Who Goes Nazi? (1941)
harpers.org
harpers.org
The conclusion that book drew was different than this article, and makes more sense to me — that it's not "mean people 'go nazi'", but ordinary people who 'go nazi', given a system which relieves them of responsibility for their actions. "Just following orders" was the typical & honest answer, if I recall. The men didn't feel they bore a moral duty to disobey, because these things just had to be done, or so they were told.
So, if I can riff a bit on the article's themes... maybe mean people will hand you the gun, but anyone will pull the trigger, if they're told to do so.
I seem to remember something about how lots of “un-American communists” were pretty staunch anti-Nazis.
But OTOH this was 1941, and there were still plenty of Nazi sympathisers in the US. The battle of ideas was still live then, and I guess Harpers were fighting it.
As part of some work in architecture for some public sector projects, I read "The Nazi Census" which was a description of the technologies and techniques of the 1938 german census which was a basis for the NSDAPs brutal bureaucracy. (https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Census-Identification-Control-Po...)
One of the interesting parts was adding "unused," fields to the Hollerith punch cards for "future use," much like we use extensibility fields in data models today. The book says many of the people recruited to administer it were promoted from the ranks of the disaffected, often far above their level to ensure their loyalty. It was a technique used by the NSDAP, Stalin, and Mao, where they put country "peasant" types in administrative roles over towns and cities to exploit rural resentment of city dwellers.
As a result, you can "steelman" the sentiments behind many conservative arguments by summarizing them as questioning the wisdom of handing reins of unimaginably powerful institutions and technologies to people who identify as victims with an implied entitlement to revenge, and who are not bound by the ethical frameworks of the deposed - the ones assumed when those techs and institutions were built. It at least provides a logic beyond evil and hatred.
Regardless of whether it's accurate in the context, it's a heuristic for reasoning about the motives and quality of an argument.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.hig...
Somewhat chilling to contemplate what purpose the current "Watson" could be put to, though:
"When the Nazis invaded Poland (...) IBM New York established a special new subsidiary called Watson Business Machines," after its then- president, Thomas Watson."
"Hello, Watson - is our genocide still on track?"
Which conservative arguments? It seems like you're just referring to a different brand of identity politics as "conservative".
In the Jonathan Haidt model, conservatives tend to be rule seeking and internally group biased, where liberals prefer the opportunities created by external influences and focus on outcomes.
Regarding the original article, 20th century wars figure prominently in the minds of conservatives, and it's worth considering that many good people are indexed on factors in a narrative that includes them.
There is a principle that some knowledge is crowd-sourced over time and we shouldn't ignore that. If there is a fence in a field, we should figure out why it is there before tearing it down. And we should tear it down in a gradual and reversible way in case we were wrong in our original guess.
Your comments about which groups are in charge of what could be that kind of conservatism if you squint, but it ignores the fact that individualism is one of the principles conservatives are trying to preserve.
That is how they were raised. That kind of thinking was traditional and Nazi school system and propaganda were designed to produce people like that.
It is also not true that anyone would pull the trigger. Even in Germany were many people who having choice participated to the minimum or did not joined groups doing worst things when they could. It is interesting that another popular glib is that "ordinary people who don't fight back are responsible". But people who looked away or were passive should be better off morally then those who could not participate but did (not everyone could avoid such duty).
The banality of evil does not absolve people from responsibility or mean that anyone will pull the trigger. There are numerous examples of people who refused to participate.
People's emotions toward acts is highly dependant on the reference system they live in.
I'm sure it's exceptionally hard to escape this kind of nation wide social pressure. At least for a while. I've read people starting to feel sick and question their duty. But they still agreed at first.
Similarly, drone operators started happy, but became overly depressed after "working" for months.
Yes, but let's be careful not to conflate felt nobility with actual good. Sacrificing humans to false gods is pretty awful, no matter the sentiment behind the acts.
That the people who filled that room wanted a wonderful society filled with everything good doesn't detract from the fact they were monsters.
It's true that people need empathy, though, partly so they can be wary despite their own good intentions and clean consciences.
I did, very few times, but I did. I bet 10$ that their culture only amplified that feeling.
We don't serve people well by simply putting ourselves in their shoes. That's certainly part of a mature response, but it's far from a complete answer.
Once socialist one party rule collapsed, the whole ruling class divided itself into political parties and participated in the whole political spectrum, like nothing happened. Some of them became ardent anti-communists, despite being active parts of the old regime.
