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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so after the war, by an American Jewish journalist. It shows, in first hand accounts, the banality of evil and how easily it can prevail if people do nothing. It is an account of modern tyranny and everyday collaboration. The parallels in the feeling of what's happened in American society, particularly the silence, confusion and cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking. It should have been required reading in American schools, when there was still time to educate people against these dangers.

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i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this.

at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. they will always be taken advantage of, scammed, etc. social media and tech just made this 10x more effective.

it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose.

maybe i'm just cynical have given up. it's a really jarring thing to encounter people who refuse to even spend the min effort to attempt to question their own beliefs.

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work

I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditional anti-intellectualism; it seems to be almost an active view that it is better that people in authority do not know how to do their job.)

Fwiw, my experience from growing up in deep red America was that anti-intellectualism was staggeringly strong there. People would actually define their beliefs in opposition to those of people they perceived to be 'smart'.

The way that I always understood this was that if they had a disagreement with someone 'smarter' than them, and they operated in good faith, they would lose ~98% of the time. This doesn't feel good. It makes smart people threatening -- it breeds resentment toward them.

However, if you have a roomful of people who define their position in opposition to the 'smart' person, your beliefs are the ones that matter, regardless of what the truth is, so you get to feel like you've won the argument. Most arguments are not consequential, so this practice doesn't really cause meaningful short-term harm so there's no negative feedback.

Over the long-term, this herd mentality is how people learn to navigate the world, and you end up with a giant mess.

Thanks for sharing this. I've been slowly coming to this conclusion, though I haven't lived in a red state since I was 16.

Your description fits our current world, IMO, far better than every other narrative I've seen. Some of those narratives feel good and fit OK, but they fall apart at the edges. The idea fits with why Hilary Clinton was so hated, better than anything.

On a personal level, I've become much more wary about seeming smarter. When I help and engage I try to do it in a way that doesn't threaten. I'm quick to say when I don't know something. I offer to help "figure it out" with others rather than preach.

Another comment somewhere in these threads talks about how social media has accelerated our problems by 10 or 100x. I think that's true for this, too.

This is a very good description of the paranoid, mob-mentality anti-intellectual subculture I've seen wax and wane in America throughout my lifetime. And I grew up in the 80s surrounded by people who were rejects from this anti-intellectual culture, who were smart enough to think all kinds of unauthorized thoughts for themselves. I believed that, above all things, this rejectionist safety-seeking and fearful mob mentality was old and that it was inevitable that its smarter progeny would rebel against it.

It's really only when you look at it through the frame of the Weimar Republic, or, the 60s youth in Argentina or Chile or the 50s in Hungary or right now in Russia or China, that you see how fragile individualism is, because it is so damn easy to whip up a mob against anyone who thinks differently, as you're describing. What is so telling about this book is how the mob itself barely even thinks it's a mob. Most of the time it doesn't even think it's doing any harm or anything unpopular. That is the lesson that we need to learn as a species - not some vague idea of freedom, but that hard individualism is more valuable than easy camaraderie. There were about 50 years worth of Hollywood movies trying to reinforce this notion, but about 10 years of social media obliterated it.

I think the current thing is a little bit different, though. It has gone from "academics are bad" to "anyone who knows how to do a thing is unsuitable to do that thing", which is a far more extreme viewpoint.

I got a little carried away with this response and it's a little off-topic, but I figured it might be worth posting anyway.

I think this has to do with the nonlinear growth in the human-facing complexity of the world over the past 30 years.

Humans aren't getting more intelligent (they may not be getting dumber either, but at the very least, the hardware is the same), but the complexity of the world that we have to engage with has undergone accelerating growth for most of my lifetime. The fraction of this complexity that is exposed to 'normal' people has also grown significantly over that period of time with the 24-hour news cycle, social media, mobile internet, etc.

It's obvious that at some point in this trend any given person will start running into issues with the world that are above their complexity ceiling. If this event is rare, we shrug it off and move on with our day. If this becomes commonplace, we start to drown in that complexity and desperately cling to sources of perceived clarity, because it's fucking terrifying to be surrounded by a world that you don't understand.

The thing that the right has done really well and that the left has generally failed to do in my lifetime is to identify sources of complexity and provide appealing clarity around them. This clarity is necessarily an approximation of the truth, but we NEED simple answers that make the world less scary. People also, as a general rule, don't like to be lectured or told that they are part of the problem -- the right never foists any blame upon the people it's targeting.

In my lifetime, the left has pretty consistently fought amongst ourselves over which inaccuracies are allowable or just when we attempt to create simplifying approximations. Instead of providing a unified, simplifying vision for any given topic, the messaging gives several conflicting accounts that make it easy to see the cracks in each argument, and often serve to make the problem worse. If you're competing with another source of information that is simple, clear, and makes people feel good (or at least like they are good), you will always lose if you do not also achieve those three things.

In the vacuum created by a lack of simple, blameless, intuitive messaging from an (arguably) well-meaning left-leaning establishment, the intuitive (though generally wrong and often cruel) explanations offered by the right have found huge support and adoption by people who need someone to help them understand the world. Because both messages are approximations of the truth (and thus sources of verifiable inaccuracies) people just choose the one that makes them feel better.

tldr I think we've hit a point where:

- The world is too complex for many people to independently navigate

- People need rely on simplifying approximations of the world

- Media provides these approximations, often in bad faith

- Sources of credibility or expertise often provide these approximation in good faith, but can't agree on which approximations are the 'right' ones

- Good faith messaging often either fails to simplify or makes people feel bad/guilty

- People are sick of feeling bad or guilty

- People associate expertise with being scolded over things that don't feel fair or fully accurate to them

Thus people often reject expertise out of principle, and just believe whatever Fox News tells them because it feels better.

ALSO: People who believe the 'right' things are often pretty shitty to people who don't (it goes both ways, but the other direction doesn't matter for this post). I've been guilty of this. This just further galvanizes the association between expertise or the 'right' ideas/people and feelings of resentment/guilt/shame for these folks. They may not understand what you said, but the do understand that you were talking down to them, and they hate you for that.

You assume that people have the bare requisite knowledge to even accept a simplified explanation of complex things. For example, I said something like, "I can't believe they're shutting down USAID" to someone the other day and their response was, "what's USAID?"

This was an American. This caused me to think back to my schooling and you know what? I don't think I ever did take a class that went over all the divisions and (larger) programs of the US government. It was like you suggest, a simplified explanation (three branches and that's about it).

Clearly, that wasn't enough. Even something as simple as, "USAID provides humanitarian aid to foreign countries in order to give the US a strong influence in those places" would've been better than nothing.

Right now we have a critical US foreign influence apparatus in a non-working state and most Americans don't even know what it does and by extension, don't care.

You make some really good points in your comment. One of the most unfortunate (that I believe to be true) is:

> don't even know what it does and by extension, don't care.

Apathy is a problem in so many different social, political, and even technological systems - for instance, if people cared just a little bit more about digital privacy, the entire adtech scene probably wouldn't exist.

