Posted on 01/10/2021 1:15:11 PM PST by Libloather
As my listeners and readers can hopefully attest, I have been on a lifelong quest to understand human nature and human behavior. I am sad to report that I have learned more in the last few years, particularly in 2020, than in any equivalent period of time.
One of the biggest revelations concerns a question that has always plagued me: How does one explain the "good German," the term used to describe the average, presumably decent German, who did nothing to hurt Jews but also did nothing to help them and did nothing to undermine the Nazi regime? The same question could be asked about the average Frenchman during the Vichy era, the average Russian under Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and their successors, and the millions of others who did nothing to help their fellow citizens under oppressive dictatorships.
These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet German, Russian, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.
What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter).
The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.
The same holds true for the acceptance by most Americans of the rampant censorship on Twitter and all other major social media platforms. Even physicians and other scientists are deprived of freedom of speech if, for example, they offer scientific support for hydroxychloroquine along with zinc to treat COVID-19 in the early stages. Board-certified physician Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who has saved hundreds of COVID-19 patients from suffering and/or death, has been banned from Twitter for publicizing his lifesaving hydroxychloroquine and zinc protocol.
Half of America, the non-left half, is afraid to speak their minds at virtually every university, movie studio and large corporation -- indeed, at virtually every place of work. Professors who say anything that offends the left fear being ostracized if they have tenure and being fired if they do not. People are socially ostracized, publicly shamed and/or fired for differing with Black Lives Matter, as America-hating and white-hating a group as has ever existed. And few Americans speak up. On the contrary, when BLM protestors demand that diners outside of restaurants raise their fists to show their support of BLM, nearly every diner does.
So, then, who are we to condemn the average German who faced the Gestapo if he didn't salute Hitler or the average Russian who faced the NKVD (the secret police and intelligence agency that preceded the KGB) if he didn't demonstrate sufficient enthusiasm for Stalin? Americans face the left's cancel culture, but not left-wing secret police or reeducation camps. (At least not yet -- I have little doubt the left would send outspoken conservatives to reeducation camps if they could.)
I have come to understand the average German living under Nazism and the average Russian living under communism for another reason: the power of the media to brainwash.
As a student of totalitarianism since my graduate studies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University's School of International Affairs (as it was then known), I have always believed that only in a dictatorship could a society be brainwashed. I was wrong. I now understand that mass brainwashing can take place in a nominally free society. The incessant left-wing drumbeat of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and almost every other major newspaper, plus The Atlantic, The New Yorker, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, all of Hollywood and almost every school from kindergarten through graduate school, has brainwashed at least half of America every bit as effectively as the German, Soviet and Chinese communist press did (and in the latter case, still does). That thousands of schools will teach the lie that is the New York Times' "1619 Project" is one of countless examples.
Prior to the lockdowns, I flew almost every week of the year, so I was approached by people who recognized me on a regular basis. Increasingly, I noticed that people would look around to see if anyone was within earshot and then tell me in almost a whisper: "I support Trump" or, "I'm a conservative." The last time people looked around and whispered things to me was when I used to visit the Soviet Union.
In Quebec this past weekend, as one can see on a viral video, a family was fined and members arrested because six -- yes, six -- people gathered to celebrate the new year. A neighbor snitched on them, and the celebrants were duly arrested. The Quebec government lauded the snitches and asked for more public "collaboration."
Snitches are likewise lauded and encouraged in some Democrat-run states and cities in America (Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in March: "Snitches get rewards") and by left-wing governments in Australia. Plenty of Americans, Canadians and Australians are only too happy to snitch on people who refuse to lock down their lives.
All this is taking place without concentration camps, without a Gestapo, without a KGB and without Maoist reeducation camps.
That's why I no longer judge the average German as easily as I used to. Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic. I just never thought it could happen in America.
Exactly! It’s like Dennis read my mind. We always used to smugly wonder HOW or WHY the Germans could allow any of that to happen. And I get it now. They had to ignore it in order to survive themselves. Now America has astonishingly descended to the level of Nazi Germany, thanks to the “progressives.” Except it’s up to us to save our country because there’s no one else coming to rescue it.
It’s interesting to see what finally made Prager understand the plight of the “good German.” It’s only a matter of time before he comes to understand perfectly what motivated the BAD German.
Still, on a related topic, what I find alarming is how easily it is to dehumanize and demonize a minority if the media provide a constant drumbeat of hatred. This happened in 1930's Germany to a very small minority - the Jews in Germany composed less than 1% of the population - and is happening now in the U.S. in different dimensions thanks to the intersectional cult: sex-wise to "cis" males, race-wise to non-progressive whites, class-wise to the middle and working classes. Someone falling into any of these categories (and it's a lot of us - black middle-class males get no mercy, nor do white working-class females) had better keep his or her mouth shut on social media or on campus lest the cancel culture brownshirts get onto the scent.
In short, this has happened before. Dr. Gregory Stanton updated his seminal Eight Stages Of Genocide to the present Ten Stages Of Genocide in 2016 and it's looking very much like we're at Stage 7 in the eyes of the radical left (if they can still even be called that). I quote in part:
National or perpetrator group leaders...often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.”
"Cleansing" and "Terrorism" have certainly come up over the past 48 hours or so, and I'd add "racial justice", "economic justice", and "environmental justice" to the mix, the term "justice" here perverted to mean "vengeance". None of these splinters represent majority opinions at the moment but neither did the Nazis in 1930 or the Bolsheviks in 1917, both of which succeeded in seizing control of the State anyway, after which theirs were the majority opinions expressed or else. It is that last echo that is rolling through the social media now and it's scary as hell.
Yep.
Oh no. It's been going on long before that.
I've written on this forum many times, and have been trashed many times as well, for writing that the press is our biggest enemy. We have a free press, but not a fair press.
The other day Trump said, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the capital building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard".
The headline in the New York times the next day? "Trump Incites Mob". Yes, the press is our biggest enemy.
Amen, amen, amen. What a good post! I've thought for a long time that there must've been a large underlying hatred of Jews for the Holocaust to occur. I'm more than ever convinced I was right but now I see more clearly how it happened.
However, I will not walk up the ramp to a cattle car.
Hitler’s rise to power was quite similar to what we are witnessing now in USA
and his politics was remarkably similar too
be prepared
And the leaders of this cultural fascism cannot even be named without being banned online, even here.
We have arrived at the day we feared would come.
Shall we too walk up the ramps and into the cattle cars silently?
We must stay under the radar to stay alive.
Today is the calm before this weeks upcoming storm! Get ready! Pray that Trump stays the course and not bend to the pressure from our traitorous Snake RINOS!
I remember reading as a teen how Americans who liberated one of the Nazi death camps (Dachau I think) rounded up nearby Germans and forced them to view the horror of the camp they had lived near and done nothing about. This always haunted me after Roe v Wade. How many of us live with in easy distance of an abortion mill and do nothing? Are we any better than those Germans who ignored the smoke of the death camp crematoria wafting over the roofs of their houses?
no
Do you remember when we used to laugh at the mere mention of TASS?
When I was five years old back in 1958 I watched some TV Show that had the movies of the Murdered Jews in liberated Concentration Camps being buried in Mass Graves by our Military.
I remember asking my Mother how the German People could have let that happen. She just put her arm around me and said “I don’t know Honey”.
Well, the events of the last few days have finally answered my question. We have gone for speculating what the Left would do when they gain power to having it shoved down our throats.
Of course the amazing part of this is that most of the American People are still clueless that this is going on and even those that do and are DEMONcRAT Supporters could give a Rat’s ass because their side benefits from it.
For those who wondered how the Civil War could have turned Brother against and Father against Son, wonder no more.
Dennis: I was at Berkeley in the fifties when there was still a raging debate between the anti-Communists and the anti-anti=Communists. Next to my apartment was the head of the Young Communists on the campus. One night, after he had returned from a protest against the execution of the Rosenbergs, we were drinking wine. When questioned what he thought might happen to them he responded, “Who cares. The Movement needs martyrs.” That cynical response forever cemented my anti-Marxism. Since then I have seen it as a completely dangerous movement, and one that works incrementally. Unfortunately, it is now on the cusp of seizing power and “Good Americans” will learn what real suffering is all about.
Speaking of martyrs, my fear is that they will try to make one out of Biden, and blame it on Trump supporters, then it’s Katy Bar the Door.
the Jews in Germany composed less than 1% of the population
= = =
This seems low.
6 million dead Jews out of about 70 million Germans is closer to 10%. Unless I have my numbers wrong.
Or unless the Germans imported about 5 million extra Jews to exterminate.
Or maybe I am wrong some other way. What am I missing?
Ditto
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