After ten years of center-right rule, some even switched sides and former nationalists (and before that communists) rebranded themselves as Christian democrats, Europeans, clean shaven centrists.
Some people are simply made for all regimes. They're the Nazis the author talks about.
For what it's worth, when the article’s author Dorothy Thompson was in her twenties, she was a fiery activist for women's suffrage, which was deeply intertwined with the temperance movement of that era. (Many temperance groups shared the same leadership as women's suffrage groups, and both shared a core idea that women were inherently less coarse and crude than men and that the burden fell on women to transform the debased, violent world men had created.)
Thompson toured New York state giving barnburner speeches promoting women's suffrage, and promoting temperance figures as well, like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, a popular keynote speaker for the New York Woman Suffrage Party and prominent member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The W.C.T.U. is the political organization most responsible for bringing us the 18th Amendment prohibiting the production, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages in the United States. The Volstead Act passed to enforce Prohibition ultimately resulted in the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens who were gunned down in the crossfire of speakeasy raids, or who drank liquor poisoned deliberately by the Feds.
Not quite Nazism, but government agents murderously enforcing philosophies of moral purity are perhaps not so far away, either. All this was going on in 1919; Thompson moved to Europe in 1920, the year Prohibition came into effect, leaving behind the violence and chaos she'd helped bring to power.
It's doubtful she wanted things to turn out quite the way they did. She meant to support only the good people and the good idea of women's suffrage, yet somehow some bad people and bad ideas came along for the ride. Indeed, some of the good people with the good ideas were also the bad people with bad ideas.
There might be a better moral in this than the notion that Nazis are a separate breed of people we can know by second sight.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11053415
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155824
Dorothy Thompson was one of if not the most famous American journalist of the 1930s and 40s. She's largely forgotten now, but is sure to be rediscovered.
OTOH, there is the typical anti-Semitic “Nazis were just a response to Commununists, and it was the Jews fault” comment. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11156462
Me, it turns out. Is it because I am unhappy and insecurity? Yeah maybe I suppose. It's not that I'm seeking revenge or domination. More that I just don't have enough fucks to give left over to care about anyone else. Staying alive takes full concentration.
That depended on your level of devotion, I suppose. See e.g. Emil Maurice, he was a Jew and a founding member of the Schutzstaffel (SS member #2).
"Hitler compelled Himmler to make an exception for Maurice and his brothers, who were informally declared 'Honorary Aryans' and allowed to stay in the SS."
One of his great-grandfathers was Jewish; he was not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling_Test
I totally was reading this thread last night and didn’t refresh before posting, I didn’t see the post below.
Its easy to assume that you are the good guy in the movie. Twist the plot a bit, and do you become the bad guy?
“They Thought They Were Free”
For perspective on what it feels like to become a nazi.
https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/022...
First, because the Nazi analogy is far-fetched -- from the Wall, to the travel ban, to throwing out immigrants, and on to war, he is continuing more or less the same policies as Obama. Who didn't do that great on institutional racism either (remember "black lives matter"? The hurt that caused this and the killer cop business had continued as usual under his watch. Same for things like surveillance, hawkish attacks in foreign policy, etc. Heck, even Obamacare was "inspired" from Mitt Romney -- and nothing like e.g. British or Canadian healthcare).
But even more so, because while the Nazi party was THE establishment, Trump is a small anomaly, with most of the establishment figures (all "good society" and the prestigious press) against him. You can't build a career on being for Trump today (you'll regret very soon), whereas you could for being pro Nazi in the thirties. And many of the author's analogies are based on those aspects.
Secondly, it reeks of 'The good old boy' and the idea that a good man could never be deceived. It promotes a sense that, if you are simply American enough, you can escape the feverish grip of nationalism or public panic.
I think this sentence in the last section of the article is the central point:
> Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi.
That Nazism is a product of cruelty, unhappiness, and insecurity.
Fascism is about dominance. About being a part of the group to which the other is subordinate. Which is something that appeals to people who are deeply bitter, delight in suffering (of their own or others), or lack a sense of self-identity.
I am very glad that I was able to purchase a modest house that I can work on and modify. I'm happy with designing and implementing solutions to the technical problems my job entails. I'm happy that I have the opportunity to save so that I have a financial cushion should many unexpected events occur.
And I don't think this situation requires anyone else to lose.
Now I would admit that I might not be and likely am not representative of everyone in our society but isn't that more of an attitude towards expectations than some sort of static rule? I might have the expectation that I should have a Ferrari and an attractive and doting partner, or a happy perfect family, but there is no reason my expectations justify hurting others.
