Comment by rexpop
6 days ago
Sorry, but your attitude is how the fascists win.
"I'll be able to do more to support the victims," decent Germans told themselves, "if I accommodate the administration and keep my career."
Totalitarianism does not rely solely on convinced fanatics, sadists, or ideological zealots to carry out its atrocities. Rather, its most effective instrument is the "philistine"—the ordinary individual who has retreated into private life and is single-mindedly devoted to "matters of family and career".
Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Nazi SS, recognized that the best material for executing mass crimes were "first and foremost job holders and good family men"[0]. Because these individuals prioritize their private security and professional advancement, they are "ready to sacrifice anything—belief, honor, dignity—on the slightest provocation".
So it's that exact "willingness to go down with integrity intact" which stands between us and the next Holocaust.
0. Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
All the celebrated liberal democracies of the present were preceded by uglier periods of militarism, and this has been a repeating pattern.
Germany, Japan, et al recovered from their worst and it is reasonable to be hopeful that the US follows this pattern. The birth of the new republic will be both painful and expensive, as is tradition, yet it will happen.