There is a lot in this that is phenomenally well stated. I don't disagree with most of it.

I'd point out that there was a lag between when extremely well informed people started to get the firehose of bullshit and when they became able to parse some facts from it; right about at that moment, the firehose was turned on the totally unprepared, uninformed mass of other people, and since that point it's been a power struggle over who controls this out of control hose. But that's not to say that, at some point, the incredible level of distrust among the confused and ill-informed won't turn against whoever seems to be pointing the hose at them at the moment. If simple answers are what people need, then information overload has its own logical way of overwhelming whoever is trying to control the flow of information.

I'm in a red state and I hard disagree with your generalizations. Even in red red red states Kamilla got 30%-40% of the vote. Trump got 40% in California.

I think you should re-read what they wrote. Asserting that you're part of a group of people who agree with you (aka conformism) is what they're saying is common in places that hate intellectualism and are scared of individualism. You're kind of just doing what they said you'd do.

Not just that, but your post is almost a perfect example of the attitude which most of the Germans in the book "The Germans 1933-1945" ended up regretting, if not on moral grounds, then after it led to the destruction of their country.

Gove was right. The problem is that experts no longer have to explain or justify themselves or explain the level of evidence behind their opinions.

Expertise has also been politicised. Experts are picked who give the prior decided opinions, and those who have the wrong opinion are got rid of (e.g. Professor David Nutt).

Finally Gove was speaking in the context of Brexit, and arguing that it ultimately a question of national identity. DO people identify as British or European? I agree - it is more like whether people in Northern Ireland want to be part of the UK or the Irish Republic, or maybe Scottish independence, than anything else in British politics. lots of parallels around the rest of the world.

Covid policy had multiple examples of this, and of not consulting experts on a sufficiently wide range of subjects.

A lot of evidence based policy is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U

> DO people identify as British or European?

And that framing is where the trick is hidden. People are perfectly capable of accepting and having multiple identities. They can be a mom of their kids, a receptionist of company X, a neighbour of street Y, a citizen of city Z, a member of the flower gardening society, a supporter of football club Q, citizens of the UK and Europeans too.

In fact you don't have to choose between these identities. But when you frame the question like that it make sense that people would choose what is closer to them.

They can have multiple identities, but may not want to be British and European.any more than a Scottish nationalist wants to be Scottish and British.

This is a very common conflict for many communities around the world and rarely is “just be both” a satisfactory solution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism

I’m not sure this is correct; in general many people would think of themselves as X and European, where X is the country of origin or citizenship. The EU is not a country.

For that matter, the UK, despite being a country, has some aspects of this; while Northern Ireland in particular is complicated for historical reasons, plenty of English and Scottish and Welsh people would think of themselves as English or Scottish or Welsh AND British.

America is a bit different and, for some generations, consider ourselves better than the ugly factionalism and national identitarianism that led Europe into centuries of pointless warfare. One can be an African-Mexican-Asian-Queer-Irish-Jewish-Italian-American without subjugating one's identity.

Basically that's because "American" isn't a breed, like Scots or French. It's a political choice and an identity which is (should be) open to anyone who lives here and adopts the Constitution as the set of laws they want to live by.

Ironically, this is why Yarvin and Musk and Thiel will fail in their attempts at overthrowing the US government to create "network states". The US is the original state founded on a set of ideas rather than identities. (Since, at least, the Roman Republic). That is its strength, and something difficult for Europeans to really understand.

Not to politicise this discussion, but the country is called 'The Republic of Ireland'. The phrase 'the Irish Republic' references the 1916 Easter proclamation, and has specific political and even colonial implications in Ireland. It's frequently used on BBC news, but never in Ireland where it would have a similar connotation to 'the free state' or other radical republican delegitimisations of the Irish state.

So, to confuse the issue, the country is officially called Ireland (it's in the constitution!), and that is the name normally used in Ireland and in Europe. The UK government officially referred to Ireland as the Republic of Ireland until 1998 (it now calls it Ireland) and as a result people in the UK often call it the Republic of Ireland.

People calling it the Irish Republic usually have an agenda in doing so, yeah.

ED: > Not to politicise this discussion

I mean, this is on a thread about the Nazis; I think you don't need to worry too much about further politicising it :)

Right you are. Also, if you're Rob Synnott I'm pretty sure I remember you from back in the early blogging / podcast days. Hope you're well.

What podcast is this?

Was wondering that as well; I don’t remember ever doing a podcast :D

Even more confusing, the constitution defines the name as Éire, but using this term is considered passé or rude if you're not speaking English.

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/cons/en/html

ARTICLE 4

The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland.

Sorry, I meant if you’re not speaking Irish

What agenda? I do not know enough about the history to understand the implications

How does one unambiguously refer to the country rather than the island without saying “republic”?

> What agenda? I do not know enough about the history to understand the implications

Traditionally, you mostly see weird names for Ireland in British media with an anti-Irish viewpoint (you saw a lot of this from the right-wing tabloids during Brexit, in particular). In particular ‘Eire’ and ‘the Irish Republic’ are red flags; ‘Eire’ has never been correct to use in English, and ‘the Irish Republic’ was never _really_ the name of the country at all. At best it comes across as ignorant (a bit like Americans calling the UK ‘England’) but in practice it tends to only be used by a certain type of publication.

(In particularly extreme cases you sometimes see ‘the Irish Free State’, presumably from journalists who are over a century old.)

> How does one unambiguously refer to the country rather than the island without saying “republic”?

Ah, well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? In cases where it could be ambiguous, Irish media tends to say ‘the state’, but that doesn’t really work elsewhere. In practice where disambiguation is required “the Republic of Ireland” is a reasonable neutral term.

A huge part of that is the lack of any effective communications education at all for the general population. Few realize that effective communications training is also ordered and logical thinking training. People with no communications training have disorganized emotional reasoning, unless something else formal comes along such as philosophy, mathematics or software, but then you get a technical specialist that cannot explain themselves nor their work to anyone other than a same education peer - exactly our current situation.

The anti mask, anti vax, anti chromosomal expression, anti 'tariffs are taxes' are beyond "anti-expert"

These positions are flatly anti-base-reality. If you want to frame them in terms of authority rejection, you could call them anti-first graders

> anti chromosomal expression

What's this? I've literally never heard this phrase before in my life.

> anti chromosomal expression

Genuinely couldn't figure out what this is a euphamism for.

Expertise can be of great value, but no-one is an expert on every matter and the rest. And expertise don’t make anyone free of committing errors, or to be drawn in a corruption schemes.

We can have a thorough and deep expertise on some technical domain, and yet lake the sagacity and humility to judge where it won’t put us in better position than someone else dealing with an issue on the topic in a context the other person is already deeply acquainted with, while we are completely unaware of its many specificity.

On the other hand of course someone tightly coupled with a particular situation might easily miss some bigger picture that a relevant expertise could unlock.

