The question that has haunted us for decades

[lunatica]

Countless times people have questioned in disbelief how Nazi Germany and Hitler could have happened. How could the German people allow it to happen? How could such cruelty be allowed?

Well now we know how it happens. Those who have believed that there must be something wrong with the German people can stop believing that. They were no different than we are. Yes, most of us object viscerally to Trump and his supporters, but the fact is a very large minority are happy with the cruelty being done to children and their parents. They’re happy, yes happy, that there was no plan to get the immigrant families back together again. It wasn’t stupidity or incompetence on their part. It was deliberate and it was and is still being carried out. They’re even ignoring a Federal judge’s order to get the families together.

If we want to know why all we have to do is follow the money. Privatization of the encarceration of children. If we think the stories are bad now, let’s just wait because in time we going to find out the entire truth.

I’m having a very hard time understanding how Trump and his people, from his administration, to his rich cronies making money off these children, to his supporters getting orgasmic over the misery of these families can do this. I simply can’t wrap my head around it, but I have accepted that they do it and that they are my neighbors and my fellow Americans. I acknowledge them.

This is a very real fight over a very real sickness people have. We can’t let them choose the agenda or the outcome.

[uponit7771]

1. I lived in Germany and wondered how such good people supported Hitler. Only 30% supported

...him getting into power and after getting in power he killed media opposition

[lunatica]

4. We're seeing it happening here

It doesn’t mean it will happen here. I think we’re seeing how it can happen. And we still have an advantage the world has never had before. We have the internet and social media. We have cell phones with the ability to make videos. We have instant communication like never before.

Imagine if all this cruelty was happening without us knowing anything about it at all. That’s the way it was in Germany.

[uponit7771]

9. 100% agree, we're too close because of what Benedict Donald is doing. You're 100% right about

... Germans not knowing as a populous.

The Nazis kept the industrial killing away from the rest of the German population.

There was one town where the US generals literally made the people clean up the messes at the concentration camps.

You know, afterwards when Germans did find out even the sycophants couldn't defend them but there was still that 20 - 30% hold outs who would say Hitler didn't make a direct order to [fill in sick blank] or ... Hitler was surrounded by bad people or ... some other bullshit excuse.

It'll be the same way here if we find out there are dead immigrant babies and sold off girls to pervs.

[BigmanPigman]

2. I am fighting harder the more they stack the cards against us.

Their hatred fuels me to do everything I can to obliterate them and their party of greedy, sick sociopaths. We will not let them rape and pillage our country. I was born on the 3rd of July in Phila and I may as well have been born on the 4th since I am a real patriot and I am fighting the treasonous actions of the GOP to sell my country to Russia and billionaires. The party of angry, selfish, greedy misogynists will not destroy us. We are the majority, only 27% of the US are republicans. We can and will defeat them! RESISTANCE WORKS!

[lunatica]

5. We have to stick together

We have to help each other keep our spirits up and our anger righteous. We have to support each other.

I don’t know what I would do without DU. There are so many people who hardly know what’s going on, or who think there’s nothing they can do.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

6. Thanks for your work, & Happy Birthday tomorrow. nt

[BigmanPigman]

8. Thanks...my sparklers are ready and my cake

is red, white and blue (it always is).

[lunatica]

13. Happy birthday Bigman!

It’s great that you get real fireworks!

[BigmanPigman]

15. Thanks! And my dog isn't afraid of sparklers

or the real thing. My others had to be given doggie downers ahead of time.

[lunatica]

16. Patriotic pooches are hard to come by!

[AlexSFCA]

3. I'd say that germans are more organized then and now

as a society. They were not stupid, highly intelligent people who decided that some humans were subhumans and even did medical experiements on them. Didn’t Japan do that also? Our only saving grace could be is that trump and his surrounding are very chaotic and lots of people are not really intelligent but hateful. Hate alone can only get you that far.

[SHRED]

7. Americans have been treating others as subhuman since the founding

Native Americans.
African Americans.
Japanese Americans.
Women.
Etc...

[lunatica]

10. Yes. Thanks for bringing it up

It’s important to know that historically we haven’t been any different than the Nazis or Khmer Rouge in treating human beings. We have no business judging any country.

[CloudWatcher]

11. I challenged myself to find anything positive about Trump ...

I challenged myself to find anything about Trump that was positive ... and the only thing I could think of was that I am so much more sympathetic towards the German people during his rise to power. I used to wonder how they allowed it to happen. I don't have to wonder anymore.

Well, that and his picture on my fridge has been great for dieting. Though I'm told that bulimia isn't healthy, so I'm not sure that counts.

[JarOCats]

12. I have posted this on social media many times:

Many years ago, I was acquainted with a neo-Nazi before I knew what a neo-Nazi was. We had many long arguments about Nazism, and his line of argument always went like this:

1. There was no Holocaust.

2. If there was a Holocaust, six million Jews did not die in it.

3. If six million Jews did die, the German people knew nothing about it.

4. If the German people did know about it, they must have had a very good reason for letting it happen.

5. But there was no Holocaust.

(Ironically, he was five years old when he and his mother fled Nazi Germany and came to the U.S.)

[lunatica]

14. Thanks for that anecdote

Any insight into how hate groups think is good.

