Today I Learned
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
view the rest of the comments
I've been reading about the Holocaust a fair bit of late, and it's interesting to see the debate around the functionalist/intentionalist view of how it happened. OP's story seems to lend credence to the former version, in that the Nazi state was a patchwork of warring factions that were each trying to take power for themselves and in an effort to do so, tried a little too hard to do what they imagined Hitler wanted of them, namely more and more murder and ruthlessness and general mayhem, eventually culminating in plans for wholesale extermination. This is the functionalist view, where things happened almost in a bottom-up fashion, whereas the intentionalist idea is one where Hitler planned the Holocaust from day one in a top-down approach. I personally think it's more likely to be the former though, at least from what I've read about it anyway.
Growing up in the '80s and '90s, I never really learned much about the Holocaust aspect of WWII. I knew the broad strokes, of course, but the finer details of the Nazi state's operations are where the true horror lies. Even without WWII or the Holocaust, it was one of the purest examples of a nightmarish dystopia run by corrupt, amoral, incompetent, petty, narcissistic lunatics and sociopaths. The parallels with certain modern governments is terrifying...
What? It is by far the most propagandised piece of WW2.
This horrible event (let's make that clear) was hijacked by zionists solely for the purpose of hiding behind it when they commit horrible acts.
I too grew up in the 80's and '90s.
Everyone in school had to go to the cinema to watch Shindler's List.
And on another occasion we had to endure a 2 hour propaganda speech by israeli Ken and Barbie they sent over to tell us how cool and democratic their apartheid state was for some reason.
Later when I had to fill in 2 extra hours/week of history, the subjects were 1 Easter Island, 2 Israel.
They sure have their hand in many things, including influencing curriculums in other countries.
I suspect it's even worse in the US.
Nah, the Israeli government would rather rehabilitate the Nazis and forget the holocaust so they can replace them with the Palestinian as the biggest enemy of Jews.
They have always had good relations with nazis.
Zionism and fascism are very similar.
Very few people understand what fascism is in the concrete day to day sense. Fascist politics are very normalized in the modern world.
The sad fact is that fascism is an ideology that doesnt need a landslide victory. All they have to do is be given true legislative power one time. Its the inherent flaw of democracy. Neoliberals allowed the ladder to be raised step by step for decades. All it took was one moment, one instant for democracy to die in Weimar Germany. All Hitler needed was true legislative power for one single day. Some 20-30 million people paid the price for that.
If you look at the actual election that got Hitler elected prior to his absolute rule, it was actually pretty close. He did not win by a landslide. The nazi party actually barely held on to power. Only 33% of the country voted for them in November of 1932. A third. It didnt matter though, thats all it takes. 37% collectively voted for the social democrats and the communists. Some people run afoul of claiming that Germany was in full support of the Nazis. It just isnt true. But it didn't matter. The following year they had armed SA at all the polling stations and were able to cement absolute authority over the whole country.
I was watching the PBS American Experience episode on Nazi City, USA.
Hearing literally the same words that came out of the American Nazi party in 1930s that have been spewed by Republicans in the last 10 years was frankly TERRIFYING.
One of the gravest mistake we can make is to believe it can't happen here / it can't happen again.
The gravest mistake is not violently putting it down the second it sprung up.
... isn't the functionalist (?) version more what the west/victors wrote about WWII? Not even as propaganda per se, just bcs it can be summed up in one line & afterwards easier to append propaganda for various purposes.
Clearly if Hitler planned everything that happened he would have needed to hold power for a lot longer to solidify his sole influence or have overwhelming public support (and then do all the rest).
It was a difference between Western powers versus the Soviet Union. Western powers tried to make sure that Germans understood their complicity to genocide even if they didn't operate concentration camps. In contrast, the Soviet Union generally portrayed the problem being Hitler leading the people astray.
That's USA vs USSR in both Germanies, right?
Yes
What is wild is that MOST people had no idea about the Holocaust as it was happening. That when we learn of WWII and all that was around it and you hear about the camps you think "no shit we went to help with that." But then find out that wasn't really a motivation for the masses is crazy.
Governments knew, for sure the Brits.
There was a letter explaining everything.
I suspect they allowed since it served their purpose of creating israel which they were heavily involved in.
Same as the zionists who made deals with the nazis who could be taken to the camps: those that didn't want to move to israel later.
Zionists were literally engaging in terrorism against the British, some even trying to side with the Nazis (Likud predecessors) to fight Britain.
