US Authoritarianism

The Nazis actually picked apart how it was that the systematic dehumanization of blacks in the US made it possible for people to be okay psychologically with straight-up murdering them if they got out of line, where without the symbols and separations that made them a “different kind,” that would have been an abhorrent and inhuman thing for ordinary men and women to do to each other.

Think about that. If you’re old enough to have known some family members born before 1930 or so, in the American South, they probably knew some murderers in their community. Like hung out with them socially. And it was okay because it was “lynching.” There was actually a big backlash when they tried to do “anti-lynching laws.” No murdering blacks if we feel like it? Fuck that I thought this was America!

Having the instructive example to draw on, and just speedrunning their way through a version of it applied to a population that before 1930 had been just a type of German citizen living in Germany like normal (albeit with some prejudices from certain people), was what enabled them to do the holocaust. Without the American example to draw from, who’s to say if they would have been able to make it into a thing that was flavored in a way that was acceptable to ordinary Germans.