this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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I never understood how normal, kind Germans in the 1920s could be so brainwashed that they'd turn into monsters just a few years later.
Now I've lived through it and seen the same transformation within my own family. It's incredibly sad.
And scary!
"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters." - Naomi Shulman
It's very much like how people have created cults, slowly pushing the boundaries people will accept, while also claiming to be the authority of everything and accept no blame. And people crave a sense of belonging, and community. By the time people find out they are following a monster they are so far down the wrong path they feel trapped and it's the path of least resistance to just go with it. Also an example is made of anyone trying to rock the boat.
Was an episode of The Dollop (podcast) about a teacher that created a cult of his students to show them this exact scenario (how everyday Germans got behind Hitler). I'll look it up later if nobody beats me to it before then.
Edit - nevermind found it faster than I thought I would.
It's not just like how people created cults, it's the exact same recipe. They are cults. I have a friend who is obsessed with true crime podcasts about cults, like, listened to the final recordings of the Jonestown massacre where you can hear people dying from cyanide poisoning in the background obsessed, and he was recently telling me how both Trump and Hitler's speeches sound exactly like Jim Jones.
Can confirm. I'm currently listening to Transmissions From Jonestown and had this very same thought the other day. I haven't heard many Hitler speeches but the rambling cadence of Jones and Trump are eerily similar.
That was a good watch. Wasn't planning on taking nearly an hour and a half out of my day on a random video, but it was super interesting so I couldn't stop!
I also find the stories of people that have attempted to go undercover to document and eventually report out the inner works of a cult, only to be sucked in and disavow their prior life.
Your comment just reminded me of this episode of the YouTube series "A Very Special Episode".
45mins into this talk about a guy that was a private investigator that did cult information gathering. Very interesting, able to give real examples of stuff he had to do to stay undercover. It's pretty wild!
this goes for brand fanbois too-- i'm in another thread full of people frothing at the mouth because i had the gall to point out how some report the company published didn't make them particularly special within the industry. it's sad seeing grown ass adults whiteknighting for a corporation, of all things
And i still don't understand it, even if I'm seeing it happen live with my own two eyes
There really is something wrong
I never believed Republicans could be this stupid. I mean... Following George W Bush, such an obvious moron... He at least had some charisma, some decency in him...
But Trump is a pure garbage human being. From inside and out, I couldn't point to a single admirable trait of the fucker.
And that is who these morons cheer for.
Patriotism is one helluva drug. Also: the socdems and the liberals helped.
I'm not sure it's accurate to call it patriotism. It's fine to love your country.
This is nationalism, in other words "my country is better than yours", or "I'm better than you because I live in a better country than you do".
Agree to disagree.
Care to expand because this seems like a pretty extreme position?
I don't really see the difference between what you call patriotism and nationalism. It's both identity politics in favour of the powerful. If I focus on "loving" my country, I might get distracted that both I as well as my siblings from other countries get exploited by the ruling class.
I thought I explained it already. You can love one thing without it automatically meaning you must hate something else.
I get what they mean in that it's a thin line between the two, especially in the US. I was recently talking to my dad, a Bernie Sanders voter who is about as left-leaning as I've ever seen, and he was talking about how after 9/11 happened the country really banded together and there was a real outpouring of patriotism. I told him that what I remembered from the days after 9/11 was that attacks against Jews doubled overnight, attacks on Muslims more than tripled, and increased against pretty much any other kind of minority you can think of.
American patriotism and nationalism is basically a "to-may-to, to-mah-to" situation. Patriotism in the US is defined by things like 9 year old kids pledging their undying loyalty to the flag of the country with a hand over their heart every morning at school.
There's been a concerted effort to conflate the two in the US for decades, for example someone's "support the troops" bumper sticker isn't patriotism, it's manufacturing consent for a nationalistic, hawkish foreign policy.
Like I said though, there is a difference, and it's worth explaining.
I agree on all points, I just understand where that other person is coming from because when you're told that America is patriotic when it's actually just nationalism in red, white, and blue, it's hard to spot the difference.
Like, I can be proud of my state for what they've done to help people, but I wouldn't call it patriotism. I still see the government as the policies and actions of individuals with power, and that is something that should never be fully trusted lest we face the consequences that we are currently seeing as a possible near future from the actions of the party of Trump. I don't care about America; I care about her people and what those individuals have accomplished alone and together. To quote a silly sci-fi movie series, "My loyalty is to the people. To democracy!"
There may seem to be a thin line, to you, between "I like who I am" and "I hate who you are," but they are critically different. There's a "thin line" between a lot of critical distinctions. Recognizing the difference is pretty important.
And I said that I don't believe that difference exists on the national level.
One way to think about it is that it's similar to the difference between partisanship, a positive belief in the party you vote for that correlates with higher faith in democracy, and negative partisanship, a negative belief in parties that you vote against that correlates with dissatisfaction with democracy.
They're both "forms of partisanship," but they're distinct and different. The way patriotism and nationalism are being used in this thread share similar affective features.
Pride in your nation (to me at least) is so intrinsically linked to the modern nation state that I can't untangle it from nationalism. As such, it is always a tool for the powerful to override international class solidarity.
I can get if you're tied to and have positive feelings towards a culture that you identify with. But the nation tries to replace that connection to a culture by: