(cache) My Dad getting arrested at an anti-apartheid protest, 1981 : OldSchoolCool

[–]Hail_Ori 181ポイント182ポイント183ポイント 4時間前 (39子コメント)

[–]aurisor 201ポイント202ポイント203ポイント 3時間前 (32子コメント)

[–]aintgottimefopokemon 74ポイント75ポイント76ポイント 1時間前 (23子コメント)

[–]zeidrich 46ポイント47ポイント48ポイント 1時間前 (10子コメント)

I think one of the worst things we do is dehumanize people. We do it to protect ourselves.

People would prefer to think of Nazi soldiers as monsters, rather than human beings, but I think that's a dangerous road to travel. We think that because we don't like what the Nazis did, and we figure that since they were monsters, and since we're not monsters, we're not at risk of doing the same sorts of things.

But the reality is that those soldiers were just normal people, with normal families and normal lives. They ended up being soldiers in the same way that Americans became soldiers, whether to fight for their country, to provide for their family, or because they were drafted and forced to fight. Some of them wanted to do the right thing from within the ranks, some of them did.

We need to realize this because we need to realize how easy it would be for us to end up the same way. If our own government were to start a war and commit terrible atrocities, it would be our soldiers that would end up doing it. They wouldn't be given a choice, they wouldn't be given the ability to opt-out. Some would defy orders and some would try to do the right thing, but most would be in a situation where they would have to choose between death and completing their orders.

And we already do some morally dubious things, nothing to the level of Nazi Germany, but things that we would prefer that the public not know about.

The thing is, if our government did go crazy and start ethnic cleansing, the soldiers would still be the same people as they were in peace time. They'd just be stuck in an unwinnable situation.

[–]alexbhood 4ポイント5ポイント6ポイント 28分前 (1子コメント)

[–]Sickpup831 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 6分前 (0子コメント)

[–]justarndredditor 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 1時間前 (0子コメント)

[–]Louis_Farizee 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 59分前 (3子コメント)

You're right. They weren't monsters. They were human beings who did monstrous things. If they were monsters, no one could blame them. Oh, well, that's just what monsters do, we'd say. The members of the Nazi Party have no such defense available to them.

But the reality is that those soldiers were just normal people, with normal families and normal lives. They ended up being soldiers in the same way that Americans became soldiers, whether to fight for their country, to provide for their family, or because they were drafted and forced to fight. Some of them wanted to do the right thing from within the ranks, some of them did.

The Nazi Party could not have risen to power and could not have accomplished the things they did without a large group of true believers who willingly went along with their plans because they believed that their goals and methods were the right thing to do.

You're speaking as though Hitler and Goering were evil wizards who cast a mind control spell over Germany. As though there was no antisemetism in Europe before World War II, and there was no antisemetism after. Somehow, the Nazis managed to fool the Germans into committing a horrible act of bloodletting, and then when it was over, the German people awoke as though from a psychotic episode to regret what they'd done.

The thing is, if our government did go crazy and start ethnic cleansing, the soldiers would still be the same people as they were in peace time.

No government could convince their soldiers to commit an ethnic cleansing of a group the soldiers didn't already want to ethnically cleanse. If the US government decided tomorrow to every Law and Order SVU fan into concentration camps, the soldiers would refuse to do it, and there's nothing the government could do about it because they'd never find enough Dick Wolf haters to enforce their orders.

Every salesman and marketer knows you can never truly convince anyone of something they don't secretly believe anyway. Every hypnotist knows you can never get anyone to do anything they truly would never do.

[–]WhyThinkThat__ 9ポイント10ポイント11ポイント 48分前 (2子コメント)