Originally Britain was going to give the land to Palestinians.
What are you talking about? Brits may have known but they were losing until the US came to help. They had no power to stop anything at the time. And governments aren't a populace. My original statement was that the masses were not motivated by their existence. The media was newspapers and they may have small articles here and there. But it was not common knowledge that these camps even existed.
You can't even read a statement and understand what was said. You must run stop signs and blame other cars for not paying attention.
bye, not wasting time on you
BTW If you're american it isn't yours either.
Since americans generally possess the vocabulary of an infant
I mean you would know right? Since you like reading one word and acting outraged. Maybe pick up a book that doesn't have coloring and take a class from someone that isn't a relative.
I don't need to value an evaluation from someone who I can't actually trust to understand a doorbell without instructions.
I was in school in the 90s (in the US) and we read Night by Elie Wiesel, The Diary of Anne Frank, I remember seeing pictures of the bodies and watching a movie that showed people killed in the gas chambers and mass graves too. And we were taught in depth about the Holocaust and WWII, too. It was a pretty massive subject in history classes. What country did you go to school in?
Interesting debate, and certainly has some truth to it. Because individuals seek personal gain, they fulfill someone else's ideology they don't really care about but it helps them to get promoted or get rich. But Hitler definitely planned the holocaust as a "final solution to the Jewish question" in Mein Kampf.
In that sense Trump is very different from Hitler - he doesn't really believe in anything but being the strong man. He has no ideology. He's not really a racist. But he adopts ideology that enchants and beguile the masses, so it works similar to the functionalist view.
I believe that MAGA functionaries actually look for things that would shock and pain liberals, and then make that real, simply because it would be "fun" for the MAGA crowd and enrage the libs, and keep them constantly in a confused and shocked state. Just to keep it all going.
No, he is. Yeah, he'll pick up and abandon most positions at the drop of a hat, but racism has been one thing that he's been consistent with, going back at least to the Central Park Five.
I think he has some "baseline European racism" but I honestly don't think he's a foaming at the mouth with murderous intent, says the n-word with the hard r several times a day kind of racist. He's just an extremely flawed sociopath on top of that. Openly saying racist shit is just like openly saying things like "God bless America" after a bomb-run on yet another sovereign nation: the dummies respond positively to it, and words are cheap, so why not do it? The only difference is that he's definitely somewhat racist, but does not care about God or religion even the tiniest bit, lol.
You dont think Trump is racist?????
White people invented the power plant, the car, and the plane. It requires an explanation.
One explanation is that culture and science advanced to the point where that is possible, by `standing on the shoulders of giants´ ~ Isaac Newton
Royalty like Trump prefer an explanation that their blood and genes, rather than their privilege and opportunities, are greater than others. Since they wont admit that men are created equal, they cling to belief in hierarchy.
I think I understand what they mean. Trump is not a racist ideologue. He's not a "capital R" Racist, the way Hitler was. He's racist and his racism influences everything he does of course. But that's "lowercase r" racist. It's not what defines him, it's just one of his characteristics, maybe not even his most defining one.
Well I do think he is "casually" racist but not serious. Like it's not a guiding ideology. If it's between making a scene or shaking the hand of a colored person's hand he has no problem with that. He doesn't really give a shit. He's a malignant narcissist, which means he is driven by the psychological need to be "the best and most amazing person". Justifying that just because of his whiteness would probably almost be an insult to his unique greatness.
I also think his mind is in a kind of fugue state where he's not fully conscious, like sleepwalking. He's more like an LLM that is constantly throwing things out "to win" and his mind is optimized to do that very well. If you'd institutionalize him, put him on medication to calm him down and then slowly and calmly begin talk therapy you'd probably find he's just a standard narcissist without any special ideology. Possibly Hitler was similarily "out there" in that regard, but they actually and truly believed in their ideology. They also believed in their nation and making it great, which Trump doesn't give a shit about either.
You can define fascism (including racism or sexism) as a "sincere belief in inequality based on identity". He certainly believes in that, just only for himself. In comparison, neoliberals also have a sincere belief in inequality, just based on class / wealth.
Even if you propose that he's using racism as a tool, that still makes him racist.
Sure, but that's not really the point. And I do think it's an important point to understand how trumpism and neofascism works.
I think it starts with the person up top seeing more and more what they are able to get sway with and how little accountability there is and things just snowball from there. At any point, the dictator up top could stop things, but instead their true evil nature gets revealed.