy" -James Madison

4bpp2• 10 months ago

The problem is that essays like this are always written, preserved and propagated with the benefit of hindsight, producing the mistaken feeling that an actionable lesson is contained within.

"A bad thing happened. We had been a little uneasy, but did not act on it. Well, of course it was hard to act on mere unease. Still, if only we had acted on it sooner...". And thus, what we take away is a simple lesson and call to action - are you feeling uneasy now? If so, it is time to stop and work to derail society from whatever track it is on.

Something that never makes it into these essays are all the times when people felt uneasy and overwhelmed, and yet nothing happened that in our backward-looking perspective ought to have been prevented. Were those feelings of unease distinguishable, to those who had them, from those experienced by the protagonists of this essay?

Something that is discussed even less are all the instances where people experienced the same unease and alienation and did act on them. The story of Nazi Germany is told as one of evil purpose-driven agitators, their evil enabling cronies, and a whole host of good people who were vaguely uneasy but did nothing. A parallel story unfolded throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, though. Germany had lost an existential war, and was under crushing pressure from the victors which wanted to be paid their dues in flesh. Society was tearing at the seams, the massive country to the East had fallen to a totalitarian revolution and rumours of repression and atrocities were trickling in every day even as their sympathisers engaged in street violence and made no secret of wanting to establish the same system at home. First the global financial crisis destroyed whatever semblance of stability and prosperity was left, and then government was paralysed due to lack of majorities even as a repeat loomed. Then, too, good people were vaguely and then increasingly uneasy - and then they decided to actually do something about it. That something was a last-ditch stabilising effort by setting aside factionalism and forming a unity government of anti-communist parties. The rest is history.

As far as more modern comparisons are concerned, I find it difficult to read this essay and not draw a comparison to the COVID years. "Receiving decisions deliberated in secret"? "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 people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security"? "Demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before"? Unfortunately, for the Terminally Online, that period has now receded into history as a cute extended staycation that normalised remote working. This obscures the extent to which, right now, the US may be experiencing the results of good "big men" (on the other side) having decided to act on their increasing sense of unease.

epistasis4• 10 months ago

Receiving decisions deliberated in secret"? "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 people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security"? "Demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before"

It's awfully funny that your comparison is to the COVID years! There were a million deaths from COVID. It's almost as if those people don't exist anymore, all those people that died, that their lives were nothingness and not worth fighting for.

Was COVID something new? Yes. It killed a million people in the US because it was new. Is that similar to Nazi Germany's fear of the threat of Jews? To Nazi Germany's sudden decision to invade Poland? Why is COVID your touchpoint of something similar to that, and not something like 9/11, which killed far fewer people, but was enough to send the country to war, with lots of deliberations in secret and secret evidence that proved to be faked?

Nothing was faked with COVID, it was all out there in the open. People who actively lied and spread misinformation got tagged as doing so on some but not all platforms, but they could still speak just fine and have their views weighed against the warnings of the platform which was giving them the means to communicate their misinformation. It's not like a popular broadcaster who said something that the President disliked would get fired because the executives were getting strongarmed into firing the person.

I find your comment quite disturbing, and it is making me reassess just how far down the hole the US has gone. We are far closer to Nazi Germany than I had assumed. That a person that can form full sentences like you do, in paragraphs of thought, and still type these thoughts out. Perhaps its because I was a scientist and could evaluate all the information that was out there in the public, it wasn't a mystery, the basis for decisions was 100% transparent and open for anybody to see. For others, that listened to lies and never got the information or disregarded it as unintelligible, perhaps what you describe might make sense. But I suspect that there are many people like you, and it scares the hell out of me.

4bpp2• 10 months ago

There's little point in retreading all the old arguments about COVID here (whose mind is going to be changed at this point?), but just to illustrate the sort of things I am talking about, there was the early whiplash in government messaging about mask-wearing[1], where the relevant officials outright stated after the fact that they were issuing instructions that were at least deliberately vague about the motivations in order to further an interest (prioritising supply for medical professionals) that was not communicated to the public; and the argumentative contortions[2] to exempt certain classes of political protest from the restrictions that were imposed on everything else.

I'm sure that if you were tapped into certain strands of "the conversation" on Twitter at the time, you did not feel like any of these decisions were made behind your back for inscrutable reasons! I'm also sure that all the way from 1918 through to 1945, there were certain strata of society that were looped into the decision making and never once got the feeling that they were being governed "by surprise". In neither of those situations was this the case for the majority of the affected population, though, and appealing to your own rarefied status as a "scientist" hardly helps the argument that your own experience is any evidence that government during COVID happened by consent.

