Well, given the obvious confusion, why don't you clearly state them again and enlighten us?
Somehow I feel that other people picking and choosing from my words, misrepresenting my claims, lying about me, and so forth, isn't on me. I must be crazy too.
I find nine time out of ten that isn't the case and there is simply confusion. People tend to jump to conclusions rather quickly on the internet in general. So again, I ask you to please help remove the confusion by restating the points you are trying to put forth. Because I have read this whole thread and I find what you are saying to be very poorly stated. I'm not trying to be hard on you, I just can't wrap my head around what you are trying to say regarding the banality of evil.
I'm not sure it is a collective delusion so much as a normalization process. People can normalize pretty much any terrible situation or in any terrible environment.
I find nine time out of ten that isn't the case and there is simply confusion. People tend to jump to conclusions rather quickly on the internet in general. So again, I ask you to please help remove the confusion by restating the points you are trying to put forth. Because I have read this whole thread and I find what you are saying to be very poorly stated. I'm not trying to be hard on you, I just can't wrap my head around what you are trying to say regarding the banality of evil.
The original argument was concocted to explain how Germany could do what it did during WWII, but I don't buy people becoming indoctrinated to the point where, like a bird-beak record player from the Flintstones, "It's a living," in less than a generation. You can't take people from the excesses of Berlin in the 1920s to straight-laced conservative slaughter without there being some massive change in mentality.
I think the argument should really pertain more to an idea of "diminishing returns of evil." Like the fifth cheesecake slice you eat not being as satisfying as the first, I think a stronger argument can be made that when you take a frothing-at-the-mouth Nazi and get him to turn on his neighbors and start executing them in mass, no matter how filled with hate he is, that level won't be the same when he's killing victim 1000 as it was did during victim 1.
I don't buy people becoming indoctrinated to the point where, like a bird-beak record player from the Flintstones, "It's a living," in less than a generation.
You can't take people from the excesses of Berlin in the 1920s to straight-laced conservative slaughter without there being some massive change in mentality.
For what reason do you take this kind of indoctrination to be impossible?
You do not think it is possible.
For what reason do you think that?
Or, if you like, why do you have that opinion?
Presumably your opinions are based upon reasons, rather than simply ad hoc intuitions.
Because as you stated many times, the concept of banality of evil basically means that these people didn't look at killing their former neighbors any differently than a guy would look at welding car doors in Detroit, correct?
In less than a generation I can't see that being a possibility without there being a serious shift in mindset from "These people are my neighbors" to "These people must die."
Hmm. A normalization process, eh? Could that... could that eventually cause things to be simultaneously atrocious and boring? Horrific and mundane? Awful and inane?
Somehow this does not seem to contradict the notion of something being evil and banal. Not sure why, exactly. Just a gut feeling.
Because as you stated many times, the concept of banality of evil basically means that these people didn't look at killing their former neighbors any differently than a guy would look at welding car doors in Detroit, correct?
Correct. A trainload of paper and a trainload of jews are basically the same thing. Just doing mah job of keeping the trains running on time.
In less than a generation I can't see that being a possibility without there being a serious shift in mindset from "These people are my neighbors" to "These people must die."
Well, it's not as if the Germans loved Jews prior to Hitler's rise to power.
That aside, though, I'm curious as to why you think it's impossible...given that it happened.
Or, think of it this way:
1) Germans maintained their belief that they had a duty to follow orders. When the orders changed from "trainload of paper" to "trainload of jews", their conception of duty remained the same.
2) Over 50% of the German population underwent a significant mental shift that fundamentally changed their world view, all at the same time.
Does 2 seem more likely to you? Because I think "it's my duty to follow orders" is a far more sensible explanation than 50% of a population undergoing a fundamental change of world outlook.
Edit: Especially when you consider the Kantian vein in German culture. "Duty" is a big part of their self conception. If it's your duty to make the trains run on time, then damnit you're going to keep those trains running on time!
Edit Edit: Yeah, that's probably the most helpful way to explain it to you, given your statements. You don't think that a significant shift in mindset could have happened. So, consider the possibility that killing jews was not a shift in mindset.
Refusing to act in accord with their duty to the state would have been the greater shift in mindset.
So let's not. Back to Indonesia, then. How would you account for it engaging in a slow and extended operation of ethnic cleansing beginning some ten years into the Suharto government and lasting another twenty under the same? What change in mindset there?
