What the second world war didn't teach us

[Pekka]

Well it did, but I think it's been dismissed too much, that ... well I'm again interested in watching tv, so what do you do, you watch the nazi documentaries, right? That's what you do!

So I've been watching some and what worries me the most is the way it's been played out. I mean not like... not that they were good guys, but the point doesn't come across, that it's not good versus evil in a way where humans are being evil and others the opposite. What this implies is that there is de facto good people and evil people. And that further translates into "we can never be like nazis, because they were evil."

I've even heard the argument many times in here as well, that it couldn't happen and the Germans were particularly ... well apt to that kind of setting, as in humans.

I just don't simply think it's true. I think we're all people, but certain things can cause certain outcomes, some of them quite extraordinary. So I think it is in fact dangerous to think that we can never or it will never happen again or what ever, or to blame others being like Hitler.

It has happened time and time again in the history, this was just one of the last ones and we remember it well. And it isn't even the last one, we've had nasty genocides going on to our days. Some would claim some wars are genocide that generally aren't thought as one, but I mean methodical in your face we will kill your race or side type of things. It wasn't the last one and it won't be the last one.

I think it's wrong to claim that some people are and some aren't. I don't think it's correct no matter how you look at it and it is precisely this thought that is dangerous. I think we're all capable of it as nations and larger groups. Of course some of us will always refuse under pressure to comply, some of us will resist and risk our lives to play a role that's smaller than a drop in the ocean, just to not comply.

However, I do strongly believe we're talking about humans, and it knows no nation borders or races. That is why I think it is not the best of ideas to show nazis as the ultimate evil that only they can achieve. No, I think we can all achieve it. Or that the people wanted to go on with those horrendous plans and wanted those outcomes. I don't think so. Social control, propaganda, certain random variables, a certain situation, most of us will fall for it. So I think that should be the lesson. To realize that it's not us who need to prevent this from happening in some other country, but it is humans who are easily led sometimes, and we need to stop it no matter where it happens, especially inside our own borders where we can still make it count. And that we are no better as people as any other nation or race. We aren't that much more significantly intelligent and less compliance ridden. The same techniques used to fit the time and place, most of us will conform. We like to think it isn't so, but I just don't really believe it. I believe we're all humans, and we are true uncivilized beasts many times.

[Pekka]

This is why I also think it's better to be loud and critical about things that encourages masses to conform into certain type of molds or to agree with the state. I think it's a bad idea. Every model has its own way to do this, call it patriotism, call it collectivism, whatever you want to call it, you can use it to make people conform, that is to set pressure to not be an outsider, to be normal and to support the "good" so you aren't the problem, and thus against that good and actively an enemy of the state and people.

This is how state would distance itself and use true power, to let citizens make their own handy work. This happens as a technique in MANY different forms, some of it we think is good, because the agenda is "good". We've got all kinds of citizen activity groups, all kinds of forms of control, special interest groups, I mean we can just call it democracy as well. It is nto beyond control, it is rather more difficult to see, as the authorities KNOW they don't have that much power anymore, they activate citizen groups to do their bidding, to chip in and help. It is this ethos, that allows larger pressure and basically social control. It is not a negative term by default.

So I'd look for these things rather than individuals. Our processes all allow these thigns to happen, it's just how we happen to percieve it. So yeah, I'd just look for everything that pressures to conform or set what is normal and abnormal. Those are the places of power and that's where opinions are made and pressured. It's not like I'm saying there are these guys in black suits, no no no... it's how it goes down, it doesn't mean there's a single person willingly having a plan that is being executed. This is rather unlikely. It just happens.

[Winston]

We still have the Arabs. But then nobody's teaching them.

[Pekka]

yeah but I don't think terrorists count so much. They can't deliver a true methodical genocide that is actually effective. They're just maniacs even though they can kill a lot of people as we know.

But it's a bit different IMO.

[Riesstiu IV]

tl;dr. could you summarize?

[Pekka]

if it has moustache, shoot it.

[Winston]

I meant they would like to eradicate another people. Or should I say the same people.

[Proteus_MST]

You know, that is the greates danger I see, too,
even from german lefitsts.

That everything concentrates on germans being evil and have (for generations to come) to bow their head in shame and be especially careful that this doesn´t happen in germany again, while the other world being the good guys don´t have to fear that this might happen in their states.

Well, any people who believe this can even be disproven by examples from post WW2.
Just think about the massacres done by the Serbs, the millions of people killed during the Stalin era (who in many cases was even loved by his victims as, thanks to soviet propaganda believed, that Stalin didn´t know about the Gulags and wouldn´t apporove of such things if he knew) or, even worse, think about Kambodscha and the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot.

I think the Stanford Prison experiment as well as the Milgram experiment show clearly, to which things even normal people are capable of (and events like the things that happened in Abu Ghraib prove their thesis)

Therefore I absolutely agree that the Holocaust should be an axample of the things that humans can do to humans, for everyone in the world.

[Pekka]

Proteus, yeah, those two experiments are very interesting to me and in fact I write about thme, well not about those but their underlying theories right now related to some other type of action. Basically the usage of authority and so forth.

THe thing is, it doesn't know any nationality, it's a human thing. It's quite shocking, but that's the way it goes. We go into denial about it, even when there's perfectly good and valid research about it that can be done over and over again and it's been done in few different decades and all across the world. Results? Always very similar. Always shocking.

And I don't know Germany SO much, even though I've been there and stuff but I don't k now the German psyche so much but I think there's lots of this... unnecessary self bashing these days, where it is in fact political and a power move in itself to strike down everything that has to do with patriotism or things of that nature and I mean the healthy side of it.

IT seems to me to be a violent conformism of the other side. I don't think it's good either. There's tons and tons, the majority of people, who've never done anything to support or weigh in what happened in history, but yet they're denied of the normal things everyone else has.

This is in my mind not the point that should be made. I understand it is a very touchy subject, so anything that steps outside of what is considered appropriate is being struck down hard. It's only a normal reaction, perhaps derives from some sort of shame or what ever, but I think it's important to understand, that it's not you, it's not me, but it can be all of us, just let the situation be spesific enough. So we should control the situation from not getting out of hand instead of people. You're always going to create conformism and massses, and masses can be influenced, and they can do stupid things or not intervene when stupid things happen, the point is ot not create conforming masses IMO. That's the safest bet. And it kind of follows the ideal of freedom anyway.

[Provost Harrison]

Well WW2 was a sham anyway, read this

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4101

[Riesstiu IV]

World War II was a complete lie invented by the Jews. In fact there was never any war and it was all an elaborate computer simulation in order to gain enough sympathy for the creation of a Jewish state.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
...In fact there was never any war and it was all an elaborate computer simulation in order to gain enough sympathy for the creation of a Jewish state.

Is the PC version out yet?

[Pekka]

Wouldn't it be awesome if it was true though? First off, all that destruction never happened, all those people never died, that would be good news. Plus, if that was a computer simulation? Well deserved lands. IF you can make a simulation like that, I'll give you the world

[Provost Harrison]

Perhaps that is what the Enigma machine was...a very powerful PC from the future that fell through a crack in the space-time continuum - perhaps one of Asher's cast-offs that fell through a rift in time and space caused by the sheer mass of his ego

[East Street Trader]

It is extraordinary to think that a nation which produces the world's finest composers and philosophers supported Hitler and perpetrated the holocaust.

But not too difficult, with the wealth of material nowadays available, to get some sort of handle on how it came to happen.

What you can do is ask yourself what you will do if your own government starts down the road which, eventually, led Germany to the misery of WWII and the horror of the holocaust. When the first jew or gipsy or mentally ill person is mistreated will you speak up and say that you won't stand for it?

If you are me you realise when you address that question that you would not.

And after that no single moment is going to come when you suddenly get brave enough to stand against what is happening. In fact everything will get scarier and scarier and it will be progressively harder to oppose it.

Meanwhile you will also come under the moral pressure of other people tolerating - even supporting - the things you think to be wrong. Which will influence you.

The lesson I myself take is to conclude that the people in the world to be scared of are those to whom you voluntarily give power - your own government.

And the moment to stop the sort of of slide into misery and horror comes before anything bad starts happening at all. It comes at the moment when that government wants to take more power.

I am afraid that I think the USA has started down pretty much exactly the same slippery slope that Hitler's Germany slid down. A politician - Bush - found it politically expedient to demonise an external enemy - terrorists. He was allowed to do so and has since been taking all sorts of powers which previously governments in the USA did not have. Fairly trivial powers like intercepting communications and much more frightening powers like locking people up without trial, torture, politically sanctioned assassination and, most recently, the conduct of show trials.

I do not know where the slide will take the USA. But I would be very glad if interest in the period leading up to the holocaust and to WWII became more lively.