>there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout

Probably because the experts are telling them that if they want a future, everyone is going to have to compromise their current lifestyle. Not a popular message. People will always be sceptical and hostile towards people who say "you can't have X". People are always happy to believe people who say "Vote for me and you have as much X as you want!"

Tbh, the Matrix wasn't far off with the portrayal of Cypher. They just didn't expect half of the population to prefer the comfortable lie over the inconvenient truth.

> "you can't have X"

More like 'you can't have X anymore' or 'only rich can have X' that brings another level of resentment and emotional kneejerk reactions.

The problem is, if 'less smart' need to be baby-sitted through every single unpopular but necessary decision, this is a failure of democracy. Sure normal democracy self-corrects over time, but not when its pushed into some form of dictatorship where the only correction mechanism is death of those in power.

That's why all researchers into immortality should be all locked up permanently in prison or to be sure shot in the head right now, however terrible and drastic it sounds. The tyranny that this will bring on mankind will make any absolutely terrible period from the past look like a paradise, and have 0 doubts all dictators ever would gladly scorch whole Earth just to achieve it.

> That's why all researchers into immortality should be all locked up permanently in prison or to be sure shot in the head right now

... I mean, you could just ban that sort of research; slightly less extreme. Though, frankly, I wouldn't bother; it appears highly unlikely to get anywhere anytime soon.

> there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment.

Anti-intellectualism in the US goes back decades (if not centuries):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_Americ...

The first two US colonies were Jamestown (looking for El Dorado North; gold; riches) and Plymouth (religious society):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasyland:_How_America_Went_...

* https://www.kurtandersen.com/fantasyland

The magical thinking of those two are the seeds of US society today and all the fruits (good and bad) can probably be linked to the ideas of one of the two.

I’m a huge fan of Asimov. Years ago I bought a back issue of the Newsweek that this was originally published in, framed it, and still have it hanging in my office: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C...

> There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”.

See also book by Tom Nichols (a now-retired professor from U.S. Naval War College):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

> “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”

I think a more apt description is the misconception that democracy supposedly means everybody gets their "equal proper timeshare of being considered correct".

I see this as very different from "i'm eating ivermectin because bigpharma wants me to buy their vaccines" or whatever it is people say. There are certainly fascism experts out there, but the one thing that I've noticed again and again is that they emphasize how effective fascism is at changing forms and tactics. Today, most of the countries we refer to as authoritarian or fascist are formally liberal democracies (by which I mean republics). And critically, many of the core symptoms—militarization of police, violent suppression of protests, demonization of outgroups (muslims, immigrants), worship of the military, disenfranchisement of voting rights—long predate Trump's political rise. Hell, we were an apartheid state in living memory, and the anticommunist propaganda here truly does rival that of fascist countries (albeit mostly an aspect of the past at thus point in terms of overt propaganda). To many Americans, fascism might seem natural and might feel like home, so an expert saying "this is fascism now" is going to get a very very wide range of reactions.

And even to educated, well-meaning americans, we have a really nasty habit of sweeping our evil deeds under the rug and forgetting what we are capable of. If Trump were to move forward with mass deportations, it wouldn't be the first time, or the second time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback is one particularly nastily named example. Many "experts" on tv don't read history and are oblivious to how close to fascism we already are.

It's also worth remembering that Hitler was a huge fan of America. Liebensraum was inspired by manifest destiny. We built this country on extreme violence, arguably to a unique degree (along with other anglo colonies). That muscle doesn't just go away. We've really only been a "liberal democracy" for about sixty years now.

So yea, I don't think you can write this off as anti-intellectualism or anti-expert, this is just who we are as a people.

> this is just who we are as a people.

I do not believe that. I believe this situation is engineered, and we have some very long game playing manipulators being very successful today.

Society engineering is real, and there are many players active in that game.

Societal engineering is not mutually exclusive with either confusion over what fascism is nor the many fascist traits that have always been in this country.

But yes, I think I would probably just call the societal engineering "for-profit media". Manufacturing Consent should be read by every adult in this country.

Do not overlook the largest player in this game, who is not "for-profit", well not directly, they are pure "for-power" players. That player is religion, primarily the manipulating faiths of Christian and Muslim religion, which is at the seat and center of anti-intellectualism.

Is this still true as it used to be? I of course see what you refer to, but I also know many highly intelligent and culturally literate people who are devout muslims and christians. Furthermore a lot of anti-intellectualism today is secular: flat earthers, people who call sugar "basically poison", anti-vaxxers, etc. I think this comes from a very different place: these theories/viewpoints distract people with a feeling that they're getting a look behind the curtain on how the world "really" works. And there is a good deal of overlap (think: tiktoker talks about the "secret code" they cracked in the bible) but I think these are distinct phenomena. I think the latter phenomenon is caused by low trust in society, I think, plus a hodgepodge of stuff like crappy faux-marxism ("every problem is just rich people", which although there is a grain of truth, does certainly not literally describe reality), laundered anti-semitism ("the world is actually run by lizard people cabals who are coincidentally jewish"), and new age speculation about stuff like mass psychosis. In fact i'd argue that "new age spirituality" seems to be a nexus for all of this (and curiously still overlaps with christianity), attracting both marks and conmen in crowds.

Or to put it another way, I don't see how Q Anon theories can be tied back to religion in any direct way, even if many posts do draw from antisemitism. I'd even put the "russiagate" stuff in this category—it's true that many of the allegations seem substantial, but feels highly disingenuous when AIPAC wields such naked influence over both parties. Surely by any metric that Trump is controlled by Russia, Israel's influence outstrips it by many orders of magnitude.

Tbh, some of it is also just inability to interpret media. Particularly coverage of politics. Watching cable or reading opinion columns you'd think the parties were diametrically opposed and represent two wildly different aspects of america—when it takes about half an hour of reading a sampling of how politics works in other countries to realize how similar our parties are compared to basically every other party system on earth (excepting Britain, I guess?). Interestingly, for a country that prides itself on voting and political opinions, we're actually quite terrible at ceding the conversation to "experts" who are often even worse-informed and less educated than many of us.

Chomsky has this great bit about how Americans will call into a baseball show as an expert to criticize everything. The coaches, tbe players, etc. most of these people don't play baseball at all but feel very confident and passionate. He then points out how those same people will not have opinions about how government should work and leave criticism and demands to "pundits" even though they are much better equipped to figure out if they are being represented well than they are to judge the performance of a professional athlete. I think the internet cracked that open and now everyone has opinions. I'm curious how much anti-intellectualism just comes from democratization of public discourse and little has actually gotten worse, we're just more aware than we were before.

I believe it is more subtle, it is the effect of intolerance, in general, on the education system, which appears most often from religious perspectives. This is multiplied by a generalized impressment of obedience to adults and authority in school aged children. Children are taught that certain thoughts and lines of reasoning are sinful to the degree they face damnation, which to many imaginative young minds equates to a terror brainwashing where they become afraid to think, crippling their critical analysis before it can develop. They are rendered old children with childlike understandings of life's unanswerable questions, which they get answered by their faith. They never develop working secondary considerations, and are gullible because of it. Such people are perfectly capable of becoming research scientists, doctors, even attorneys, because we have an incredible compartmentalism capability. As you point out they are incapable in interpreting media, and why would they? It's not their specialization. They can apply critical analysis and secondary considerations within their career, because it was hammered into them in that compartmentalization, but it is not innate to them, they are not natural critical thinkers. So politics using indirect language and wolf whistling Nazi signals is just right over their heads, they will argue with you how their candidate never says racist anything.