Here, try this as a reformulation: consider that a country could ideologically commit toward violence in some situations, which may be rarely triggered or indeed not anticipated at all but nonetheless mentally accepted as an ideological response, so that the implementation of violence is long since accepted, in the event it occurs. The implicit commitment toward violence can be present without surfacing all the time. Nationalism itself is a simple example - countries may violently overreact to perceived slights in a way consistent with "the way things are", eventually embroiling itself in an extended occupation with all the atrocities that may entail, with no change in mindset or ideological outlook at any point. The normalization of circumstance-specific evil can take place even in the absence of said circumstance.
Well, in fairness, East Timor is far enough removed (geographically) from Indonesia that the average Indonesian wouldn't have been affected in any meaningful way by the invasion / occupation, and many probably were scarcely aware of it. Being kept at a standard of living where you spend most of your day looking for ways to survive another week tends to limit one's empathy, authority figures be damned. :P
As for the leadership, Suharto was pretty typical of American puppets of that epoch; a self-centered goon looking to enrich himself and please his benefactors as flamboyantly as possible. The invasion certainly made a positive impression on the good 'ol boys in Washington.
Because as you stated many times, the concept of banality of evil basically means that these people didn't look at killing their former neighbors any differently than a guy would look at welding car doors in Detroit, correct?
Correct. A trainload of paper and a trainload of jews are basically the same thing. Just doing mah job of keeping the trains running on time.
In less than a generation I can't see that being a possibility without there being a serious shift in mindset from "These people are my neighbors" to "These people must die."
Well, it's not as if the Germans loved Jews prior to Hitler's rise to power.
That aside, though, I'm curious as to why you think it's impossible...given that it happened.
Or, think of it this way:
1) Germans maintained their belief that they had a duty to follow orders. When the orders changed from "trainload of paper" to "trainload of jews", their conception of duty remained the same.
2) Over 50% of the German population underwent a significant mental shift that fundamentally changed their world view, all at the same time.
Does 2 seem more likely to you? Because I think "it's my duty to follow orders" is a far more sensible explanation than 50% of a population undergoing a fundamental change of world outlook.
I have a much uglier view of humanity as a group, than most, probably.
I feel that heroes are rare. We don't have many Barfoots or Basilones. We didn't have a ton of folks smart enough to leave Germany or who used their power to help others, but it did happen, and it shows the encroaching Nazidom wasn't unanimous.
I also feel that otherwise normal people can get easily drawn into ugly situations with the right catalyst. I buy the contagion theory of crowds. Like Randle McMurphy says in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it's like chickens at a peckin' party. They just need that one spot of blood. How often have we all seen people in a heated atmosphere turn ugly when someone gets bold enough to take the first violent action? I've been a victim of it in school as I'm sure many here have. I have helped victims of it when I became a peer counselor. But we've all seen one person start a violent action and everyone else join in. Heck, it's a staple of every barfight you've ever seen in a movie.
Then you have a political party ran by people who believe what they are doing is mystically ordained. Now, do I think Hitler was crazy? Not particularly. He strikes me as a high-level Manson: not really capable of it himself, but good at finding people who can act ugly on his behalf. However you choose to perceive him, however, he surrounded himself with people who believed. They, in turn, killed off their early followers which shows a gutting of what could have one day been dissidence. If they all don't agree, then that is weak and not German.
Combine that type of ruthless leadership with a desperate population and you are building a bomb of historically ugly proportions. You take people willing to incite violence with people who are hungering for progressive action of any kind and there you have it: People like Himmler pecking that first spot of blood, the rest of the party joining in. Turn in your neighbors, turn in your neighbors, turn in your neighbors, Ja wohl, Ja wohl, Ja wohl.
Then you have people being chosen to commit atrocities based on their adherence to the party line (like Eichmann was) which now includes the idea that these people are inhuman and must be eradicated. The leadership is praying on something. For some of the perpetrators, it'd be insane to deny insanity. For others maybe it's just a bully complex, or a nasty streak. For some maybe it really is just a deep, patriotic fervor. But it's not, from the inception, dull and routine. It just becomes that way after the twentieth trainload.
That, for me is the disconnect. I can't buy the first victims killed as being routine. The simple fact it was a new process means it couldn't be dull from the outset. That's why I see it as diminishing returns.
That is a lot of a priori assumptions to lead to your conclusion. Usually, that means the conclusion isn't a very sound one.