Was COVID something new? Yes. It killed a million people in the US because it was new. Is that similar to Nazi Germany's fear of the threat of Jews? To Nazi Germany's sudden decision to invade Poland? Why is COVID your touchpoint of something similar to that, and not something like 9/11, which killed far fewer people, but was enough to send the country to war, with lots of deliberations in secret and secret evidence that proved to be faked?

Editing to replace a section here, because I was unhappy with the (lack of) clarity in my original text. I am not just meaning to make a two-way comparison between COVID and one or another of the German periods. We are looking at four distinct situations here:

(1) The Weimar interbellum (1918~1936). Well-meaning people were beset by a creeping unease over instability and communism (which by 1933 had already killed on the order of ten times your COVID figure). They chose to act on it by enabling Hitler's rise to power.

(2) The Nazi era (1936~). One group of people in power pushes through unprecedented oppressive policies. Their claim to legitimacy is ultimately rooted in the threat of communism, which is very dangerous, but the connection to many measures they take is tenuous (though "understood" by some set of people "in the know"). Well-meaning people were beset by creeping unease, but they did not act upon it. Bad outcomes.

(3) The COVID period (2019~2023?). One group of people in power pushes through unprecedented oppressive policies. Their claim to legitimacy is ultimately rooted in the threat of COVID, which is very dangerous, but the connection to many measures they take is tenuous (though "understood" by some set of people "in the know"). Well-meaning people were beset by creeping unease. They chose to act on it by enabling Trump's rise to power.

(4) Trump II (2025~). One group of people in power pushes through unprecedented oppressive policies. Well-meaning people are beset by creeping unease. (What's next?)

Looking at the first three cases where outcomes are known, do you actually see some pattern that looks like it'd yield a good rule for when unease should be acted upon by well-meaning people? Given these examples and your alignment of course you would be tempted to say "when they are left-wing", but it's not like we can't find relatively left-coded examples similar to (1), or right-coded examples similar to (2). I would go looking to spin a narrative around the French Revolution, or the two phases of the Russian Revolution (which might well be parseable as a case of left action against the Empire, followed by a case of right inaction against the Bolsheviks), but this would require some more research to do at a reasonable level of quality.

But I suspect that there are many people like you, and it scares the hell out of me.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I am not American or in the US anymore (though I spent many years there as a PhD student, including through the COVID years).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea...

DavidPiper• 10 months ago

I listened to the audio book a few months back - probably the last time it appeared on HN, I'm not sure how else I would have stumbled across it. It's well worth the time.

I remember particularly the teacher's statement that (paraphrasing, it's been a while) "if I could not resist, it means that anyone else of my station or below could also not resist".

The idea that an admission of impotence is not just a personal note, but also an observation of an actionable waterline that anyone with fewer means will also be unable to rise above...

"If I am unable to do X, who else is unable to do X?" is such a powerful question to consider.

ProllyInfamous4• 10 months ago

"if I could not resist, it means that anyone else of my station or below could also not resist"

"All ten of my friends gladly confess this crime of having been Germans in Germany." —p164

Related quote, with the teacher and the taylor (opposite ends of "Nazi spectrum") in agreement that the pro-Nazi mentality was pervasive.

"Adolf Hitler was good for Germany—in my [ten] friends' view—up until 1943, 1941, or 1939, depending upon the individual" –p69

moomin4• 10 months ago

I’ve read the book. It’s genuinely interesting. It’s very interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years. It also contains a) passages that are very much quoted out of context and b) an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable.

I highly recommend actually reading it and understanding what it is and isn’t. Mostly I learned that there’s no simple answers, but also that people and even political movements were just as slippery then as they are now. But you may come away with something completely different. It’s an odd but interesting book.

jebarker2• 10 months ago

an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable.

Yes! I recently read this book and was pretty shocked by how much was chalked up to the German character.