This is the part where liberals are, caught up in their own inherent contradictions, desperately trying to understand whats happening so they reach for things they do understand, meaningless pop psychology.

I didn't really want to experience that particular part of German history repeating itself but here we are. "Wer hat uns verraten?"

> social media and tech just made this 10x more effective.

Social media took away the hesitation of crowing about stupid things. If many people are saying it, maybe I am not stupid after all. The legitimisation and amplification of dumbness is a big contributor to the current state. Among other things of course.

Social media no longer represents "many people are saying it".

The early internet could give an overview of what's being said in general on a particular topic - but today's content is often manipulated to support or attack a particular viewpoint.

You don't need to explain with malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.

In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types.

The longer I live the more I am convinced that the average person has next to 0 ability for critical thinking. They just sort of stumble between local maximas until they end up wherever they are.

> In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types.

Bollocks. Studies suggest as much as 35% of social media posts are fake, and as high as 40% on some forums. This isn't Fascism or paranoia, this is just how large tech companies make money. Like, if you don't understand how AI and scripting align with marketing and propaganda goals then you're gonna get played like a rube every time.

The problem is that "marketing works even when you understand how marketing works", and that it is very hard to maintain constant vigilance.

When there started to be money made, and even better real power to be gained by herding such crowds then its not anymore just about self-organization over time, the push becomes very proactive

Stupidity is when one fails to genuinely see things from some other perspective than their own.

It is not that hard to do, and does not prevent from taking a side eventually, but it helps one to realize that the distance to someone else taking a radially oposite approach is usualy not that large.

Unfortunately, this kind of mind gymnastic is rarely encouraged because it goes against the creation of stronger social circles I guess.

So, all that to say: don't give up. Cynicism is like a drug that feels right at the begining but that will damage a brain eventually.

>there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work.

That’s not what the pointed text is about though. It specifically mention the concern is about those that should be considered of higher education in the context, as opposed for example to a baker¹.

¹ This is the example given in text, not some condescendence of bakers from my part here.

Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo

Some people won’t change their mind even with contradicting evidence is shoved in their face.

Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.

Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative.

And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.

It's the combination of a desire for student obedience and the intellectual damaging power of religion. Far too often a young student is told their youthful and essentially unsocialized behavior is sinful, including their own thoughts, and that coupled with an Orwellian level of obedience socialization with religion and you create crippled intellects that are afraid of their own thoughts and are perfectly obedient church members and employees. They are minions in the most literal sense and the United States is filled with them, obedient and terribly dangerous.

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

This is a beautiful book.

In particular this excerpt is frustrating though. As said directly in the text, it's hard to see the beginnings. Yes, many things are changing right now, but to be fair, if you went to any random trump supporter and showed them this text they would immediately recognize it and tell you all the things the prior admins have done that matches these "sudden" decisions "made in secret" that nobody should disagree with.

It discusses tactics, which are easy to recognize in expansion of power, but also in illiberal thinking anywhere, but I don't see in this excerpt (or remember in the original book) discussion of root causes. One thing that really stuck with me though was that many of the interviewees were quite happy with what the party had done for the country, on an individual level. This was rebuilding, providing party benefits, etc. And many joined up because they had to to advance socially or in their career. Again, things that become a Rorschach blot even in hindsight because, I guess, they are always using these tactics to push their agenda over ours until it spirals out of control, regardless of who "we" / "they" are.

I read this book years ago and it had a huge impact on my thought.

I agree with your statements here, and I've been trying to figure out how to have some of these conversations with my Trump-supporter friends.

"He's planning to put migrants in Gitmo." But Gitmo has already existed through red and blue administrations. It's not like it's a brand new concentration camp.

"Look at the laundry list of executive orders." But Biden did a bunch of EOs early on too.

Both sides have done tariffs. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen killed in a drone strike under Obama.

The Patriot Act and the 100 Mile Border Zone undermined the Fourth Amendment years ago.

We've permitted corruption and insider trading for congresspeople for years.

The fact is, we've had bipartisan "fascism" creeping up on us for decades. I don't even know where to start with root causes, and everything is so damn historically muddy that it's hard to persuade someone who genuinely believes that "Trump & Elon just want less government spending" that they're not using their exceptional powers for good.

This sentiment is exactly what David Lynch explores over, and over, and over:

Why are some people willing to be so evil.

I think we tell ourselves it’s environment or inequity or education… but the older I get, the more I think there is a kind of lack of conscientiousness that most people have, and that they are decent folks is only that they have something to lose.

Unless a theory can explain the prevalence of litter, which should effectively never happen based on most criteria, than that theory of why bad things happen is insufficient.

There is a theory, and it's called sadistic child abuse. Maybe optimistically only 20% of people who had wicked and abusive parents grow up to take that sadism out on others. But they have a draw on their peers, as sociopaths, enticing them to indulge in or excuse sadistic acts. And of course they perpetuate it through violence on their own children. Once they reach a critical mass in a society, you have Russia.

If they do it but they're not quite aware of it, and think they're teaching children a lesson, then you have Germany.

And if they do it because they're saving their children's souls, you have red state America.

Of course, it's abuse, a psychotic perversion dressed up as a social norm. But the point is it's contagious.

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work.

I have absolutely no evidence to support this (but I would welcome any for or against it), but I have a loose theory that there is pretty much always a subset of people who are physiologically predisposed to be driven by a fear response more than the average person, and over time they congregate, possibly as a safety mechanism.

And with the social media of today, they also got a performant platform for wider and broader congregation, with the effects that we see.

This is pretty much the premise of Bob Altemeyer's work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer His book The Authoritarians is the one that most elaborates on it, so works that cite or respond to it would probably be exactly what you're looking for.

Thank you! This really helps to have an initial breadcrumb into the idea. I can scrutinize it further.

> it's baked into our DNA i suppose.

In the unlikely event it genuinely was then this would be solveable with subsidized genetic engineering for the masses.

I also think there's a lot to improve in education. While making everyone a rationalist is unrealistic, most of the ideas such as sampling bias and messy word meanings can be taught to almost all.

> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work.

Yet extremists always want to dismantle education to control the population. For instance, in the US, Trump got the votes from the uneducated. He has no interest in an educated country.

I don't believe in this "natural stupidity" theory, many well-educated people voted red. Fascism is not a natural state of mind, it is carefully and relentlessly cultivated over years by a giant propaganda machine, at the hands of the capital class who stands to benefit the most from the current situation.

This is no coincidence that Trump's cabinet is the most billionaire-friendly ever. Total deregulation of businesses is the point, fascism is the mean. Eventually, fascism becomes the point and even billionaires become losers. I don't think we're quite there yet, but close.

