Bram

I’ve been reading this fascinating book that won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research It looks at what nazis thought using their own sources to scrutinise their ideology I’m a third of the way through it, and there’s already so much information that helps explain how they did so much evil. For example, they believed that a ‘true’ German didn’t really need the law (which they thought of as a Jewish malady anyway) to guide their morality. They thought a true German would somehow have innate instincts about what was right and wrong and those instincts were therefore infallible. So in the end, those who fit what they thought of as a true German could have justified anything to themselves and others. And we all know how far that went. Then they also didn’t see people (even their ‘own’ people) as distinct individuals who happened to be part of a whole. The whole was everything and all. The only goal being a “pure” race who would perpetuate forever. You can see how quickly ideas like that could snowball. And how that mindset would lead to murder in the hands of the kind of people who would commit to it. Individual rights were totally eroded for the “survival” of the race…and thus individuals were dispensable to that goal. I think that without individual rights you can’t really have individual protections. Or even the concept of such. There’s a lot here, and the writing is quite dense, but it’s very informative. Even the things I already knew are better explained. And it’s often a good insight into a certain type of predator too…like reading how a shark might think about the little fishes. …Do you know what though? Nothing in here so far reminds me of the women fighting trans ideology on twitter. So it’s extra fascinating to be reading it just as we are all being called far right (again). And this time (again) by some who say they are feminists. The lessons from Nazi Germany are crucial. But those who insist on misusing those lessons to whack women on the fingers, like a Victorian teacher with a ruler, are doing nothing to learn anything. I think it’s just a power play for them. They can use these accusations to diminish and control women, to alienate them from each other, to mark them, and to silence frank discussions. This silencing of frank discussions is especially important because the kind of niche activist doing this doesn’t want you to think for yourself when they can think for you instead. They want you to sit at their feet and nod along. Not just on one issue, but on all issues that matter to them. If you are high enough up the pecking order you might get to sit beside them mouthing the words along with them. But the desire is the same; for you to be a mirror and for you to show them their reflection. Anything else seems to read as a threat to them. So you can be good, kind, interesting, funny, clever, the whole shebang, and still worthless to them if you step out of line even a little. Alienating people from discussion at every turn is not the strategy of altruists or leaders. The irresponsible high drama of calling people far right at the drop of a hat is much more about keeping control of the in group than about making the world a better place. I can’t help but think it’s a very pro far right behaviour, too, given that it will help them blend into the wider crowd. Much harder to find the real far right if you’ve put then in a ballroom with a bunch of Mumsnetters, determined women, grooming gang rape victims and ordinary people dissatisfied with the current state of the world and are insisting these people and the far right are the same & as to the endless guilt by association… they won’t believe we aren’t far right, even if we say it five times fast on Sundays & twice after pudding. Because we aren’t perfectly reflecting them anymore we can only be bad 🤷‍♀️ Meanwhile, even as they rage, women& children still need protection from the violence of men of all politics