I came away feeling neither comfort nor increased panic relating to the current US situation. I read the book because I was hand-wringing about how complicit I am just by getting on with my privileged and comfortable life right now. I didn’t really come away with any resolution to that question or clear ideas about how I should change my behavior.

simpaticoder• 10 months ago

Anecdotally, having lived in Germany for a couple of years recently, there is a perceptible national character. The best way to understand it is to ponder the difference between a drag race and a rally race - in one, success means going as fast as possible; in the other success means getting to navigation points within a window of error. Or, with beer: in America success is discovering a new beer with a different flavor profile. In Germany, success is figuring out a way to even more precisely and consistently conforming to a centuries-old brewing standard. This, along with a kind of blunt speech that presupposes the listener to have little in the way of vanity or ego (or challenges them to not express it), is the "German character" as far as I can tell.

I suspect in part this was because they were burned very, very badly by the outward striving into the unknown that Hitler represented, and still having creativity and effort to apply turned inward to asymptotically approach perfect execution of the known.

noobermin3• 10 months ago

While reading about history can always be enlightening, I sure hope you aren't looking to a book to inform you on what is right or wrong and what your behaviour should be.

kangs• 10 months ago

a lot of the western world learns only speaks about ww2 (let alone ww1, americans civil war, etc.).

there has been countless western and non western wars with slightly different patterns and a taste of "winner writes history".

one i find interesting is the french revolution. its also fairly recent, but not as tampered with as ww2 history. for example, there still are records of how terrible and cruel the revolutionaries were, how everyone was a royalist that needed to die and how the populace started to be ready to revolt - again - right after the change of power. thankfully, things eventually calmed down - as they were cruel, but not dumb.

either way I'd basically recommend expending the reading curriculum a bit.

permo-w12• 10 months ago

what elements of WW2 history are you suggesting are most tampered with?

permo-w12• 10 months ago

what made the stuff about national character questionable?

tbrownaw2• 10 months ago

It requires there to be meaningful systematic differences between the people who happen to live in different countries.

mcfunley• 10 months ago

To your point, the thing that jumped out at me reading this book is how familiar the German characters are. People have loved to imagine that the Nazi era in Germany was so anomalous it could never happen again. But no, the Germans were just like us.

dghlsakjg5• 10 months ago

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 transporting them to foreign camps and foreign countries. The final solution came very far into the whole sequence of events, and 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. I would be willing to bet there are any number of people inside the US federal government who are thinking exactly that line of thought.

pjmorris• 10 months ago

I recently read 'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland', Christopher Browning.

My takeaway was the same as yours; the Germans (and everybody else) were (are) just like us.

moomin4• 10 months ago

Terry Pratchett says something very similar in Pyramids.

heresie-dabord2• 10 months ago

interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years.

The observations about the ineffectiveness of US propaganda in post-war Germany are interesting.

But for all the flaws of Meyer's work, the book is about how people thought they were free during the sordid, infamous Nazi period. Above all, the people who saw themselves as the honest folks supporting the good principles of the dictatorship.

It is also interesting to read how people — the very same who were supporters of the dictatorship and who helped persecute the target groups — are comfortable in all their justifications.

"Sure, we knew these people who were taken away. But what could we do?"

"I didn't do anything terrible. If something terrible happened, it happened later, elsewhere."

"The Great Leader failed only because he had some bad people in his circle."

m0llusk• 10 months ago

This is a very intense piece, but misses some critical points. Germany after WWI was suffering terribly under reparations that European Allies and the US insisted on. Previously wealthy professionals went broke and begged in the streets for scraps. When Hitler swept aside reparations there was a great economic updraft as Germans rebuilt their economy and got back to work. The politics of the time was driven by the economy. The US appears to be entering into a period of stagnation and a breakdown of global trading upon which it had become dependent and that is a very different situation with economic factors hitting politics in ways unlike past crises.

Hikikomori4• 10 months ago

The German economy was a house of cards waiting to fall, there was no real economic boom that could be sustained. When they annexed Austria they looted their gold reserves and continued to do so through Europe to sustain their economy.

motoboi2• 10 months ago

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.

The experts, people that have dedicated their lives to understand authoritarianism have already given the alarm. Well, a specialist has even moved to Canada for god's sake.

And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. High profile figures started saying out loud that "maybe democracies are overrated. maybe democracies cannot deal with the world as it is now". Just listen to what people are actually saying instead of what you think they meant when they say it and you'll hear they saying that an authoritarian leader is what america needs now.

ants_everywhere2• 10 months ago

And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again.

Yup. I've see it a few times a week on HN at this point

padjo• 10 months ago

By all means criticise the implementation but definitely don’t criticise the idea! America’s democracy would be greatly improved by being made more representative through electoral reform.

UncleMeat• 10 months ago

No surprise that HN was one of moldbugs targets in the beginning.

ryeats• 10 months ago

I think it has been happening for a while now cancel culture had a very negative effect on academia Jordon Peterson and Warren Smith being examples of that. I much appreciate Dr. Sam Richards who walks the fine line of trying to be centerist but he did comment recently how he does gets hate from both sides. Now I know this is going to be down voted because some will say I am both sidesing this when it's clearly one side right now. This is true I think that's however not a great argument to start a conversation. the founding fathers gave us a great foundation to work with it just takes open dialogue to convince enough of the other side that their is an actual good counter argument. The violence we have seen in the past couple months is only going to entrench positions because each side will want the result of that violence to have been meaningful furthering solidifing the separation. Currently I think American agree on the vast majority of things social media just does it's best to highlight our differences but the average person has mostly the same culture and the same day to day issues so I actually am hopeful.

herval5• 10 months ago

The US has always been a very moralistic country. From banning alcohol and burning witches to its long struggle to accept differences (in skin color, gender or even the definition of freedom). “Cancel culture” is part of America since its foundation. It’s a moral tug of war.

It’s a different thing altogether to have the government itself weaponize “cancel culture”, however. As much as right wing people like to scream that “democrats are the same”, there’s little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse and disregard for institutions in the name of revenge (“if the left cancels, I can cancel too”). It’s a flight from moral infighting to authoritarian rule.

throwawaymaths6• 10 months ago

there’s little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse and disregard for institutions in the name of revenge

If you think that, you've not been paying attention. Both sides doing it is disgusting and I think the right does it more than the left (at this point in time), but the left DOES do it.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 10 months ago

little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse

You not looking for it doesn't mean "little evidence."

It's well documented that the previous administration pressured social media to silence views it didn't like, as well as instances of debanking conservative organizations.

That's not to say this administration doesn't throw its weight around, too, but to think it's only one side make you complicit in the problem.

thrance4• 10 months ago

Jordan Peterson is very much proof that "cancel culture" as it exists in the right's collective imagination never existed. A completely clueless guy that holds backward views from centuries past, that can still find an audience and be hailed as a "great intellectual" among the equally clueless people he appeals to.

shrubby• 10 months ago

https://youtu.be/Sfekgjfh1Rk?feature=shared

Bonhoeffer got a lot of things right.

evantbyrne• 10 months ago

I have it on my shelf. Fascinating to read the perspective of regular citizens who organized themselves to do something terrible. Likely to remain relevant for as long as people can read it.

silexia3• 10 months ago

The common ground Republicans and Democrats can find is that neither wants the power of government used against them or their rights. The best way to stop the government from being used against either party is to shrink the government until it is a threat to neither party. Lower taxes, less spending, and no regulations infringing on rights or freedoms.

nathan_compton3• 10 months ago

This is one solution to the problem. But it isn't as if its the only solution or one that has no downsides.

I mean from a very trivial point of view, government spending constitutes a large amount of GDP.

What this comes down to, in my opinion, is the question of democratic allocation of resources and labor. Most people believe that there is a role for democracy in the allocation of resources and labor, which is to say that we think that certain societal goals (for example, defense, the care of the elderly or the poor, etc) should not be allocated to by markets but by democratic will.

This seems to be something almost all Americans agree on (though what things should be handled this way and how is contentious).

But to simply shrink the government away has the effect of decreasing the power of democracy to allocate resources, transferring that power to (in an ideal case, anyway) markets.

The fact is, most people do not want to live in a pure free market society, as far as I can tell. They want government services, they want safety nets, they want the air they breathe to be clean and safe. They want the power to decide that sometimes its worth spending money on stuff even if no one accumulates profits in the process.

silexia3• 10 months ago

The system you describe is majority rule, which often abuses minority rights. It is better to have a constitutional democracy with very limited government powers.

morkalork2• 10 months ago

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes

brainwad2• 10 months ago

Everyone in this thread is reading this in relation to the current US government. But some other interesting parallels are the current Israeli government, and more speculatively, A(G)I.

morkalork2• 10 months ago

Sort of pertinent for any boiling the frog or salami tactics situation where something profoundly negative is gradually introduced into society so as not to raise alarm.