> many well-educated people voted red

I think, then, there's a difference between "well-educated" and "intelligent" or even "critical thinker". I would go on to argue that most "well-educated" people are perhaps well-educated in generalities only, other than perhaps a narrow special-interest field.

> it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose.

I think this is probably correct. It's inevitable. It's who we are - we (some percentage of?) humans simply want to hurt each other.

Nobody in the history of humanity has had it as good (by any material metric) as Americans living in 2025, yet here we go again.

I can only recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer's essay "Von der Dummheit" (On Stupidity), which he wrote while being imprisoned by Nazi Germany. It's a short read and a terribly accurate description of what's happening.

> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity".

At this point people are celebrating cruelty:

> We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated[1] from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists[2] when he mocked a child with down syndrome[3] who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse[4] suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre[5] (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake,[6] the women who said the president sexually assaulted them,[7] and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting.[8] There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents[9] shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement[10] who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump.

[…]

> This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

* https://archive.is/ex0TP

* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...

* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-...

People voted for Trump (the first time) because he promised The Others pain, but when you get /r/LeopardsAteMyFace moments:

> “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...

I think you are terribly mistaken and, if I may, you are the one who seems to refuse to be educated (I don't say this as an insult). It is very easy to say "they are brutes" instead of looking at what exactly is going on and why democrats lost the elections.

As a non-US, I see very little difference between democrats and republicans, except maybe Trump. Democrats are the typical neoliberals: free markets, global capitalism, corporate rule, worldwide patents, etc. There is the famous chart that shows that since around the 80s the productivity went up while wages stagnate. Workers in the US right now are not in a much better position than 20 years ago.

Did the democrats campaign for improvements, raising the wages, improving healthcare, education? No, it was business as usual, "please don't vote Trump so we can keep things like now". Thus, many people said "fine, I'll vote for the other, he says things will be like before, literally".

So it's the Democratic Party who has baked into its DNA that things should not change, no matter what. I would say they could've won easily with some concessions, but those concessions go against their core beliefs.

Unfortunately, and because of this, Trump, a liar and conman, won. If they wanted to win they should've lied better, like Trump did.

On one hand, you're partially right: It's a pretty sad state of affairs that our only choices in the previous election were "maybe let's not elect a fascist" and a fascist. I can totally agree with you that I would have loved an option that was "let's make life better".

On the other hand, what does it say about our society that given those two options, we picked the Fascist? It's not like the messaging from the Republicans was unclear: they ran on a platform of attacking the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants. And more than 30% of the citizens of our country said "sounds good. Count me in". Another 30-odd% decided it didn't really matter to them one way or the other. Only 30-something-percent of Americans said "wow, that's kinda fucked up. Let's not do that".

I don't think people who voted for Harris thought "yeah, let's keep healthcare pro corporate and screw the poor", they voted for other stuff. And I think people who voted for Trump didn't vote specifically against LGBTQ+ policies necessarily.

Of course, media and social media had a heavy influence, but on everybody.

People who voted for Trump voted for "let's keep everything including healthcare pro corporate and screw the poor".

The anti LGBT and especially anti trans messaging was strong and clear from the conservative side. There was no ambiguity or potential for mistake.

Trump voters were not misled, they wanted the things parent comment list.

The coworkers I felt comfortable asking why they voted for Trump came out of the gate with some variation on "no pretend girls in girls sports and locker rooms". To some of them being gay is apparently "just something pedos do". Plenty of people voted against lgbtq+ rights explicitly. But beyond that we are all stupid on the issues, and to some extent that is unavoidable. We can't all be experts in economics. So we can't vote on issues, we need to vote on character. When faced with a wolf in sheep's clothing and a wolf, pick the one still pretending. At least pretending to feel shame about corruption sends the message that it is wrong.

yeah i concede i don't know everything, but honestly if you're not from or living in the US i would also re-examine your view of things. you have a different objective view but miss a lot of the context. it's easy to intellectualize the whole situation and come up with these solutions. this kind of reasoning is what i've gone through already trying to make excuses for people and it sounds nice on paper but it doesn't hold.

i'll tell you from personal experience there exists huge swaths of people in my community that voted for trump not because of any of his policies or a feeling that dems didn't bring change, but because they worship him like a religious figure. or they demonize anything that isn't conservative and treat it like team sports. it really doesn't seem to be much more complicated than that for some people no matter what angle you try to come in with (lack of education, not tending to their needs, etc.)

Hmm, if somebody idolizes a serial liar, cheat, fraud, convicted felon, horrible personality, sleazy conman etc. who is also a billionaire who laughs at poor then problem lies deeper.

Failed upbringing, failed education, failed by society. If I substract those people who we can call unfortunate from pool, the only stuff that remains is really not anyhow pretty, in contrary.

Those people in your community that voted for him - are they happy with his steps now and firm direction he is taking? If yes, then it confirms the line above.

This idolisation can also happen for the left (not democrats, I mean real left), but I think it's the minority. Unfortunately, people choose something new and potentially bad vs the same as usual. Not because of education, but because of limited choices.

Nah, cynicism is the only rational reaction now. Lots of people died from covid and our poor government response, but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.

> Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.

I think this trivializes the outcome in a dangerous way.

From my view as an outside observer, these were all big factors:

- Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late)

- Having an impossible platform for a lot of single issue voters (mainly: people that want immigration reduced, but also firearm availability)

- Thoroughly uninspiring middle-east policy (not a personal opinion, but I think that cost a bunch of votes that would have been democrat)

Personally, I also think that some sexism was also a significant factor and that Harris would've had an easier time had she been male. I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated).

If the democrats main takeaway is that they just need to campaign for lower egg prices next election they might well lose again IMO.

> I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated).

I'm not sure what they could actually do about these; if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem. We see the same thing in the UK. You can't fight a thing that people have made up in their heads with facts.

(I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them)

> Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late)

Many of the democrats are simply too old. Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84. Feinstein died in office at 90. There's an entire missing generation, the party should be averaging 50-65. People are supporting them because there's no alternative, which is .. not durable.

> if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem

100% agree. But I think you don't even need heavy bias on media ownership to get the whole political landscape distorted; I think the whole attention/outrage-driven ad-economy systematically pushes all reporting on both sides toward the fringes, and this is inherently more helpful for the right side of the political spectrum.

> Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84

Is this tongue-in-cheek? Because IMO the whole insider-trading exemptions for congress are deeply unethical (and unlikely to get fixed). To be fair, though, it barely even registers on the scale compared to the whole "You get to design and lead a government agency after donating 250M$ to my campaign"-thing... Whole situation just feels a bit like the gilded age is making a comeback right now, just strictly worse :/

> I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them

I think this is a really big lesson and something Trump is excellent at: His non-stop BS (annex Greenland, rename the Gulf, take over Canada) keeps media busy and many of his voters from realizing that the whole platform is neither self-consistent (see H1B) nor in the voters interest.

It is a really bitter lesson though, because after seeing how "effective messaging" looks like in our current media landscape, I'm absolutely certain that I don't want more of that not even from parties that would perfectly represent my interests :(

Propaganda was a problem in this election, and many of the points you make touch on this.

For instance, if you're concerned about the price of eggs, you would not elect a president who campaigned heavily on tariffs and clearing out illegal immigrants, both policies which will tend to make things more expensive. But that was not the propaganda.

If you are concerned about Palestine, you would not elect the president whose inner circle was floating around ethnic cleansing fantasies about Gaza well before Trump made the current remarks yesterday. But that was not the propaganda.

Many issues (like immigration, firearms, and transgender topics) are difficult to talk about these days in America because propaganda (in any direction you choose) has turned them into absolutist binary views. Binary views that happen to be tied to identity. It is difficult to try to reason with identity-tied views.

Social media has only made such worse. Everyone huddles in their silos, cheers when their identity issues go one way, and rages when their identity issues go another. Contrarian viewpoints to the silo get downvoted en masse. It is pretty clear that there are nefarious sorts out there that know this and try to manipulate the crowd. And this isn't even an American only problem these days. America's just one of the places where the democratic backsliding is the most visible, due to our former position.

My main worry in fact goes beyond mere politics, and more to the anti-intellectualism, anti-expertise wave that is also part of the above. How can progress move forward when the propaganda turns vaccines into a boogeyman, when the propaganda politicizes climate change and also ties such to identity, and when (at its worst) the propaganda attacks science itself? To me, such is far stronger concerns to worry about compared to who wins the next American election.

> but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.

You guys need to stop being so disingenuous (and get some new material). EVERYTHING got a lot more expensive under the previous administration. Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant. A poor economy motivates people to vote for the other party, ESPECIALLY when the average person felt they had better economic prospects when “the other team” was in power (again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant).

(Note: I'm not an american)

> Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant

> again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant

For democracy to work, you need voters with a good enough civics education to understand how the different parts of government interact, and a trustworthy media providing factual news so voters can understand the dilemmas their politicians are facing.

If what you're saying is right, and American voters are unable or unwilling to understand how their vote and current events combine to cause certain outcomes, doesn't that mean democracy in the US cannot possibly work?

What you're describing sounds closer to a popularity contest or a sports competition than politics.

________________________

Personally, I believe a major part of this issue is caused by the political system and media landscape of the US.

In a two-party system as in the US, the legislative only represents half the population (as bipartisan efforts are rare), leading to resentment among the other half.

In a mixed-member proportional system[1], as in Germany, New Zealand and many Scandinavian countries, you end up with many more different parties in parliament (Germany currently has 8 [2]). For any law to pass, you need multiple parties to work together, which allows more voters to be represented.

Similarly, while in Germany newspapers and public broadcasters still provide high-quality news (less than 20% of the population distrust the public broadcasters and major newspapers as of June 2024 [3]), in the US the media tried to improve their ratings by replacing factual reporting and analysis with ever more emotional content.

The level of polarization in the US as it is today will lead to a new civil war, or worse, if it continues. How can a democracy continue if the majority of voters cannot even agree on basic facts?

________________________

The perfect example for this is the discussion around the re-categorization of Pluto. Which has no real-world impact on anyone, yet everyone had an immutable opinion on.

The arguments for categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet were relatively simple: We've found many other objects like Pluto. They're more similar to one another than to the other planets. Some of them are larger and heavier than Pluto. Either our solar system has 17 planets, or it has 8.

But the arguments against re-categorizing Pluto were of a very different nature. People had spent a lot of effort memorizing the planets in school, and didn't want all that effort to be wasted. People were emotionally attached to the way things had been. People preferred the emotional comfort of something that wasn't real, over the inconvenient truth.

One argument is based on logic and scientific fact, the other on emotional attachment to a middle-school understanding of the world.

The Enlightenment once replaced the emotional, religious order of the world with scientific fact and logic. This is the basis the US and modern democracies are based upon.

How did we end up in a situation where half of the political spectrum wants to tear down the very foundation of democracy and replace it with emotion, religion and tradition, medieval concepts we had long left behind?

________________________

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU

2. https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/e...

3. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-repo...

I'm having a hard time googling the book you mentioned. Is it by any chance called 'They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45'? That's the closest thing I could find.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free

Yes. "They thought they were free" is the main title. "The Germans 1933-1945" is the subtitle.

I remember I once stumbled upon pictures of the daily life of ordinary nazis.

They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.

There is even a video where hitler is shying away from his love companion.

This was a shock to me as a kid: evil doesn't look like the caricature of "the very bad guy", it emerges in every day people.

I think we failed to communicate that. It was too tempting to have a universal vilain you could use in Hollywood movies and instantly recognize. That you can't identify to. Black and white is so easy to sell.

But what it means is a huge part of our society cannot make the link between what is happening in their own life and the past. Because they have a vision of the past that looks like a kid show, not what really happened.

Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.

Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.

In the last too decades, we surely spent a lot of time playing with words until they could not be useful anymore. But it made us feel good for a moment.

You can find similar images from apartheit South Africa and apartheit southern US states before 1970. And in those cases they believe they are happy because of the protective wall of state violence against other humans.

There was always what you might call a "particle" of fascism throughout the War on Terror (maintained by both parties! because it was popular with the public!) Things like the unaccountable secret prisons in Gunatanamo or Abu Gharib, or the US sniper who amused himself by randomly murdering hundreds of civilians (eventually convicted .. then pardoned). And then in the war on Gaza everyone (bipartisan) was falling over themselves to say that it was children's own fault for being in the same school as Hamas and that the Israeli government was right to bomb them.

Back at home in BLM, everyone stood up for the right of the police to unaccountably murder citizens. Because that power would only be used against bad people, right?

> Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.

> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.

Do I understand that while the United States is undergoing a radical neonazi revolution lead by the tech industry your take away is that the people who called out the right-wing and tech industry were wrong to do so and bear responsibility for the horrific state of the world?

Well, I think so. Because many didn't understand they were fascists too.

The fascism was always in the vast majority of us, if we wanted to look at it. Just look at the structure of our workplaces, which accounts for half our waking lives. There's no free speech in them. With few exceptions, they're intensely hierarchical, people passing orders downward. Those "unlucky" enough to make it inside one of them, often sleep in the nearby alley.

The bizarreness of this form of organization isn't lost on those on top of the hierarchy. They're used to battalions of people doing what they want, and they seek out philosophers who apply this vision to other aspects of life. It wasn't hard; for example, the US had a 4 year king anyway. Usually a warmonger callous to the vast majority of his population.

One problem is "calling out." Name-calling. The current administration is showing direct action, which impresses many who find their lives increasingly intolerable. Many didn't like him, but rather rationally rolled the dice with the change candidate, even if it was probably going to end up as bad change. Like hitting the computer.

Excuse me, I forgot a 'not': Those "unlucky" enough NOT to make it inside one of them

So radical anti-capitalism caused the gambling public to spin the slot machine?

