• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    19 小时前

    Germany had a reckoning after the war and plenty of people were able to admit that yes, in fact, they were Nazis and that was wrong of them. And then they tried to make things better.

    Because they realized that maybe all they did was support the Nazis by wearing an armband, but that still made them a Nazi and that made them complicit.

    Plenty more were never able to admit it but also were never willing to talk about what they did during the war out of shame and embarrassment. Because they also knew they were complicit.

    All of these people who voted for Trump did not just sit down at a table with a Nazi. They went out of their way to go to a voting booth or sit down and fill out and mail a form to choose a man who made absolutely no secret about his Nazi ideals. The roots are very, very deep.

    • stickly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      18 小时前

      Right but this isn’t the conclusion of a world war yet. I don’t doubt that the problem gets worse after people are forced to participate or be complicit while atrocities are committed.

      There’s a series of miniscule steps from being ok with a hateful statement to being ok with dangerous people being rounded up to being ok with dangerous political opponents being rounded up to being ok with gas chambers.

      Assuming that everyone who ignores the first step is a full fledged Nazi isn’t putting faith in people to change or even resist. Plenty of people stepped out of line in Germany and paid the price.

      The real lesson after WW2 is that the Nuremberg Trials were far too lax and narrow in scope. Germany’s populace (while on the cusp of swinging far right) went through the most thorough denazification. It’s still putting up much better resistance than the United States (which had basically no punishment for nazi sympathizers) or Italy (handwaved due to surrender).

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        11 小时前

        What is the effective difference between a “full fledged Nazi” and someone who ignores all of their promises and votes for them anyway?