I think if we look closer at social dysfunction in general we would see that the people lashing out have either unrealistic expectations or have someone been marginalized even beyond what we all might agree about as a baseline of expectations: that we have the opportunity to take part in society without being treated shabbily for no reason, that we are appreciated at some level by someone, and that we can be vulnerable and rely on others without being neglected or ostracized.
There will always be people who are naturally dysfunctional due to mental health issues but I have to think most of the worst problems society faces could be greatly reduced if we cared about each other more.
I don't know enough macroeconomics, nor enough about the veracity of macroeconomics, to determine whether this is true. I'm not calling you out, or asking you to defend your thesis to strangers. I'm just wondering whether you're able to reason end-to-end about this in your own mind, to reach this conclusion.
Also, whether or not your good fortune depends on losers, there are losers. An exchange at dinner the other night went like this: What slogan did Obama run on? Change. And what is it that people want to change? They want their lives to stop sucking so hard.
I have friends who would consider me a "loser" by rankings (no house, no wife, no kids; I rent, have a fiancee, and, well, no kids). But their achievements have not caused me to be in this state. It's just facts of how life has played out, and differing priorities.
The summary is that everyone needs to be a winner, and we can be as long as we all play a different game.
Not all games are zero sum. I'm not saying that you need to win in order for others to lose. The cause and effect are almost the inverse of that. What I'm saying is, your definition of success and winning is defined by either achieving what others have, or avoiding situations you know are possible because other people are in them.
You know you're winning because your not in a third world country, homeless, starving, immediately dying, etc. You wouldn't know those were states to avoid unless others were in them.
I think the loss, if it actually exists, is distributed thinly over a lot of people so it's hard to see.
Wow. How little things change.
The conclusion taken from almost 4 000 years of written information is that indeed things change very little regarding human politics.
This is utterly correct.
> Which is something that appeals to people who are deeply bitter, delight in suffering (of their own or others), or lack a sense of self-identity.
This is absurd, and does not follow from the first part.
Here's the truth (and you do get this from the article) : anyone who rises a lot in the world, or has that as an ambition, in either popularity or money, would "go nazi". That is very different from actively persecuting people, and that should be clearly understood.
I feel like dropping another 10 points on this site, so may I just make the point. Someone who was born a man (or woman) of some privilege (not necessarily much, but some) and does not really seek to advance, someone who gets his life pre-planned for them, and follows the plan. "Dad was a doctor, and I will be too". Those are the people that do not go Nazi, that, no matter what, will never join.
In other words : rich republicans would be the bastion against Nazism. They would be the people that, no matter what efforts are done, cannot be converted. Doctor families. Lawyer "dynasties".
The Bay Area ... would be a hotbed of Nazism in America. No doubt about it. Nazism has everything that SF wants : loads of young people. Support from universities and "follows science" (read the newspapers from the time). It sings the praises of the poor, gives a clear reason for the poor getting repressed (rich jewish bankers), Nazism hates the status-quo and wants to change it at all costs (even though most people don't nearly realize just how big those costs were going to get. Please keep that thoroughly in mind before judging people).
If the SJW's taught me anything it's that the people loudest yelling that they're the good people would be the first people to go nazi. It wouldn't be the same nazi's nowadays - their uniforms would be different, their slogans would be different, the group they scapegoat all their problems on would be different.
But they'd still be plowing through imprisoning and killing people who fit into their nearly arbitrary category not caring what kind of people they actually are because "their group is the reason why bad things happen!".
They'd simply go on their facebook feed, be told who they should hate this week, and gleefully post about how they're being put in camps to slowly die, all the while convinced they were doing the right moral thing.
It doesn't have to follow from the first part (I can imagine several things it could precede from), but it is entirely credible that bitterness/resentfulness might go hand-in-hand with a desire to dominate. If you've been told long enough that you've gotten the short end of the stick, if you feel you've been looked down on, not given enough respect, or even if you're doing quite well for yourself, but of course you've earned it, and there are all kinds of hangers-on and disgusting and lazy people who are still somehow getting a piece of your labors... it's quite plausible that you'd love nothing more than either (a) to be in a position of dominance over your oppressors (real or imagined) or (b) watch someone else who is in such a position really give it to 'em good.
> rich republicans would be the bastion against Nazism. They would be the people that, no matter what efforts are done, cannot be converted. Doctor families. Lawyer "dynasties".
