the lesson people take from the poem is that you can't look away, you have to speak up immeidately, not just when you are affected. which isn't wrong, but... - ThreadSky

nberlat.bsky.social • 8 days ago

the lesson people take from the poem is that you can't look away, you have to speak up immeidately, not just when you are affected.

which isn't wrong, but...

Comments

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

downplays the extent that Nazis gain power because *they target groups that are widely despised.*

so the danger is not just indifference; the danger is that you may see the fascists as a chance to crush groups you don't like.

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

maybe I should write this up...sort of depressing to talk about but I feel like people don't really understand this dynamic and maybe it would help to explain it...

queerkitty.bsky.social•8 days ago

I think it’s good to write up, b/c honestly I see too many ppl even losing the most popular takeaway from that poem.
PBS took down LGBTQIA+ history from its teaching resources, erasing history—NY & LGBTQ+ history—even tho there was no mandate they do so. Just rolling over, and no real justification

queerkitty.bsky.social•7 days ago

and quite few of IG comments (that didn’t seem to be from bots or trolls) seemed to be along the lines of ‘we still need to support PBS’ or ‘they must have needed to do it’ as if we can’t or must not demand our *publicly funded media* protect its archive & access, not cower to fascism.

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

one thing I have tried to emphasize in various places is the extent to which fascism is not a binary on/off switch. we see Niemoller today as a brave opponent of the regime, and he was...except when he wasn't.

sonofmrmopps.bsky.social•8 days ago

Niemoller himself didn't see himself as a brave opponent of the NSDAP, right?
That's why he wrote a long mea culpa after the war.

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

I think he was conflicted!

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

part of the reason people are reluctant to see parallels between Trump and the Nazis is because there's this idea that the Nazis were like Sauron or something, and that anyone supporting them was a kind of soulless orc.

yesthatstevengrant.bsky.social•8 days ago

Correction: soulless orcs.

yesthatstevengrant.bsky.social•8 days ago

And in the long run that might not be the worst interpretation. All it really says is that Trump supporters don't want to see themselves as orcs...

crippledscholar.bsky.social•8 days ago

Which is a relatable sentiment because they aren’t fictional monsters

Some of them are feeling legitimately bamboozled because of cultural and information silos

twinkitude.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yep. In reality, a huge portion of the population is EXTREMELY susceptible to fascism. I think to admit that for many of these people would be to them like saying "I am an evil monster", when in reality, 95% of the time, it's really just "I am easily fooled".

adhesiveslipper.bsky.social•6 days ago

i mean, i definitely wasn’t taught anything about hitler’s politics or whatever when i was in school. every history class was about the revolutionary war and the civil war, and then maybe in june they’d turn off the lights and we’d watch “schindler’s list” for the fourth or fifth time and that’s it

chencke.bsky.social•7 days ago

Sebastian Haffner’s “Defying Hitler” sort-of memoir is great about this experience. Civil service family, in some kind of judicial clerkship in ‘33. Vaguely center-right republican sentiments, but not particularly political.

nberlat.bsky.social•8 days ago

but...the Nazis were just people. those who supported them had a range of investments, from genocidal hatred of Jews through financial incentives and kind of everything in between.

srossmktg.com•6 days ago

The issue is, we've made "Nazi" synonymous with "brownshirts in uniform" where, there's no way the median voter wants to identify with that. The ideological actuality, however... it's moreso Arendtian banality of evil. No one wants to admit this is *actual* national socialism.

cuuixsilver.bsky.social•8 days ago

True, but I think that people making that choice must invest more to defend it, especially to themselves, and eventually I think this dishonesty and deliberate silencing of their own consciences makes them into orcs. --For example, JK Rowling.

ebharchetype.bsky.social•8 days ago

Dusting off my Christopher Browning over here, now.

neekeswart.bsky.social•8 days ago

This is the reason why people can't see their inaction is wrong. They keep believing in this Hollywood picture of identifiable good and evil.

Not supporting is all the support these kind of regimes need.

gochujunghan.bsky.social•8 days ago

I think this point abt remembering that all these fascists & genociders are ppl & not monsters is so important. Humanizing ppl who do terrible things doesn’t “let them off the hook”, it reminds us all that whatever turned them toward power hoarding & violence is deeply human and thus part of us too.

vaskrag.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yes, and even Tolkien was subtler than that: his Sauron had somehow convinced tons of humans, mostly Easterlings and Southrons, to join his war. Tolkien is blurry about the how, but they were clearly not soulless.

What's clearer is that he also tried to bribe the Dwarves to his side.

stephenmagpie.bsky.social•8 days ago

the divorcing of consequences from identity is apparently unbearable

shiftercat.bsky.social•8 days ago

One of the reasons I prefer Maurice Ogden's "The Hangman" is because it underscores the complicity of the bystander. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRDq7aneXnk&pp=ygUZbWF1cmljZSBvZ2RlbiB0aGUgaGFuZ21hbg%3D%3D

michaelanes.bsky.social•8 days ago

Great thread.

I might add a these-times relevant counterpoint; helping behavior is also not a binary on/off. Many Holocaust rescuers did not do so immediately. Many took money but still helped after the money ran out (eg Leopold Socha) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Socha