I don't get how these are priori:
You think there are a lot of war heroes or people who bravely defied Nazidom in Germany? We don't have records of a German underground like we have of France, indicating no.
You don't think that people are susceptible to the contagion theory of crowds? This is a legitimate theory.
You disagree that top Nazi leaders were part of the Thule society and believed in Aryan mysticism? This is a fact.
You think leaders with ideas that are evil will not spread those ideas? Hitler wrote a book of them.
You disagree that a country's leaders will pray on the heightened emotions of their people? This can be pointed out in many countries.
You think that the first day of a job will be as boring as the last? No, this is what diminishing returns refer to.
That is a lot of a priori assumptions to lead to your conclusion. Usually, that means the conclusion isn't a very sound one.
Please explain:
You think there are a lot of war heroes or people who bravely defied Nazidom in Germany?
Weren't you talking about what is and isn't aberrant from the perspective of the people who left or heroically saved Jews from within Germany? I didn't think it was relevant then... wait, no, still haven't changed my mind.
I mean, psychosis isn't generally described as a communicable illness, but it's obvious when you examine cases like Rwanda's that racism doesn't emerge from a vacuum, historically or socially. It's an awful, delusional idea, but not all awful, delusional ideas are a result of psychosis. Most of them are a result of social pressure. Unless you think that Germans are locally predisposed to psychosis because there's something in the water in those parts of Germany and not others.
If one chicken thinks it's normal to peck at another chicken...
It is fair, though, to say that the first time someone directly witnesses systematic murder is by definition not routine. And there has to be some pretty substantial mental gymnastics being performed in order for someone to get through it without rejecting the system that makes it happen. I think that evil ideology, such as the racism that was present in generations past and ignited to fanatical extremes by Hitler and, yes, his Thule society compatriots, explains this better than psychosis does. Wrangling psychotics seems like a taller order than convincing normal people that their victims are not people. That's where we've been at odds since you compared Eichmann to BTK. With your recent posts I'm not sure we actually disagree anymore.
Well, the only member of the Nazi party to have kept well substantiated Thule society trimmings around was Rosenberg. Himmler used his past connections & the New Age bullshit associated with the Thule society to host large sex parties of varying flavors at his residence, but none of the Thule society hierarchy or teachings were incorporated into his (hilariously incompetent) management of the SS and he maintained that he was a through and through Catholic until the end.
I initially wrote "Hitler and Thule society compatriots such as the Red Skull," but (not knowing that MGK had already quit the thread in a huff) I tried for a more accommodating tone. Shoulda kept the snark in there, I guess.
And I brought up the point that America, a nation with both racist and isolationist policies, had concentration camps during WWII. Yet we only held people, didn't slaughter them and then harvest their bodies like the Indian did the buffalo, which the Nazis did. If your argument is that it doesn't take a different mindset to slaughter people in mass, I'm curious as to how you explain us not doing so.
Trail of Tears, yo. Also, motherfucking slavery.
We kind of did.
So now we're comparing slavery and the Westward Expansion of the 19th century with twentieth century war crimes? So there are no goal posts then...
"Banality of evil is indisputably true because of...human history having bad things happen. During what part? All of it!"
Good to know where to get off this train.
The empire had racist polices it also had liberal and socialist leaders that thought the empire was inherently costly and de humanising
Yet when the miltary and colonial civil servants set up camps and fortified villages for the natives " own protection."
Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.
The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.
Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.
Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.
No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".
The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.
Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
Where is the drastic change from white mans burden to the reality of literal heart of darkness scenarios. The men in charge actually lied about it and had the records sealed or destroyed because it would embarrass HM Government. HM government wished it away and British historians and writers still white wash it. Where was the massive take over of evilmen/mason/Thule equivalents in the colonial service/British army? Psychopaths and/or sociopaths in charge are not the independent variable.
Bastable on
Philippe about the tactical deployment of german Kradschützen during the battle of Kursk:
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Nazi Germany is a picture perfect example of large swathes of good people doing the most horrible sort of evil for no reason beyond a general desire to do what was proper.
Unless you think every German for about two generations was just a rabid psychotic.
...a leadership made up of...
Yeah, so? I mean let's say the top... I dunno, 150 people were all just balls to the wall insane, literally possessed by demons.
Would you say the dude cutting off people's heads with a shovel for his day to day was just you know, cool? He was neither committing any sort of terrible evil that brooks explanation nor was he particularly psychotic?
