I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi

It's appealing to say she must have known, but the truth is that 1) media was not then what it is now, 2) psychology has interesting ways of making things make sense as a self defense mechanism. Plus, perhaps it is totally un-PC to say, but young people do lots of stupid stuff; They're easily swayed by where the herd is mooing off to. And yes, in this case that meant they were complicit in one of the worst atrocities in history. Does this mean she should indict her own grandmother, personally, for all time? I almost think that because we deeply need to feel that WE would _never_ be so dumb as to be complicit in such an evil movement that this causes us to be extra hard on those who were. The truth is that humans, then and now, have an endless capacity to surprise ourselves in just how low we can sink under just the right circumstances.

You can't blame the median person for being a Nazi or a Communist or a believer in the Democratic Kampuchea (Pol Pot). Simple people are convinced by simple answers/slogans/etc and it should come as no surprise to anyone that the majority of "supporters" fall into the camp of easily manipulated people. Which so far in history has probably been most people in most nations.

These discussions always imply questions like: If democracy is really an exchange of ideas and people are remotely rational about how they select their candidate/party, then why do they spend so much on advertising? People are swayed by the faintest attempts at manipulation.

In light of how easy the median person is to manipulate, blaming your agrarian grandma for her political beliefs almost callous.

Part of me wants to flag this, but it is actually a pretty good read. If things turn out bad here in America, I could see a lot of folks giving the same answers that the author's grandma is giving in the piece.

I wonder if New York Times authors with Communist grandparents are similarly ambivalent.

“But what did you think when you started hearing the rumors about the gulags?” I would press her.