Who Goes Nazi? (1941)
harpers.org
harpers.org
I enjoy it more every time I read it
I totally get the appeal of nazism or any other movement where you can become part of the Cool Kids group that bullies instead of being bullying
To feel so victimized and disempowered for so long, and then have someone come along and tell you that 'the evil people' stole it all from you and you have to fight to get it back, with physical violence if necessary
It must be an intoxicating and freeing and empowering feeling -- maybe like religious belief -- tho that's just a guess
The out groups change a bit, but like that story says -- it doesn't really matter -- that's just details to the believers
America used to be hella anti-semitic back in the day -- though maybe people and business execs were just more open about it back then?
Chomsky talks about it -- nazi house parties/street rallies in Philly in the 1930s
And the US supported the creation of Israel in part or primarily to not have to accept as many Jewish refugees
There was a nazi rally, promoted as a "pro america" event, at MSG in 1939 -- more than 20,000 people attended.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323...
I doubt that any serious political scientists or historians think that democracy is safe in America right now.
Democracy is never safe, the people can always vote in a tyrant if given an enemy and a scapegoat.
In the US, it's assumed that liberty is unassailable due to the vigilance of America's armed militias and populace, yet we've seen they'll happily support an authoritarian who targets leftists and immigrants and leaves their guns alone.
And as far as anti-semitism goes, it's still alive and well, just not as overt. People talk about "the globalist elites" and "New York liberals" and "cultural Marxists" without realizing how much modern "Conservative" dialogue is just repurposing the dog-whistle terms of anti-Semites. Nazi ideals have been rebranded as scientific racism and fascism as dark enlightenment philosophy. You can literally take the scare narrative around BLM, cancel culture and "the left" and just search and replace "the left" with "the Jews" and most of it wouldn't be at all out of place in the 1940s. People still think /pol/ is just harmless edgelord kids LARPing, and they still argue the Capitol insurrection was just nothing but minor vandalism and memes.
Unlike in the 1940s, the modern framework of hatred is constructed to allow plausible deniability, because we live in a post-Nazim world, so extremism has to rebrand and adapt to survive. The people waving Nazi flags and doing Hitler salutes at rallies are clowns - hateful, dangerous clowns, but clowns nonetheless - wedded to an obsolete model of fascism that flourishes online but is too easily taken down in public. But when tyranny comes to the US, it will come draped in an American flag and carrying a Bible. It will be presentable, calm, rational. No tyrant will need to rant openly about the Jews or other undesirables, because we've all been trained to connect the dots and read between the lines, and we can all pretend we didn't know even when the bodies start to stink.
"While working in Munich, Thompson met and interviewed Adolf Hitler for the first time in 1931. This would be the basis for her subsequent book, I Saw Hitler, in which she wrote about the dangers of him winning power in Germany. Thompson described Hitler in the following terms: "He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the little man." ...The Nazis considered both the book and her articles offensive and, in August 1934, Thompson was expelled from Germany."
Time Magazine made Hitler man of the year in 1938 and Stalin in 1939.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year#1930s
> Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion (to go Nazi). It is something in them.
Grandparent comment:
> Author tries to highlight that there are certain types of people that would get attracted.
If you disagree with that, what do you suggest as an alternative explanation?
Any thoughts? Or should we say that it's just random who signs up?
Be careful with such statements.
Describing something/someone as "fundamentally" evil obscures the fact that things (like extremist politics) happen for reasons. It is these reasons that if addressed, can put a stop to such unpleasantness occurring.
The individual reasons for a specific person to ascribe to such an ideology are complex and worthy of study, and if the quoted statement had been 'any individual member of a fascist ideology is fundamentally evil', then sure - let's pull in the nuance.
But that's not the case here - we aren't talking about individuals, or general social movements, or something else that requires such consideration. We're talking about a very specific ideology.
Nazism - the ideology itself - is not a redeemable thing; it's an ideology inextricably tied to a laundry list of horrific acts.
It's absolutely fine to declare it evil.
No disagreement there but I don't think it's good or insightful to assert that the people you find to be personally distasteful are the same people who are likely to associate themselves with evil. Quite the opposite actually!