It's just weird.
The whole point of exploring institutionalized evil is to figure out how someone can work as the line cook at the Cannibal Cafe but not be particularly mean or driven or anything. Everyone gets the Nazi brass. They kind of got a shitload out of the deal. It's harder to understand the camp guard who got 3 meals of gruel a day to whip children.
I don't buy people becoming indoctrinated to the point where, like a bird-beak record player from the Flintstones, "It's a living," in less than a generation.
You can't take people from the excesses of Berlin in the 1920s to straight-laced conservative slaughter without there being some massive change in mentality.
For what reason do you take this kind of indoctrination to be impossible?
You do not think it is possible.
For what reason do you think that?
Or, if you like, why do you have that opinion?
Presumably your opinions are based upon reasons, rather than simply ad hoc intuitions.
Actually, there was a massive shift in mentality that explains it - read up on the T4 Program sometime. We just don't like talking about it, for a few big reasons.
So one of the issues with your assumptions is that you seem to be under the impression that people must have knowledge of an action to perpetuate it.
Almost no one would ever encounter the decision:
"Do I load a bunch of innocent people onto a train in order to shuttle them to their death?"
They would instead face decisions like
"How do I make sure these dissidents get on board with little fuss?"
"How do I ensure the train schedule allows for all the trains people want to run today?"
"How can I get overtime so we can have a decent Christmas?"
etc
there is no violent transition. There doesn't need to be. No one gets handed a little memo saying "oh and today you're going to start participating in a genocide".
And I brought up the point that America, a nation with both racist and isolationist policies, had concentration camps during WWII. Yet we only held people, didn't slaughter them and then harvest their bodies like the Indian did the buffalo, which the Nazis did. If your argument is that it doesn't take a different mindset to slaughter people in mass, I'm curious as to how you explain us not doing so.
Trail of Tears, yo. Also, motherfucking slavery.
We kind of did.
So now we're comparing slavery and the Westward Expansion of the 19th century with twentieth century war crimes? So there are no goal posts then...
"Banality of evil is indisputably true because of...human history having bad things happen. During what part? All of it!"
Good to know where to get off this train.
The empire had racist polices it also had liberal and socialist leaders that thought the empire was inherently costly and de humanising
Yet when the miltary and colonial civil servants set up camps and fortified villages for the natives " own protection."
Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.
The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.
Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.
Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.
No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".
The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.
Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
Where is the drastic change from white mans burden to the reality of literal heart of darkness scenarios. The men in charge actually lied about it and had the records sealed or destroyed because it would embarrass HM Government. HM government wished it away and British historians and writers still white wash it. Where was the massive take over of evilmen/mason/Thule equivalents in the colonial service/British army? Psychopaths and/or sociopaths in charge are not the independent variable.
Better hope that @Casual or the other Brit revisionists don't read this; they'll get all butthurt.
And I brought up the point that America, a nation with both racist and isolationist policies, had concentration camps during WWII. Yet we only held people, didn't slaughter them and then harvest their bodies like the Indian did the buffalo, which the Nazis did. If your argument is that it doesn't take a different mindset to slaughter people in mass, I'm curious as to how you explain us not doing so.
Trail of Tears, yo. Also, motherfucking slavery.
We kind of did.
So now we're comparing slavery and the Westward Expansion of the 19th century with twentieth century war crimes? So there are no goal posts then...
"Banality of evil is indisputably true because of...human history having bad things happen. During what part? All of it!"
Good to know where to get off this train.
The empire had racist polices it also had liberal and socialist leaders that thought the empire was inherently costly and de humanising
Yet when the miltary and colonial civil servants set up camps and fortified villages for the natives " own protection."
Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.
The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.
Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.
Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.
No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".
The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.
Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
Where is the drastic change from white mans burden to the reality of literal heart of darkness scenarios. The men in charge actually lied about it and had the records sealed or destroyed because it would embarrass HM Government. HM government wished it away and British historians and writers still white wash it. Where was the massive take over of evilmen/mason/Thule equivalents in the colonial service/British army? Psychopaths and/or sociopaths in charge are not the independent variable.
Better hope that @Casual or the other Brit revisionists don't read this; they'll get all butthurt.
Ha. Wow. I think you got all the butthurt all to yourself there buddy.