1oooqooq2• 10 months ago

IR is more complex. They know very well what it's leading to, since it's part of their founding history. Half the population do go out on streets to rotest, while the other half go out to protest the protests. So it is the opposite of the lack of awareness/too busy with life and changes etc the article talks about.

meanwhile, this is very pertinent to USA current climate. But interestingly, people will repost this, comment, vote, but nobody will ever think of discussing impeachment.

stevenwoo2• 10 months ago

He’s been impeached twice already and the GOP has chosen party over constitution and country twice. The handful of token GOP senate votes for conviction don’t matter. With a GOP house, an impeachment stops there without going to the Senate, there’s already been a House vote to impeach this year that failed. A bunch of Democrats voted against it.

brainwad2• 10 months ago

The part I found relevant for Israel was the bit about how war is a catalyst that lets the leaders justify anything on the basis of necessity, including things they wanted all along for ideological reasons.

Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong.

megamike• 10 months ago

history does not repeat itself it rhymes

non_aligned• 10 months ago

I think this is interesting, but perhaps for reasons other than intended. I think it shows the formation of the post-war mythology that Germans used to explain to themselves how their family members or parents were good people, and did not deserve any punishment, despite the involvement in the most genocidal movement in modern history.

When you read these accounts, it always feels like no one had any agency or knowledge what's going on, that Hitler was basically a lone wolf who installed himself in power against the wishes of the nation, that had some outlandish ideas that no good German believed in, and that then he and a small band of his supporters somehow forced everyone to comply.

And to be clear, it was a totalitarian state, but it also wasn't North Korea and no Soviet Union. If nothing else, you could always leave. Many countries wouldn't take fleeing Jews, but as a dissenting German, you'd be welcomed with open hands almost everywhere.

So yes, of course there were people who hated the regime, and just decided they didn't want to or couldn't rock the boat. But a significant portion of the population approved of what was happening. Hitler was wildly popular. Millions of people enthusiastically bought into what he was selling. Germany perceived itself as a wounded lion after WWI. They felt they had a rightful claim on their "living space". And antisemitism in Europe needed no marketing. Tellingly, purges of Jews continued even after the war in the Soviet sphere of influence.

My point is, for every person who genuinely had no choice, there were ten who definitely had it, who more or less approved what was happening, and who would have been proud of it had Germany won the war.

BlueTemplar4• 10 months ago

Tellingly, purges of Jews continued even after the war in the Soviet sphere of influence.

How much of that was specifically because of Stalin ? (Noticeable changes after his death ?)

User23• 10 months ago

This has been true in the USA since approximately 1965, at least. Analysis has shown the general public has absolutely no say in policy making; literally everything is for this or that influential “special interest.”

This is borne out in the erosion of what we now euphemistically call the middle class along basically every dimension that matters.

Some of the heat here is on account of members of this community are, or at least are used to being, special interests that have had a powerful voice in previous administrations and less of one in the current one. But let’s not pretend this is some sort of creeping fascism, it’s just a different faction of elites making their own plays.

noobermin3• 10 months ago

I know this is made to be an analogy with America, but people there still think much about politics at least at this moment, despite the recent chaos slowly becoming expected and mundane. I think the point of the passage is not to allow things to slip and not to simply accept the chaos, but the good news is there's still time, for the most part.

someguydave• 10 months ago

no the point is to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about their perceived political enemies

arrowsmith2• 10 months ago

Will we ever get a second analogy?

whoamii• 10 months ago

We’re working on it as we speak

DenisM• 10 months ago

Caesar?

AfterHIA4• 10 months ago

There really needs to be a Second American Revolution. It should be bloodless and as simple as 90% of the country showing up to take back the wealth that was stolen from the middle classes during the neoliberal assault. The popular momentum exists for this project in both the MAGA camp and lefties that support Sanders. It seems like the only alternative is liberal authoritarianism which we're seeing from Vance and Peter Thiel. We still have a chance. Let's use it.

This isn't a drill. Let us assemble the Rebel Alliance.

Nasrudith• 10 months ago

Ah yes, the syllogism of thieves strikes again. - You have it. I want it. Therefore you must have stolen it from me and I am justified in taking it "back".

Have you read history at all? "Revolutions" by entitled thieves who feel that every transaction they agreed to is somehow retroactively unfair because somebody else has more money is the surest way to kill an economy. Nobody wants to do trade with cannibals.

anonymousDan• 10 months ago

You talk like it's the case that people with wealth never actually stole it. Yes I've read history thanks, and there are plenty of cases where it turns out for the better for the majority of people. Judge each case on its merits instead of citing fatuous truisms.