I guess I could understand that kind of thinking if there was even some logic to it, but there isn’t any. There’s too much proof that it did happen and the proof comes from the Nazis themselves. In their zeal to document their efficiency they filmed their own activities. Practically all the film footage we see was filmed by them. The rounding up of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, the trains being loaded up, the train going through the gates of Auschwitz and the long lines of naked men and women being forced to run to their deaths in the showers. All of it filmed by the Germans.

They also filmed the death squads sent to villages to separate the Jews out and march them out of town to shoot them all and bury them in mass graves.

Another thing that is not as well known is that the Germans also killed 5 million Gypsies alongside the Jews.

Yet hate groups claim it didn’t happen. I wonder, do they claim all those photos of white families happily posing with hanged black people are false too or are they too proud of themselves to deny them?

[JarOCats]

17. There's no logic when it comes to...

...trying desperately to convince oneself one is not a monster. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

Do you happen to know, offhand, why the Nazis filmed their own atrocities? Was it intended as some sort of twisted morale booster for other Nazis? It certainly wasn't for the rest of the world to see; for that, they made propaganda films showing happy, robust Jews working and playing in a staged Nirvana.

Re the Roma: I believe the number was closer to a quarter-million. Not that that makes things any less horrific, but the 5+ million non-Jewish deaths included Roma, Poles, homosexuals, the physically and developmentally disabled, and numerous other groups of "undesirables."

If memory serves, I believe the often-cited total of 11 million is lowballing it, considering an estimated 7 million Soviets (a couple million of whom were Jews) were slaughtered. But then, that number may overlap a bit with Soviet soldiers; I'll have to look up the numbers to be sure.

Lynchings... If the modern-day Nazis in our midst are bold enough to hang Obama in effigy at their hate rallies, I fear the real thing is not too far behind.

Interestingly, my online encounters with RWNJs has them denying such racist filth would ever be permitted at their rallies. Which brings us full-circle back to denying these things ever happened ("...but if it did happen, then...).

[lunatica]

18. I think Nazis were too organized for their own good

Their record keeping borders on obsession. Perhaps they felt it necessary to film their persecution methodology for the consumption of the top officials. These films were not meant for the public. Heinrich Himmler was tasked with centralizing the running of the concentration camps into an efficient system. Himmler gave the job to the SS General Theodore Eicke. I assume the films were to show Himmler and Hitler how the job was going, and also to show where things could be ‘improved’. The avowed elimination of the Jews went through a great deal of changes in their efforts to implement the task. Film would naturally help the process quite a bit. We need to remember that nothing like this had been tried before.

There was more than just eliminating Jews and all the other groups you correctly added. There was the using of the living prisoners for free labor until they died of starvation. No one can claim the Nazis weren’t highly effective at being efficient and forward thinking.

The evolution of these tactics shows an explosive growth over a very few years. Filming their handiwork is probably the single most important factor in this growth.

Another valuable tool some of the film was good for was the propaganda use on the people. As shorts in movie theaters showing the hated scapegoats in order to feed the hatred towards these groups. To show the inferiority of the hated groups. Keep the rabble roused.

And now that we’re experiencing the actions and behavior of sadistic sociopaths and Narcissists in our government and daily lives it’s not hard to see some parallels. ICE is just the prototype for the Gestapo it would soon become if Trump becomes President for life. There are more than enough of his supporters who would gladly volunteer.

Unfortunately Hitler’s Fascism wasn’t a one off. The more you study the history of Fascism in the 1930s the more you see the necessary ingredients are easily available for history to repeat itself.

[JarOCats]

19. All that makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately. But it makes perfect sense.

Slightly OT... Something that has boosted my spirits, if only for a few minutes, has been watching YouTube videos of drivers refusing to cooperate at immigration checkpoints. I hope those videos will not become mere relics of the last moment we could resist.

If we can just hold out long enough...!

[lunatica]

20. I've always believed that Fascism would have a following here if

someone like Trump came along, but at the same time I’ve also always been pretty convinced that the actual implementation of such a form of government would be impossible, at least across the entire country.

The reason is the sheer size of this country. The size of any Gestapo type military police would have to count in the millions and would probably be stretched too thin to be as effective as it would need to be. Germany is small and only the size of one of our middle to large sized states. I think even Hitler and his followers would not have ever been able to handle anything near the size of this country. We also have one of the most diverse citizenry in the world and the White population is no longer the largest race group anymore. In California alone the Hispanic population soon to be adults already outnumber the same age group of whites.

Fascism could manage the red states with some modifications but the worst that could happen is a civil war, and even that would have major problems that probably couldn’t be overcome.

The best that can probably happen is to have things be basically the way they are now. Which is being divided into red and blue states.

[JarOCats]

21. Or literally divided.

I normally wouldn't entertain the thought of actually splitting the country in two, but nothing is normal right now. I doubt there would be a real civil war (that's the Right's fantasy, not mine), but if there's one thing this nightmare has taught me, it's never to believe "it can't happen here."

I agree with you re the sheer size of the U.S. preventing full-blown, nationwide fascism. They'll try, but they'll fail.

I hope.

[Boomerproud]

22. Thank goodness he isn't in your orbit anymore.

Obviously he wouldn't have been able to answer the fact that Hitler and his henchmen destroyed their own country.

[JarOCats]

23. Thank goodness, indeed.

My long-ago ex had a penchant for befriending the wrong kind of societal outcasts, out of sheer pity. I'm glad for that reason alone we are exes.

I think the Nazi is still alive. I'd bet money he's a Trump supporter today -- but I have no interest in finding out.