Current Events > "You would be a Nazi if you grew up in Nazi Germany" - some redditor

(+) Yeah! (+)

It might not have been what the reddit poster had in mind but I read that as:

"Be more alert because anyone can be transformed into a nazi under the weight of enough propaganda"

It's not about trying to justify the actions of nazis. It's that people have this cartoon in their heads where they themselves would obviously have the foresight to not be the ones that are nazis and yet some of these same people fall for blatant fascist propaganda that is strikingly similar to what we saw in the rise of nazi Germany. Just be aware of it and be on guard.

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Thighon posted...

i'm glad i'm not like that but i guess i wouldn't even realize it if i was

mm, funny thing, that

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Shadow Don posted...

It's that people have this cartoon in their heads where they themselves would obviously have the foresight to not be the ones that are nazis and yet some of these same people fall for blatant fascist propaganda that is strikingly similar to what we saw in the rise of nazi Germany. Just be aware of it and be on guard.

People have been so conditioned to watch out for fascists in paramilitary uniforms, they fail to recognise the ones in business suits.

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viewmaster_pi posted...

mm, funny thing, that

Is this about me? Do I typically come off as unwilling to change my stance on things?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Well you sure aren't one now

Thighon posted...

Is this about me? Do I typically come off as unwilling to change my stance on things?

not just you

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Shadow Don posted...

"Be more alert because anyone can be transformed into a nazi under the weight of enough propaganda"

not just a Nazi

Everyone is vulnerable to manipulation and social pressures . You are always influenced by the media you consume , the education you have and the people around you

Including you person reading this message

Never forget that

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viewmaster_pi posted...

not just you

But that's what you're saying, right?

UnfairRepresent posted...

not just a Nazi

Everyone is vulnerable to manipulation and social pressures . You are always influenced by the media you consume , the education you have and the people around you

Including you person reading this message

Never forget that

It's quite frightening how many people love to think of themselves as hard-nosed, independent-thinking skeptics because they chucked all their critical faculties out the window and gulped down some half-baked nonsense from a crackpot website.

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shockthemonkey posted...

People ITT exposing themselves

I've been exposed as an unprincipled kid

well i mean look at this topic, or anything political here. no one on CE is emotionally mature enough to have a discussion in good faith about the impact of war on average families, not just regarding nazi germany or WWII, but even like Vietnam. Do you dodge the draft, go awol and get courtmarshalled, or march to your death knowing you're undertrained and underequipped and going to die in a foxhole? either way some family's losing their son. like others have said, it's not black and white, especially if you want to protect your family from the results of actual literal fascism. no one changes their stance about shit here. they just get different levels of mad and mark posts

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viewmaster_pi posted...

well i mean look at this topic, or anything political here. no one on CE is emotionally mature enough to have a discussion in good faith about the impact of war on average families, not just regarding nazi germany or WWII, but even like Vietnam. Do you dodge the draft, go awol and get courtmarshalled, or march to your death knowing you're undertrained and underequipped and going to die in a foxhole? either way some family's losing their son. like others have said, it's not black and white, especially if you want to protect your family from the results of actual literal fascism. no one changes their stance about shit here. they just get different levels of mad and mark posts

So it was just a broad statement on the boards demeanor overall? Alright cool. Cuz I've been explicitly trying to broaden my stances and open myself up to new info, so I'd be disappointed if I was coming off otherwise

Also realize there was no such thing as social media in Nazi Germany. So whatever knowledge/information you received day-to-day was controlled by the Nazis, therefore it would be very easy for you to be brainwashed into holding Nazi beliefs.

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viewmaster_pi posted...

actual literal fascism

He just couldnt resist

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FlameTurtle posted...

He just couldnt resist

Oop I missed the hell out of that line

My dad never got drafted but he always told me he planned to go to Canada if he did

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Everyone was a redhat during the Trump Administration.

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and this is the part where the cool kids club rallies up

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Most people say that advertising has no effect on them
Companies spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year on advertising

Curious

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viewmaster_pi posted...

and this is the part where the cool kids club rallies up

I've seen modlogic say that cool kids club thing as kool kids klub. Is this like a code you guys worked out to call ppl racist or something?

no, i mean cool kids club like a gradeschool clique that hasn't grown up

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viewmaster_pi posted...

no, i mean cool kids club like a gradeschool clique that hasn't grown up

oh. who's in the clique?

My grandfather fought against the Nazis in ww2 not for them.

I mean to be fair he was a racist white man of German descent but he was born in New Jersey!

People are largely shaped by their environment. This has been rigorously proven by scientific studies. For example, the vast majority of impoverished people are living in poverty because of their life circumstances and family history.

However, I dont think that can be said of Nazis. Anyone who took part in orchestrating the Holocaust is a special kind of evil.

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AdrianBeterson posted...

Also realize there was no such thing as social media in Nazi Germany. So whatever knowledge/information you received day-to-day was controlled by the Nazis, therefore it would be very easy for you to be brainwashed into holding Nazi beliefs.

I'm in two minds about this argument in defence of ordinary Germans. I'd draw a distinction between youngsters who were maybe 18 or 19 by the war's end -- who would have been seven years old at most when the Nazis took power, and who grew up in a hermetically sealed world in which the Party shaped their entire mentality and life experience -- and older, adult Germans.

Many adult Germans did have a different frame of reference, a different set of values that they'd grown up with. Their education, their upbringing, had been in Wilhemine or Weimar Germany. Many key Nazi figures had already had whole lives, careers, families, before Hitler was appointed Chancellor; they knew what it was like to live in a different world. They weren't brainwashed from birth, they weren't robots programmed by the NSDAP; they were able to make comparisons and choices for themselves. They were conscious collaborators.

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shockthemonkey and flameturtle are present, sometimes you fit in there too. i guess rebelelite. shablagoo WAS with how he'd gas on and acab this, acab that, but ever since the weird genocide denial and ccp shilling, it looks like he's out. which is fair. now he has time to clean his room.

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viewmaster_pi posted...

shockthemonkey and flameturtle are present, sometimes you fit in there too. i guess rebelelite.

nice, post pandemic drinks with this crew'll be rad. so like, what, we just patrol around the board and always side w/each other or something?

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Thighon posted...

nice, post pandemic drinks with this crew'll be rad. so like, what, we just patrol around the board and always side w/each other or something?

i mean that's been the status quo. the whole "either agree with everything we say or you're an alt right chud" thing.

never understood "chud." it's a movie. C.H.U.D.? cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller?

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viewmaster_pi posted...

i mean that's been the status quo. the whole "either agree with everything we say or you're an alt right chud" thing.

hmm, not really. shock and i have called each other out for contentious opinions/tones before

do you really think we just go around expecting everyone to agree with us all the time, and for us to always agree with each other? what kinds of opinions are we calling people alt right for having?

and chud has been an insult since at least the early 2000s, when i started browsing forums. i always assumed it was coined from the movie but i dont know the true etymology

shockthemonkey posted...

Im down to drink with that crew. Sounds like hes upset that we have friends because hes only ever gotten negative attention.

I thought that it was because I always tried to get out of doing the dishes

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Most Germans (even in the German Army back then) weren't in the Nazi Party back then. I don't remember the exact percentage that were in the party but it was less than 30%.
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Yeah pretty much the opening statement is accurate.

Well, either that or you'd be dead/tortured in prison. Nazi Germany was an awful place

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Hop103 posted...

Most Germans (even in the German Army back then) weren't in the Nazi Party back then. I don't remember the exact percentage that were in the party but it was less than 30%.

This is fucking horseshit and you know it.

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ScazarMeltex posted...

This is fucking horseshit and you know it.

It may be true for the officer corps of the German Army during WWII. An analysis of the personnel records of three divisions held to be representative of combat units on the Eastern Front -- the Grossdeutschland Division, the 12th Infantry Division, and the 18th Panzer Division -- found that among a sample of 531 officers, 112 were members of the NSDAP. That's 29.2%.

(Source: The Eastern Front 1941-1945, German Troops, and the Barbarisation of Warfare by Omer Bartov, published by Palgrave, 1985. Bartov: John P. Birkelund Professor of European History at Brown University, RI.)

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yeah, you almost 100% would be. I think anyone who believes "yeah I would fight the Nazis even though I was raised as a Nazi from birth" must have a gigantic ego. I think the only exception was if you were somehow born as a Jew in Nazi Germany.

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if anyone wants to dust off anymore alts to take a steamy dump itt, feel free to do so

I doubt I would've. Grew up in strict Catholicism, still and atheist at age 8.

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UnfairRepresent posted...

I can't read minds

Not with that attitude
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EnvoyOfTheLight posted...

I doubt I would've. Grew up in strict Catholicism, still and atheist at age 8.

to be fair, the internet now makes it a lot easier to be different than the people physically around you now. Back then you didnt really have so many other views to be exposed to.

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RebelElite791 posted...

Awfully convenient way to excuse perpetrators of atrocities.

That doesn't really follow. I don't really believe in free will either and I think every single nazi needs to be destroyed. It doesn't even need to be a matter of justice, removing malignant forces in the world is just a thing that always needs doing.

Your personal ideals about propriety shouldn't affect how you interpret the cold hard evidence of how the world works

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I'm Jewish, so I kinda doubt it.

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Thighon posted...

and chud has been an insult since at least the early 2000s, when i started browsing forums. i always assumed it was coined from the movie but i dont know the true etymology

I know there's a Tribe Called Quest song that uses it as an insult. pretty sure it's from either Low End Theory or Midnight Marauders. so early- to mid-90s at least

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ScazarMeltex posted...

And yet there were plenty of Germans who chose to defy and oppose the Nazis.

And how many of them were adults or at least old enough to think for themselves when the Nazis took power? If you were born and raised in Nazi Germany, you were mandated to a school system designed to indoctrinate you to their way of thinking.

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Crazyman93 posted...

And how many of them were adults or at least old enough to think for themselves when the Nazis took power? If you were born and raised in Nazi Germany, you were mandated to a school system designed to indoctrinate you to their way of thinking.

Again.

Jewish.

So no.

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