[ohgr]

As my wise but now throughly dead German grandmother said:

”Do you think the nazis appeared out of thin air? No they were everywhere just waiting for someone to enable them with a label and an ideology.”

I suspect something analogous is happening here and it’s similarly not pretty. Hopefully it’ll get nipped in the bud quickly.

My fellow citizens scare me more than the government does.

[surgical_fire]

The interesting thing about this parallel, is that the "final solution" in Germany was final because it was not the original solution.

Originally they wanted to, well, deport the undesirables to some far off country, initially to Madagascar if memory serves.

Managing mass incarceration and deportation is a difficult task however, and these people (both then and now) are not exactly competent at anything beyond bravado.

Watching this unfolding from afar is interesting, because I can do so with some healthy detachment. If I lived across the pond I would be pretty desperate right now.

[afpx]

Unfortunately, if this follows history, the safest thing to do is to not do anything, blend in, and wait for external help. Afaik, only a handful of Germans who resisted survived. But, I don’t see any help for us coming anytime soon.

[giraffe_lady]

Then honor demands that we die. I think there are still other outcomes possible but if that's how it is that's how it is.

[afpx]

Yeah, there are some possibilities. For example, if a strong resistance leader emerged. But, are there any good candidates for that role? I can't think of any.

[giraffe_lady]

Things like this are stopped by movements, not individual heroes. There are almost certainly organizations in your area already working against this. No one is coming to save us. But if anyone does it is the people who were already trying to, bolstered by people like you who see it now. Get in there.

[afpx]

(Edited based on comment below)

I recognize the optimism, but realistically, without a strong and strategic leader, coordination will collapse into disorganization and infighting. Historical examples like Occupy Wall Street demonstrate that leaderless movements tend to self-sabotage and generate instability without achieving meaningful outcomes.

[ohgr]

I suspect it won’t come. The US embedded itself in everyone else’s business and is now withdrawing so we all have our own problems to deal with.

[Der_Einzige]

The safest thing to do is GTFO before the masses rush to do it. The breakdown of separation of powers in the canary in the coal mine.

[southernplaces7]

>Managing mass incarceration and deportation is a difficult task however, and these people (both then and now) are not exactly competent at anything beyond bravado.

The holocaust also required mass incarceration and deportation, except that the huge undertaking of deportation was towards death camps in occupied territories instead of some foreign land. On the first point above, I caution against thinking that it would be much easier; it wasn't really, they just decided that they wanted to kill the people they considered undesirable after all.

On the second point, it's worth noting that the efforts at expulsion partly failed because many other countries, despite knowing of the brutal repression being suffered by the jews (and others but the jews in particular) decided to stonewall most avenues of exit from Nazi domains. Deportation would have still been terrible, but at least it would have put millions of eventual victims outside the reach of gas chambers and death squads. Such as it was, a sort of tacit complicity of indifference didn't allow that to happen, by others who weren't even necessarily supporters of the Nazis.

In either case, be careful about calling evil people practicing evil ends incompetent. In so many ways they were very competent at far more than simple bravado, and underestimating the capabilities of barbaric monsters is always dangerous for future lessons.

[surgical_fire]

> be careful about calling evil people practicing evil ends incompetent.

The Nazi were a mess, plagued with infighting, and completely incapable of measuring the strength of their opponents, which eventually led to their downfall.

Incompetent evil people can still do a lot of harm until they screw up for good. This doesn't stop them being incompetent.

[southernplaces7]

>The Nazi were a mess, plagued with infighting, and completely incapable of measuring the strength of their opponents, which eventually led to their downfall.

no the Nazis weren't entirely a mess or completely incompetent.

There was lots of infighting, partly deliberately designed to be that way by Hitler's tactics for organizing his own subordinate leadership levels, but there was also a massive amount of military, industrial and logistical competence and a robust amount of cohesion and careful, powerful cooperation on fundamental aims.

Had there not been, the Nazi's never would have risen to power so effectively, formed their dictatorship so effectively or managed a colossal war against multiple enemies for so many years so effectively, and only been defeated at such a gargantuan cost in lives and resources. The Nazis underestimated the military strength of their enemies, but not nearly so badly as to not wage very effective war and pose a very, very serious threat to these enemies for several years.

I really suggest a book called "The Wages of Destruction: the making and breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze, as a nice basic primer on how wrong these ideas of supposedly incompetent Nazis are.

The above is all deviating a bit from the topic at hand but with this sidestep into a look at the Nazis, you're working from a simplistic caricature view of a more complex situation with complex evil people, and I fear that this is also all too common when many critics today view the Trump government. It's not staffed entirely by caricaturesque evil idiots. Many of its supporters are intelligent and cohesive in their guiding methodologies. (Also, no, the above isn't to compare the bad actions of Trump's government to the completely unrestrained monstrosities of the Nazis. I'm comparing defects of external analysis)

[watwut]

The end goal was world domination, as in owning whole world. So, they would eventually come to Madagascar too.

Majority of Jews killed in Hocaust were not Germans. They were from conquered countries.

So, while there was some Madagascar plans floating and while they tried to deport as many German Jews (majority of who were atheists, considered themselves Germans etc) in first stages, they were aware there is going to be showdown later on anyway.

[sitkack]

I too have noticed the same language coming out of folks here, folks that have had accounts for over 10 or 15 years. They were always here, but now they emboldened and they are doing their best to make sure that overton window stays very very open on the right.

[ohgr]

I had a friend until recently. Really nice guy. Always looking out for people. Never said a bad word. In the last couple of years he turned into a nasty piece of work jumping on every politicised story out there and treating it as gospel. He alienated everyone around him.

It turns out that some people don't have a mind of their own and are waiting for orders.

Here is no exception. Look at the foaming at the mouth praise of the second coming of Microsoft when Satya took over. And where we are now? Look at the hype as well - blockchain, crypto and AI now. Mindless people slithering all over everything.

In fact I find a lot of the people in the technology sector to either be entirely morally bankrupt or lack any kind of self or societal awareness of their speech of actions. It disgusts me. I've been on HN pretty much since day one but the accounts last perhaps 6 months before I tire of it.

I moved out of the tech-first industry about 10 years ago and into a position of tech as a tool not a reason for a business existing and there are better people here.

[kentm]

I’ve been in tech for about 2 decades now, and the general culture has always been to disregard ethics and social impact. How many times have we heard “We’re just building tools. Tools are apolitical and ethically neutral, it’s how you use them that matters!” It turns out that is actually not the case.

Plus the insistence that we can cordon off an area of life and designate it non political is incredibly common but also pretty naive (and dare I say privileged).

That is to say, we in the tech industry often encourage this sort of moral bankruptcy and like to pretend we’re above it all.

[ohgr]

I think a lot of that attitude is self-justification to proceed as they intend without moral compass. Personally I can't do that. Everything we do has a consequence.

I've got a copy of Careless People sitting in front of me I'm scared to read at the moment.

[kentm]

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

It’s definitely a factor (perhaps the dominant factor) and the easiest place to see it at play is on HN whenever the adtech industry is being criticized.

[stackskipton]

Since we are quoting, I quote FDR: "Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations--not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership in government."

True, we are not in bad shape like 1930s Germany or United States but as neoliberalism rot has really set in, people feel economically shaky, and government clearly is not responsive to them. Combined with Social Media warping people brain on what is "success" and "strong man" who will take care of things is clearly appealing. Many of them can also be turned around but it's going to take some doing.