9dev• 10 months ago

You’re on a very slippery slope yourself there. Did the native Americans "agree" to the transactions that took their land away, land they never considered something you could own in the first place? Did the African tribes converted to Christianity by colonists agree to give up their way of life? Did the peasants in feudal times agree to being servants of the aristocracy? Did the tribes in early Europe agree to submit to the Romans?

Throughout history, people have been coerced into a subordinate position by the stronger party, without much choice over their fate other than to give in to pressure. Until that pressure grew too strong under the greed of the privileged, as it always does eventually, giving way to revolution.

AfterHIA4• 10 months ago

Wah, wah, wah brainwashed member of the Adam Smith Society that never actually read, "Nations" obviously chiming in.

The American people are entitled to what was taken from them-- competent public education, accessible higher education and healthcare, laws preventing gross concentrations of wealth through the enforcement of anti-trust law (VC groups I'm looking at you), and for we computer dorks the use of ARPA funding to produce novel new technologies. Most or all of this is non-controversial for most Americans.

http://rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-histo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider

ck2• 10 months ago

and remember there was a NAZI RALLY AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

1939, twenty-thousand attended

while all that was going on, it was normalized

in the end took 15 million military killed

38 million civilians killed

to stop it finally

when in 1930 it simply started by making all other political parties illegal

making all jews illegal immigrants so they could not have jobs, healthcare or even shop eventually

group after group made illegal so they could be disappeared

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/artifact/chart-of-...

ycombigators• 10 months ago

Tremendous.

People say to me, "Donald, I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say." And they're right! They right! They said nothing, they thought of nothing to say.

ProllyInfamous4• 10 months ago

This book's cover/spine features swastika — definitely controversial on a bookshelf, but can lead to some aggressive questioning ["why own this?" e.g.]. Unfortunately this detracts from the truths within this book (that National Socialist Ideology is attractive to the majority in a fascist regime change-over; you cannot fault ill-informed "nazi citizens" for their patriotism).

Instead of me rambling on about this for the dozenth time, I'm just going to provide some of my favorite passages from the book:

"My faith found that of God in my ten Nazi friends ... they were each of them a most marvelous mixture of good and bad impulses, their lives a marvelous mixture of good and bad acts. I liked them. I couldn't help it." —xiii
"Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, 'the democratic part.' The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it." —p47
"In good times, you work with reward. But in bad times and good, you work. These are good times. The regime?—the regime promised the people bread, and I bake the bread." —p32, quoting a 51 baker, Nazi party manager, in 1933
"When I asked Herr Wedekind, the baker, why he had believed in National Socialism, he said, 'Because it promised to solve the unemployment problem. And it did. But I never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did.' " —p47
"The lives of my nine friends—and even of the tenth, the teacher—were lightened and brightened by National Socialism as they knew it. And they look back at it now—nine of them, certainly—as the best time of their lives; for what are men's lives? There were jobs and job security ... what does a mother want to know? She wants to know where her children are, and with whom, and what they are doing ... so things went better at home, and when things go better at home, and on the job, what more does a husband and father want to know?" — p48
"...'in 1938, during a Nazi festival ... the entusiasm, the new hope of a good life, after so many years of hopelessness, the new belief, after so many years of disillusion, almost swept me, too, off my feet. Let me try to tell you what that time was like in Germany: I was sitting in a cinema with a Jewish friend and her daughter of thirteen, while a Nazi parade went across the screen, and the girl caught her mother's arm and whispered, `oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren't a Jew, I think I'd be a Nazi!` No one outisde seems to understand how [attractive Nazi ideology] was.' " —p51, quoting an anti-Nazi German imprisoned for hiding Jews
"The German community—the rest of the seventy million Germans, apart from the million or so who operated the whole machinery of Nazism—had nothing to do except not to interfere." —p56
"You look every man in the eye, and, though your eyes may be empty, they are clear. You are respected in the community. Why? Because your attitudes are the same as the community's. But are the community's attitudes respectable? That's not the point." —p60
"Adolf Hitler was good for Germany—in my friends' view—up until 1943, 1941, or 1939, depending upon the individual" –p69
"All ten of my friends gladly confess this crime of having been Germans in Germany." —p164
" 'Many of the students—the best of them— understood what was going on in all this. It was a sort of dumb-show game that we were all playing, I with them. The worst effect, I think, was that it made them cynical, the best ones. But, then, it made the teachers cynical, too. I think the classroom in those years was one of the causes of the cynicism you see in the best young men and women in Germany today ... the young people, and yes, the old, too, were drawn to opposite extremes in those [earlier] years ... it is a very dangerous mistake, to think ... that Germans came to believe everything they were told, all the dreadful nonesense that passed for truth' " —p192, a teacher reflecting on students
" 'Understand, I was proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged ... still—I didn't want those Jews from our town to see me wearing my insignia ... it hurt me to have Jews see me wearing them.' " —p200
" 'It is easy these days to say anti-Nazi and even to believe it. Before 1933 I certainly was, but then—only again after the war.' " —p201
" 'You say Totalitarianism. Yes, totalitarianism; but perhaps you have never been alone, unemployed, sick, or penniless, or, if you have, perhaps never for long, for so long that you have given up hope; and so it is easy for you to say, Totalitarianism—no. But the other side, the side I speak of, was the side that the people outside Germany never saw, or perhaps never cared to see. And today nobody in Germany will say it. But believe me, nobody in Germany has forgotten it, either.' " —p223
"The six [most] extremists all said of the extermination of Jews, 'That was wrong' or 'That was going too far,' as if to say, 'The gas oven was somew2hat too great a punishment for people who, after all, deserved very great punishment.' My ten friends had been told, not since 1939 but since 1933, that their nation was fighting for its life." —p183
"Men under pressure are first dehumanized and only then demoralized, not the other way around. Organization and specialization, system, subsystem, and supersystem are the consuqence, not the cause of the totalitarian spirit. National Socialism did not make men unfree; unfreedom made men National Socialists." —p277
" 'It doesn't matter whether you call it a democracy or dictatorship or what, as long as you have discipline and order.' The sensitive cabinetmaker ... and the insensitive bill-collector ... said the same thing. Neither morality nor religion but legality is decisive in a state of perpetual siege. And the attest of legality is order; law and order are not two things but one." —p284
"There were only people, all of them certainly guilty of something, all of them certainly innocent of something, coming out from under the broken stones of the real Thousand-Year Reich—the Reich that had taken a thousand years, stone by stone, to build ... how could they understand the world of broken stones that once were houses? Houses mean people. The war against houses was a war against people. 'Strategic bombing' was one of war's little jokes; the strategy was to hit ... houses" —p296

----

There're dozens of typos above, typed while drinking my morning coffee.I hadn't skimmed through they thought they were free [author's styling] since first reading this extremely challenging book, six year ago.

----

Whenever I've recommended to IRL friends (seeing "the book on your bookshelf with a swastika on it!"), nobody wants to read about Nazi's... but this book is about why such ideologies are so attractive, and why ought be avoided.

Read this book, but if the topic interests you Ordinary Men by Chris Rush expands much further on this topic, following a geriatric brigade of conscripted laymen "Nazis."

¢¢

watwut4• 10 months ago

I was sitting in a cinema with a Jewish friend and her daughter of thirteen, while a Nazi parade went across the screen, and the girl caught her mother's arm and whispered, `oh, Mother, Mother, if I weren't a Jew, I think I'd be a Nazi!` No one outisde seems to understand how [attractive Nazi ideology] was.' "

It pays off to point out that actual Jews and opposition left completely different writings and opinions. They did not felt free, in fact. By the 1938, they were thoroughly victimized and fully aware of it.

There was a lot of fear in Germany itself.

The above are opinions and feelings of Nazi, basically. It make sense to write and analyze those, but they dont speak for non-nazi germans, they dont know former opposition, Jews or minorities actually felt and thought.

ProllyInfamous4• 10 months ago

Correct, the above quotes are from a book which uses German citizens' POVs to explore the dangerous allure of National Socialism to a majority-in-crisis (some using Nazis' own words). A Jew recommended this fantastic book to me [if that matters to you] after he and I had discussed Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

"if I weren't a Jew, I think I'd be a Nazi!" —p51, an anti-Nazi German, imprisoned for hiding Jews, quoting a Jewish girl he'd overheard telling her own mother.

Was there a reason you cited that particular quote..?

It's interesting, from that of certain famous Jewish POVs, that both Albert Einstein & Henry Kissenger also lamented similarly, well into their old ages (only being Jewish because of birth into Its customs).