No I'm noting that to fight better we must realize what we did inefficiently and correct course so that we can mobilize more people.

Right now If I discuss the events around me, many are apathetic, because they think I'm exaggerating. Because that's what they have been used to.

And your comment is directing your anger at someone that very likely share a lot of your value system while he was trying to make a self-reflecting point. This is a waste, and it divides us.

When everything is an outrage, the outrage is worth nothing.

And while you are fighting on semantics with potential allies, for virtue signaling no less, the real threat is showing a united front, no doubt, no debate.

No, what you should takeaway is that misoverusing the term Nazi as an insult patently no longer works precisely because noone cares about being called a Nazi anymore due to its misoveruse.

In a different timeline, Trump being called a Nazi or any of the vicinity terms should have been an immediate termination of his campaign chances.

What actually happened is Trump ignored it (as he should) and the American people shrugged "OK" and went to vote for him with complete disregard.

Then Musk got called a Nazi at the inauguration, and the American people shrugged "OK" and went back to facepalming at just how much sheer waste the government has with complete disregard.

The moral you should take away is you should not invoke Godwin's Law. It's probably too late for "Nazi", "racism", "sexism", and a host of other insults the Left have thrown around to see what sticks (none have), but that doesn't mean future originally-valuable-terminology have to face the same fate.

Another moral is that insulting Americans probably doesn't actually work in general. "Deplorables", "Garbage", and others were turned around into rallying cries during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns, not unlike the original meaning behind the term "Yankee" which was originally an insult not unlike "Kraut" or "Jap" but is now one of the fondest nicknames of Americans.

If this had been true, Musk and other far right people wouldn’t have tried to defend Musk’s nazi salute. But they did.

So, Americans were insulted by being called Nazis and in true progressive fashion decided to reclaim the term and, well, embrace it?

Cool - it’s nice that you say this is an American trait. I was almost about to say that this entire setup was manufactured to pit Americans against each other, weaponising victimhood and identity, with the complicity of legacy media and big tech. And out of the three players in this game - the ‘left’/‘libs’, ‘right’/‘conservatives’ and the billionaire fascists up top pulling the strings, only the billionaires stand to win.

Trump is a neonazi, openly aligned with American white supremacist militias, attempted a violent coup in 2021, and "the American people" who shrugged "OK" are neonazis. It is the inescapable reality of our present moment, and it has been visible for a very long time.

Godwin himself openly endorsed calling Trump a Nazi.

My takeaway is exactly the opposite, that not only were people right to call out radical fascist elements and influences in our society, they (we) were wrong to be cowed.

I sincerely thank you for perfectly demonstrating my point.

The reason why terms like nazi, racist, sexist etc did not affect Trump's chances is because his voting base _does not care_ that he is those things. The right wing in America, magnitudes more than the left, does not care about the personal qualities of their chosen candidate, only about whether he advances their agenda. Why do so many nominal Christians vote for Trump despite him being a cheater, hoarder, and a person who otherwise embodies so many of the qualities the Bible cautions against? It is, again, because they will cook up any number of excuses and denials to justify their support as long as he hurts those they consider the enemy. The only way to make the application of those terms hurt Trump would have been to make the population care about them in the first place (beyond the thinnest veneer of superficial handwringing) which would have required a much stronger education system than America has.

Indeed. The allegation of "racist" has lost its power because people feel free to be openly in favor of racism again.

> Another moral is that insulting Americans probably doesn't actually work in general. "Deplorables", "Garbage", and others were turned around into rallying cries during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns...

It depends on the insult; sometimes that doesn't work. One of the purest expressions of joy I've seen in politics was Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) back in 2019 analysing [0] a group of anti-Trumpers trying to rally around being called "human scum". He had a lot of interesting things to say back then about the art and science of persuasion.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_3HGjAVv0M 1:30 to 7:30

Direct link to segment: <https://www.youtube.com/embed/1_3HGjAVv0M?start=90&end=450>

> They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.

You may wish to watch this movie on the banality of the life of those who ran the concentration camps and who lived next to them:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)

That's exactly why this book is so valuable and important. It shows the link between a happy daily life in a nice clean country (that happens to be at war) and the insane things those people ignored at the same time in order to act normal every day. Once you read it, you will look around at America in a completely different way. Because unlike ignoring something done in the past (slavery, colonization) this is not arguably not the fault of the people pretending normal through it. It's happening in realtime. The thing to look for is the mix of apathy and fear.

I’ve not watched it yet, but a recent film called the Zone Of Interest sounds like it aligns to this.

It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp.

Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.

Point to be noted is that Rudolf Hoss wasn't the leader of a random Nazi camp. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, making him one of the biggest mass-murderer of the last century.

Apologies, I’m not tuned into the details of the film as it’s on still my witch list. I didn’t want to overstate it just in case I was incorrect.

> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.

In my experience, most of the people who get accused of being Nazis do turn out to be actual Nazis. Sometimes they are stupid enough to make overt Nazi gestures (e.g. Elon Musk) which is pretty much the only way the average person will accept that someone is a Nazi. Much more frequently they turn out to agree with Nazi ideas such as ethnic cleansing, but do not do the salute, and people will say they're not really a Nazi because they didn't do the salute.

> They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.

the reason for this contradiction is that, in their view, some people are not considered human

that's how nazis see jews, how colonizers see natives, how slaveholders see black slaves, how zionists see palestinians

If you haven’t seen it, the 2023 film “The Zone of Interest” is an excellent movie that shows the banality of daily life in the Nazi regime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)

I don't know if there was intent behind it, but during and after WW2 the nazis and ww2-era Germans were depicted as textbook villains, in media, documentaries, school books, etc, but they did so in a dehumanizing fashion, as in, there were only a few named individuals (Hitler, Goebels, Göring, etc), but a generalised and unified "Them". Which made them completely unrelatable to those that weren't "them", which also opened people up for sleepwalking into facism - as long as they don't look too much like "them", and only when "they" got into power did their true colours reveal, including the caricature of Musk doing a nazi salute. I mean he didn't need to do that, and for the facist takeover it would've been better if he didn't because there's now a strong correlation between the two, but he did at the moment it was too late.

I mean it wasn't and isn't too late of course, that's defeatism, people can quickly be removed from power once people get their act together. Jan 6 proved that, and that was a fairly unorganized mob with only a handful actually prepared to arrest / kidnap or do worse to the congresspeople (thinking of the one guy with the tie wraps).

Did you read the article? The section about "alarmists" and "troublemakers" is directly relevant to your take on the use of the word "Nazi". Some people have been calling Musk a Nazi for what, a decade? They sounded like alarmists a decade ago, but now he's literally doing Nazi salutes on TV, acting like it's normal.

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In France, I remember we read several classic allegories on that theme at schools. Rhinoceros by Ionesco (even watched it in the theater as a school trip), also The Plague (Albert Camus). I didn't think much of it when I was a teenager, but I'm looking at them on the light of these recent events. Especially Rhinoceros on ideological contagion.

