Posted on 02/02/2022 12:14:09 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
We underestimate the cost of losing historical knowledge at our peril. When we forget what happened only a generation ago—and as I’ve written before, these events are still for some living memory rather than history—we ensure that we will not recognize the conditions that allowed these things to happen in the first place. Suddenly, young men can march with Nazi flags in American streets, even though some probably had grandfathers who took up arms against the last bearers of that flag. Anti-Semitic crimes can be written off as isolated events rather than a dangerous indication of old demons stirring.
That is why Dr. Jordan Peterson is frequently moved to tears as he begs his listeners to realize that it was so-called “good” people and “normal” people and “nice” people that allowed the Holocaust to happen—and in many cases, even facilitated it. We must all realize, Peterson says with a passion that demands attention, that it was people like us who murdered the Jews, and it is essential that we understand why that happened, and how that happened. It is why he asks that his followers read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, and William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking.
“If only it were all so simple!” Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.timesofisrael.com ...
That is Jordan Peterson’s fundamental point—that most of us wouldn’t have done anything. History—which we no longer know—proves that he is right. Not knowing history allows us to delude ourselves into thinking that we are good people who might have done great and courageous things had we been given the chance, while often avoiding any opportunity to do anything good or self-sacrificial now. To forget history is to in a very real sense forget who we are and assume that we are morally superior to our ancestors. And it means that we can blithely ignore such things as they begin to happen again, perhaps to other groups of human beings this time.
- Jonathon Van Maren
My Grandfather hated few things.
1. Woodrow Wilson.
2. Nazi’s (we are Saxon and HATE the Prussians)
3. Much lower on the list, Swedes.
But today, the Nazi flag doesn’t have the connection it did to our fathers. It is a movie prop.
Most don’t know what happened anymore than what happened with Napoleon.
Ever wonder what you would be doing during The Holocaust? You’re doing it now.
Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is also a fascinating read.
“That is Jordan Peterson’s fundamental point—that most of us wouldn’t have done anything.”
This is correct. Most people now aren’t doing anything about human trafficking, medical oppression or stolen elections. “Doo dah doo dah, what’s on Netflix tonight? Better check my Tiktok feed.”
Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
The German people didn’t allow the holocaust because they felt their whiteness made them superior we are often told, they went along with it because they were convinced by the Nazis to fear the Jews.
Its an important distinction and one we’d best consider when looking at whats happening today.
The rise and fall of the third reich, in its entirety, is now available for free on YouTube as an audiobook. But it’s in about seven parts each one is many hours long. Good background music for your commute or while working in the shop. :-)
Fear the Jews? You spelled hate wrong. No one fears Jews.
I was just kicked out of guitar center in Algonquin for not wearing a mask. It’s important that we fight it at every opportunity. No matter how petty we may seem
The worse part is we have people today looking up to the Communists under Stalin and Mao and believe they were largely good guys whom we ought to emulate.
Think of Obama’s former press secretary. They should be shamed out of public society like the Nazis.
Germans were told Jews were behind the Bolsheviks. They were responsible for the ‘stab in the back’ that ended in Germany’s surrender in WWI. Fear, hate, call it what you like.
The point is the ‘white supremacy’ charge is the left’s convenient over simplification.
“Suddenly, young men can march with Nazi flags in American streets, even though some probably had grandfathers who took up arms against the last bearers of that flag.”
Otherwise a reasonable article, but what does this sentence mean? Does the author mean “young men could be marching...”?
Has anybody seen anyone walking around with a Nazi flag?
Yep. The go along to get along crowd.
Disarming the citizens of firearms is the sure way to make sure it happens again.
I’d rather see a few idiots marching around with a Nazi flag than a govt that makes it impossible to march around like idiots with a Nazi flag. That’s as long as they otherwise obey the law.
In America you can march around with an Antifa flag and burn down businesses and one particular political party will cheer you and the other will turn its head and do nothing. Most people don’t see how perilous this is.
It wasn't difficult. Jews were prominent in socialist/communist activities. Everyday Germans were hearing about the Holodomar in Ukraine. Hungary in 1919 experienced a brief Communist dictatorship under Bela Kun (ethnically Jewish, but non-practicing). The German communist Spartacist revolution narrowly missed seizing power. They had communist Antifa groups rioting in the streets.
It wasn't hard to scare the German middle class into thinking they were under mortal threat, and that the communists were disproportionately Jewish.
No. People don't do that. But leftists want us to think there are meelyuns and meelyuns of white supremacist Nazi sympathizers in the U.S. that only the leftists can protect us from. They've got to be out there ... somewhere.
All while it distracts us from the fact that the leftists in the U.S. are the ones building a modern day National Socialist American Workers Party (replace American with German and you have the formal name of the Nazi party).
True. I like to think I would have done something but probably not. The Milgram experiment of 1963 shows we can actually do bad things under the guise of authority. Again I like to think I’d draw a line and resist at some point but there’s not much evidence in my life for such behaviour. Occasionally however some of us surprisingly do resist regardless of the cost. That’s the glimmer of hope.
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