I'd love to have real conversations [which is something this book assists readers with, regardless of "Nazi perspective only" as you somewhat-erroneously proclaim]. This is a book about ending hate.

amai• 10 months ago

"when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."

Remember that, then they attack the immigrants, the woke people, the trans gender and the leftist...

Aeolun• 10 months ago

This felt so insightful, but then they started going on about jews, and I realized it’s from ‘55.

bborud3• 10 months ago

The shocking thing isn't that fascism would come back. The shocking thing is that the people I thought were smart would allow it to normalize so fast and give up without a fight. And that even some people I know are apparently fascists at heart - they just needed "permission" to show themselves.

For most of my teens I wondered what side I would have been on in 1930s Germany. If I would have had the courage to stand up to fascists. Even when they emerge among your friends. I used to wonder what side other people would end up on. Who would recognize fascism for what it was. Who would have the guts to call people out.

I read extensively about fascism. About the war. About the camp. About where all this came from.

Almost everyone has disapponted me in the past year. Not only the shits who turned out to be closeted fascists, but the cowards who do not dare to speak up. Because this time there was no excuse. Our history should have warned about this. And we failed. Almost all of us. Almost everyone makes excuses for themselves. For why they can't stand up to this.

The excuses are worse than the stupidity.

I do not despise people for being stupid. I despise people for being having had every opportunity to not repeat past mistakes and still

creata• 10 months ago

For why they can't stand up to this.

How have you been standing up to "this"? How do you expect others to stand up?

bborud3• 10 months ago

I expect people to be decent human beings.

senordevnyc• 10 months ago

If almost everyone has disappointed you, then perhaps the issue lies with your expectations. Just like the boiling frog, perhaps our evolution has not prepared us to take courageous action in situations like this.

bborud3• 10 months ago

This is not a frog boiling situation. This is much, much faster.

SquibblesRedux• 10 months ago

The challenge with long form texts is that they are so often picked apart, each piece quoted and analyzed on its own, without regard for how that small piece fits into the whole, often veering from a far more nuanced argument or portrait of life.

Something I very much like about poetry, is that so much wisdom can be condensed into such succinct language. We fill the gaps with our own experiences, not relying on the author to lead us step by step. And I see poetry proliferating in modern times in song. (How else is a poet to earn a living?)

There frequently are reminders of who we are, where we come from, and whence we always return. Life is a wheel. From Black Sabbath:

   They say that life's a carousel
   Spinning fast, you gotta ride it well
   The world is full of Kings and Queens
   Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
   It's Heaven and Hell, oh well
   And they'll tell you black is really white
   The moon is just the sun at night
   And when you walk in golden halls
   You get to keep the gold that falls
   It's Heaven and Hell

johnnienaked• 10 months ago

To add a little nuance, no one was free from 1939-1945, not even in the democracies.

Since the organizing principle of the United States has been war, cold and hot, since about that time, one could argue we haven't been free since then.

dluan• 10 months ago

Reading this in China, it's hard not to see the similarities with the cultural revolution, but there seems to be a big difference with how the trauma lasted among those who survived. At least in China, the primary shared memory is that everyone was a common victim, that the cultural revolution was this brutal madness and frenzied state that was exacted on everybody, even if you were also a participant and threw some tomatoes at a struggle session here or there. But in Germany, it's more of a feeling of mass cowardice and shame. That so many people "let" the events unfold, because they had an opportunity to stop it or prevent it from snowballing. I have a gut feeling that in 20 years, Americans will feel like latter.

But I also question that because out of the last 30 or so historical examples we have of fascism's rise, there's never been one instance of deposing it non-violently once it's been given power. Germany, France, Italy, Portugal's Estado Novo, Spain's Franco. I think the lone exception might be Finland's Lapua movement. So maybe there is nothing that could've actually been done. I don't know, these days I look around and I feel like it's inevitable.

Anamon• 10 months ago

Wasn't the end of Estado novo famously low-violence? It's called the Carnation Revolution because there were a lot more flowers than bullets.

The overall statistics are undeniable, though. I take some comfort in the fact that no two macropolitical situations are ever really identical, and in my naïve belief that overall, humanity still learns a tiny little sliver from the past.

sizzle• 10 months ago

Anyone else with ADHD struggle to parse this?

They Thought They Were Free (1955)

Related Stories