Presumably engineers in that professional class as well.
Amazing that nazi Germany was able to do as much as it did without the help of doctors and engineers and other respectable and conscientious members with a place society. Almost recommends nazism as a philosophy if they were able to basically conquer Europe primarily with the poor, young, faux-science disrupters and others who had no stake in the status quo.
Birtherism to me is Nazism. It is his original sin entering the political scene, and the party did not do anywhere near enough to repudiate it. The passivity was tacit acceptance of it. That's not a bastion.
Even the cream of a country can be goaded and led and pushed into fascism, as the tide sweeps across a frightened or depressed people. The soldiers of Germany had to be shown the horrors and crimes of their superiors in gory detail, and still they had to be marshaled by strict speech laws to prevent the resurrection of a horror that largely benefitted the masses.
He'll be recounting some story of Bormann or Goering, and you'll be thinking to yourself, "That's just like Joe in HR!" or "Matt does that all the time!"
Take the ordinary schmuck in middle-management, give him absolute power, then BAM--nazi.
https://archive.org/stream/Inside_the_Third_Reich_Albert_Spe...
You see it in both the obsession to label anything and anyone a nazi or nazi-adjacent, as well as to turn a blind eye to the real abusive power wielded in the name of anti-fascism.
The ends do not justify the means, and you don't get to paint your team's actions as merely "consequences" like it's some sort of divine and just punishment. You can't cast yourself as a powerless observer when you're actively applying leverage in collusion with institutions.
Consistent rules, actual accountability and real responsibility need to apply to everyone if this is to get better.
Quotes, citations, showing one's work are all inherently substantive.
To take something seriously as Nazism in the context of a game like a puzzle to be solved, it's brilliant and absurd, and literary cleverness, and worth repeating as is. And this wedge fits within the timing of the article, itself wedged between rampant Nazism in the U.S. but before the U.S. had entered WWII. I doubt this activity could be called a game during or after the war, no matter the satirical hints.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/542499/marshall-curr...
Adding no information? That's the vast majority of comments on HN including my own, which don't get either an up or down. But fine, you can say it did not enrich the conversation.
National-socialism was a collectivist ideology. It was grouping people according to a hierarchy of "races", in other words judging individuals according to their ancestry. It was fundamentally horrible not because of its form of collectivism, but because it was both collectivistic and totalitarian.
Human action is driven by ideas and personal choices, not by collective biological origins or urges, nor by "feeding", nor by "physical training."
If you want a deeper, intellectual, practical understanding of what made Nazi Germany possible read "The Ominous Parallels" (1982) [1] or an extract titled "The Cause of Hitler's Germany" [2].
She's ascribing an inclination to Nazism to feeding and physical training. There is no charitable interpretation.
Added [I'm blocked from responding]:
Near the end: "L is the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room... He has the brains of Neanderthal man, but he has an infallible instinct for power."
She constantly ascribes adherence or willingness to adhere to Nazism to a biological cause -- being born, one's feeding, a physical training, Neanderthal man, or instinct.
This is not how to understand Nazism, or its causes; nor is it how to fight it.
> Fourth paragraph: "Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work—a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature."
It's obvious that she's talking about upbringing rather than genetics, despite the word choice. You're being way too literal.
The word "born" is clearly an awkward choice--perhaps it worked better in the idiom of 1941--but you're not doing any good by ignoring context and stubbornly insisting on a literal dictionary reading.
Your interpretation of the word "born" is bizarre. She is repeatedly describing someone's Nazism to be directly caused by biological breeding and processes (such as feeding, physical training, or Neanderthal brains).
Are you actually saying it's immoral to say that the circumstances of a person's upbringing can affect their adult behavior? Because that goes way beyond just misinterpreting the article.
I'm asking you to provide evidence for that claim.
"I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines."
If you actually read the article in its entirety, it's pretty clear from both her misuse of the words 'born' and 'biological factors' that Dorothy Thompson, unlike Nazis, is refering environmental factors and not genetic ones. Misuse of those words are the only flaws I see in what's otherwise a good article that feels sadly still relevant today.
So the explanation for the true meaning of her article is that she somehow "misused" the words born and biological throughout her arguments? and that what fundamentally causes someone to become a Nazi is their environment?
Whether your interpretation of her arguments is correct or not, I hold that individuals who promote national-socialism (i.e. Nazism) are entirely responsible for choosing evil ideas (not helpless pawns of their childhood feeding, physical training, or as you assert "environmental factors").