Having said that I don't doubt for a second the UK has done some pretty awful things in it's history. Frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a country that hasn't. If you actually want to reply to some of posts addressing the problems with your flawed perception of the Falklands war that a thread full of posters other than me also found fault with then be my guest. But getting huffy about it in other threads isn't how we do things in D&D.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume vanilla ate your response, but there were many replies after your last post. Read them at your leisure, but I'm done talking about this in this thread.
Posts
I find nine time out of ten that isn't the case and there is simply confusion. People tend to jump to conclusions rather quickly on the internet in general. So again, I ask you to please help remove the confusion by restating the points you are trying to put forth. Because I have read this whole thread and I find what you are saying to be very poorly stated. I'm not trying to be hard on you, I just can't wrap my head around what you are trying to say regarding the banality of evil.
The original argument was concocted to explain how Germany could do what it did during WWII, but I don't buy people becoming indoctrinated to the point where, like a bird-beak record player from the Flintstones, "It's a living," in less than a generation. You can't take people from the excesses of Berlin in the 1920s to straight-laced conservative slaughter without there being some massive change in mentality.
I think the argument should really pertain more to an idea of "diminishing returns of evil." Like the fifth cheesecake slice you eat not being as satisfying as the first, I think a stronger argument can be made that when you take a frothing-at-the-mouth Nazi and get him to turn on his neighbors and start executing them in mass, no matter how filled with hate he is, that level won't be the same when he's killing victim 1000 as it was did during victim 1.
But that's my own addendum to the concept.
Again, it's my opinion. If people disagree, fine.
For what reason do you take this kind of indoctrination to be impossible?
You do not think it is possible.
For what reason do you think that?
Or, if you like, why do you have that opinion?
Presumably your opinions are based upon reasons, rather than simply ad hoc intuitions.
Because as you stated many times, the concept of banality of evil basically means that these people didn't look at killing their former neighbors any differently than a guy would look at welding car doors in Detroit, correct?
In less than a generation I can't see that being a possibility without there being a serious shift in mindset from "These people are my neighbors" to "These people must die."
Somehow this does not seem to contradict the notion of something being evil and banal. Not sure why, exactly. Just a gut feeling.
Correct. A trainload of paper and a trainload of jews are basically the same thing. Just doing mah job of keeping the trains running on time.
Well, it's not as if the Germans loved Jews prior to Hitler's rise to power.
That aside, though, I'm curious as to why you think it's impossible...given that it happened.
Or, think of it this way:
1) Germans maintained their belief that they had a duty to follow orders. When the orders changed from "trainload of paper" to "trainload of jews", their conception of duty remained the same.
2) Over 50% of the German population underwent a significant mental shift that fundamentally changed their world view, all at the same time.
Does 2 seem more likely to you? Because I think "it's my duty to follow orders" is a far more sensible explanation than 50% of a population undergoing a fundamental change of world outlook.
Edit: Especially when you consider the Kantian vein in German culture. "Duty" is a big part of their self conception. If it's your duty to make the trains run on time, then damnit you're going to keep those trains running on time!
Edit Edit: Yeah, that's probably the most helpful way to explain it to you, given your statements. You don't think that a significant shift in mindset could have happened. So, consider the possibility that killing jews was not a shift in mindset.
Refusing to act in accord with their duty to the state would have been the greater shift in mindset.
Well, in fairness, East Timor is far enough removed (geographically) from Indonesia that the average Indonesian wouldn't have been affected in any meaningful way by the invasion / occupation, and many probably were scarcely aware of it. Being kept at a standard of living where you spend most of your day looking for ways to survive another week tends to limit one's empathy, authority figures be damned. :P
As for the leadership, Suharto was pretty typical of American puppets of that epoch; a self-centered goon looking to enrich himself and please his benefactors as flamboyantly as possible. The invasion certainly made a positive impression on the good 'ol boys in Washington.
I have a much uglier view of humanity as a group, than most, probably.
I feel that heroes are rare. We don't have many Barfoots or Basilones. We didn't have a ton of folks smart enough to leave Germany or who used their power to help others, but it did happen, and it shows the encroaching Nazidom wasn't unanimous.
I also feel that otherwise normal people can get easily drawn into ugly situations with the right catalyst. I buy the contagion theory of crowds. Like Randle McMurphy says in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it's like chickens at a peckin' party. They just need that one spot of blood. How often have we all seen people in a heated atmosphere turn ugly when someone gets bold enough to take the first violent action? I've been a victim of it in school as I'm sure many here have. I have helped victims of it when I became a peer counselor. But we've all seen one person start a violent action and everyone else join in. Heck, it's a staple of every barfight you've ever seen in a movie.