Yes we did, but I think that the people who needed it the most, were the ones who either didn't had to read it (the ones not in a "lycée général") or whent through because it was required but didn't tried to understand the meaning.

More broadly, as teenagers, most of us didn't had the maturity to truely grasp the meaning ; and the ones who did probably already where sensitive enough to don't fall in the same traps.

In the hundreds of people I crossed path with during my school time, I don't remember a single one who was actually enlightened by things in the program. The only ones who had kind of a shift from their original mindset did that outside of school or because of a teacher who went out of their way (and of the official program) to explain things.

Odd things can enlighten someone. I was outside a gay bar in Avignon when a guy I knew who was hardcore FN hesitated and then sat down next to me, a Jew, and had an honest conversation. I think it doesn't take too much to enlighten French people, because much of the template for plurality and tolerance is already there and built into the culture. Then again, there are always some true assholes.

I don't think I was enlightened at that time, but at least, we discussed these topics and they are part of the collective knowledge in Europe. It's probably why Musk nazi salutes resonate differently in Europe vs the US. That being said, populism is raising in Europe too.

Is "The Plague" considered an allegory of the struggle against upcoming extremism?

While reading it I saw some parallels with occupation: people trying to escape, some suffering from being separated from their loved ones, those abusing the system and enriching themselves with contraband, help being flown in irregularly, etc. But I didn't get as far as Nazism.

Do you happen to remember which elements supported that supposed theme?

I think the thing that has been most surprising to me is how utterly transparent our current situation has been. I like to say "When it comes to the end of the Republic, I thought it would have all been quite a bit sneakier."

Like the way that all of the Republicans in congress folded like a cheap suit and are now completely subservient to Trump - "Profiles in Cowardice" from top-to-bottom, with the exception of a few outliers who have now been ejected from the Republican party. My favorite current example is Bill Cassidy - what a total coward! I knew all of his "concerns" about RFK Jr. were a charade, and then even given his oath and knowledge as a doctor that he would eventually fold, and come out with some BS statement about how "After a really long conversation with RFK Jr. he assured me on some of my concerns blah blah blah..." And it happened like that to a T. Almost exactly like the Susan Collins/Brett Kavanaugh situation "I was shocked pikachu! I mean he assured me he wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade!"

I'm just surprised at how it's all playing out exactly to script, and the "scripts" from previous history aren't even that old or forgotten...

Yes, pinning our hopes on Bill Cassidy to head off catastrophe was a bit like hoping your oncologist would show up bright and early with good news...

Watching Gaza get razed has pretty much ended any sense I had that liberal society is capable of learning lessons or improving itself. I grew up a good liberal, but as an adult I realize that so much of peoples' attraction to liberalism is simply inability to resolve conflict, center values in society, or establish a shared culture. There are better ideals to structure society around, like material rights.

Fwiw i also believe we should dismantle our government as it is not, actually, very democratic and doesn't actually function well and mostly exists to serve itself and its corporate clients. The current parties are simply the last people on earth I'd trust to do it.

If you hate liberalism, wait until you find out about illiberalism.

What makes you think I hate liberalism? I was just pointing out it's not sufficient for a functional society, contrary to the tenets of our civic religion. If it was, our country wouldn't be such a dysfunctional shithole our citizens log on to China's instagram to talk about how much of a dysfunctional shithole this country is. Hilarious and hugely embarrassing.

Granted, I do abhor the part of liberalism that makes people think their voice has any inherent value and that political action begins and ends with voting. I'd like to remind readers that Hitler was voted into office, but the civil rights act was legislated out of fear of cities burning down, and it took a literal civil war to end slavery in this country (outside of prisons anyway). Most of the few labor rights we have in part because the labor movement was bombing buildings and shutting down entire cities. We live in an arguably progressive society in spite of liberalism, not because of it.

Am I naive for thinking americans are capable of making a government we can ACTUALLY not be embarrassed by? That can actually prioritize its own citizens over its GDP and bombing places that never did us wrong? Whose flag isn't seen by many groups of people as a hate symbol? With a culture not based on being proudly ignorant? Probably. But we all need hope. Liberalism certainly ain't gonna get us there by itself—at some point we need actual values to orient around aside from greed and the right to be an asshole in public.

From a German who lived through the 30s (from memory): "at the time, I couldn't determine if Hitler was a good phenomenon with some bad side-effects, or a bad phenomenon with some good side-effects".

In hindsight the answer is pretty obvious. But in 1934 Germany? A lot less so.

>cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking.

That's the least of your concerns.

What you should be opposing is the US' government participation in genocide.

The American publics' scale of tolerance of evil needs serious and earnest re-callibrating.

This can only happen with war crimes prosecutions.

sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything.

Is this admin making the government smaller?

So far they are expanding power, firing dissents and trying to reduce spending to humanitarian causes and education, to expand its hegemony, to agitate allies. They even attempt to increase means of incarceration.

But there’s no attempt to decentralize power.

> government smaller

I'd also emphasize that a dictator is smaller than a Congress, but not better, and "fewer written rules" can easily conflict with "more freedom for individuals."

Just imagine if the many state laws concerning crimes and misdemeanors were torn up in favor of "don't piss off the police." Sure, it's way shorter, but you've simply replaced the hard-fought written rules (which you have a chance to see, understand, contest, etc.) with hidden unwritten ones that change semi-randomly.

> sure, making the government smaller is basically the same as putting the government in control of everything.

Come on. A "hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy" is completely orthogonal to the size of government, before or after the takeover.

How do you clean up a corrupt organization?

It's probably best to start by not appointing a serial liar, convicted felon and conman to head it.

But if for some insane reason you do, you probably want to keep him and his cronies accountable to the law of the land. The conduct expected from someone with that history should be unimpeachable.

Instead, what we got is the conduct of someone who is unimpeachable. None of the rules apply to him or his friends, and neither do any of the checks and balances.

He's a rapist too, isn't he?

IANAL, but if you're asking for a technically-correct answer, it depends on which place's laws you're using for the statement.

If the crime can be done with hands and objects, yes.

If the crime requires an actual phallus, no. (It'd still be something else, like sexual assault.)

He literally bragged about it before he was elected the first time.

I know we live in chaotic times and all but "grab them by the pussy" without clear consent is, in fact, sexual assault, no matter how much of a celebrity you are.

And there's a long trail of credible accusations against him ranging from various forms of sexual assault to unequivocal rape:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct...

Bernie Sanders has been trying to tell you this since I can count.

Corruption is fought by cutting off external, financial influence and lobbying and by putting the voters front and center.

It is however _not_ fought by firing and going after dissents, pardoning violent extremists, stepping over the separation of power.

By making it more transparent

> How do you clean up a corrupt organization?

1) The US government isn't "corrupt." It might be inefficient, it might be bloated, but it isn't generally corrupt.

2) You definitely don't try "clean up corruption" by out-doing it in corruption and lawlessness.

Surely not by appointing other oligarch and cronies at high position of said organization.

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