Then you have a political party ran by people who believe what they are doing is mystically ordained. Now, do I think Hitler was crazy? Not particularly. He strikes me as a high-level Manson: not really capable of it himself, but good at finding people who can act ugly on his behalf. However you choose to perceive him, however, he surrounded himself with people who believed. They, in turn, killed off their early followers which shows a gutting of what could have one day been dissidence. If they all don't agree, then that is weak and not German.
Combine that type of ruthless leadership with a desperate population and you are building a bomb of historically ugly proportions. You take people willing to incite violence with people who are hungering for progressive action of any kind and there you have it: People like Himmler pecking that first spot of blood, the rest of the party joining in. Turn in your neighbors, turn in your neighbors, turn in your neighbors, Ja wohl, Ja wohl, Ja wohl.
Then you have people being chosen to commit atrocities based on their adherence to the party line (like Eichmann was) which now includes the idea that these people are inhuman and must be eradicated. The leadership is praying on something. For some of the perpetrators, it'd be insane to deny insanity. For others maybe it's just a bully complex, or a nasty streak. For some maybe it really is just a deep, patriotic fervor. But it's not, from the inception, dull and routine. It just becomes that way after the twentieth trainload.
That, for me is the disconnect. I can't buy the first victims killed as being routine. The simple fact it was a new process means it couldn't be dull from the outset. That's why I see it as diminishing returns.
I don't get how these are priori:
You think there are a lot of war heroes or people who bravely defied Nazidom in Germany? We don't have records of a German underground like we have of France, indicating no.
You don't think that people are susceptible to the contagion theory of crowds? This is a legitimate theory.
You disagree that top Nazi leaders were part of the Thule society and believed in Aryan mysticism? This is a fact.
You think leaders with ideas that are evil will not spread those ideas? Hitler wrote a book of them.
You disagree that a country's leaders will pray on the heightened emotions of their people? This can be pointed out in many countries.
You think that the first day of a job will be as boring as the last? No, this is what diminishing returns refer to.
Were any replications of the Milgram experiment done 'fee free', as it were? That is, no payment being offered to the teacher?
I sort of assume not, because then it would be difficult to find participants, but I wonder what the difference (if any) would look like.
I was asked to state why I felt the way I did. You obviously disagree with me.
Excuse me while I don't grovel for your approval. Good day.
The empire had racist polices it also had liberal and socialist leaders that thought the empire was inherently costly and de humanising
Yet when the miltary and colonial civil servants set up camps and fortified villages for the natives " own protection."
Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.
The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.
Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.
Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.
No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".
The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.
Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
Where is the drastic change from white mans burden to the reality of literal heart of darkness scenarios. The men in charge actually lied about it and had the records sealed or destroyed because it would embarrass HM Government. HM government wished it away and British historians and writers still white wash it. Where was the massive take over of evilmen/mason/Thule equivalents in the colonial service/British army? Psychopaths and/or sociopaths in charge are not the independent variable.
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Turns out that granny-killing changes a man.
Actually, there was a massive shift in mentality that explains it - read up on the T4 Program sometime. We just don't like talking about it, for a few big reasons.
Almost no one would ever encounter the decision:
"Do I load a bunch of innocent people onto a train in order to shuttle them to their death?"
They would instead face decisions like
"How do I make sure these dissidents get on board with little fuss?"
"How do I ensure the train schedule allows for all the trains people want to run today?"
"How can I get overtime so we can have a decent Christmas?"
etc
there is no violent transition. There doesn't need to be. No one gets handed a little memo saying "oh and today you're going to start participating in a genocide".
Better hope that @Casual or the other Brit revisionists don't read this; they'll get all butthurt.
Ha. Wow. I think you got all the butthurt all to yourself there buddy.
Having said that I don't doubt for a second the UK has done some pretty awful things in it's history. Frankly you'd be hard pressed to find a country that hasn't. If you actually want to reply to some of posts addressing the problems with your flawed perception of the Falklands war that a thread full of posters other than me also found fault with then be my guest. But getting huffy about it in other threads isn't how we do things in D&D.
http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/screenplay/vi207487513/
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume vanilla ate your response, but there were many replies after your last post. Read them at your leisure, but I'm done talking about this in this thread.