They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)
535 comments
·February 5, 2025noduerme
ookblah
i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this.
at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. they will always be taken advantage of, scammed, etc. social media and tech just made this 10x more effective.
it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose.
maybe i'm just cynical have given up. it's a really jarring thing to encounter people who refuse to even spend the min effort to attempt to question their own beliefs.
rsynnott
> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work
I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditional anti-intellectualism; it seems to be almost an active view that it is better that people in authority do not know how to do their job.)
jdcasale
Fwiw, my experience from growing up in deep red America was that anti-intellectualism was staggeringly strong there. People would actually define their beliefs in opposition to those of people they perceived to be 'smart'.
The way that I always understood this was that if they had a disagreement with someone 'smarter' than them, and they operated in good faith, they would lose ~98% of the time. This doesn't feel good. It makes smart people threatening -- it breeds resentment toward them.
However, if you have a roomful of people who define their position in opposition to the 'smart' person, your beliefs are the ones that matter, regardless of what the truth is, so you get to feel like you've won the argument. Most arguments are not consequential, so this practice doesn't really cause meaningful short-term harm so there's no negative feedback.
Over the long-term, this herd mentality is how people learn to navigate the world, and you end up with a giant mess.
graemep
Gove was right. The problem is that experts no longer have to explain or justify themselves or explain the level of evidence behind their opinions.
Expertise has also been politicised. Experts are picked who give the prior decided opinions, and those who have the wrong opinion are got rid of (e.g. Professor David Nutt).
Finally Gove was speaking in the context of Brexit, and arguing that it ultimately a question of national identity. DO people identify as British or European? I agree - it is more like whether people in Northern Ireland want to be part of the UK or the Irish Republic, or maybe Scottish independence, than anything else in British politics. lots of parallels around the rest of the world.
Covid policy had multiple examples of this, and of not consulting experts on a sufficiently wide range of subjects.
A lot of evidence based policy is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U
bsenftner
A huge part of that is the lack of any effective communications education at all for the general population. Few realize that effective communications training is also ordered and logical thinking training. People with no communications training have disorganized emotional reasoning, unless something else formal comes along such as philosophy, mathematics or software, but then you get a technical specialist that cannot explain themselves nor their work to anyone other than a same education peer - exactly our current situation.
elif
The anti mask, anti vax, anti chromosomal expression, anti 'tariffs are taxes' are beyond "anti-expert"
These positions are flatly anti-base-reality. If you want to frame them in terms of authority rejection, you could call them anti-first graders
psychoslave
Expertise can be of great value, but no-one is an expert on every matter and the rest. And expertise don’t make anyone free of committing errors, or to be drawn in a corruption schemes.
We can have a thorough and deep expertise on some technical domain, and yet lake the sagacity and humility to judge where it won’t put us in better position than someone else dealing with an issue on the topic in a context the other person is already deeply acquainted with, while we are completely unaware of its many specificity.
On the other hand of course someone tightly coupled with a particular situation might easily miss some bigger picture that a relevant expertise could unlock.
MrVandemar
>there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout
Probably because the experts are telling them that if they want a future, everyone is going to have to compromise their current lifestyle. Not a popular message. People will always be sceptical and hostile towards people who say "you can't have X". People are always happy to believe people who say "Vote for me and you have as much X as you want!"
throw0101a
> there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment.
Anti-intellectualism in the US goes back decades (if not centuries):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_Americ...
The first two US colonies were Jamestown (looking for El Dorado North; gold; riches) and Plymouth (religious society):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasyland:_How_America_Went_...
* https://www.kurtandersen.com/fantasyland
The magical thinking of those two are the seeds of US society today and all the fruits (good and bad) can probably be linked to the ideas of one of the two.
taurknaut
I see this as very different from "i'm eating ivermectin because bigpharma wants me to buy their vaccines" or whatever it is people say. There are certainly fascism experts out there, but the one thing that I've noticed again and again is that they emphasize how effective fascism is at changing forms and tactics. Today, most of the countries we refer to as authoritarian or fascist are formally liberal democracies (by which I mean republics). And critically, many of the core symptoms—militarization of police, violent suppression of protests, demonization of outgroups (muslims, immigrants), worship of the military, disenfranchisement of voting rights—long predate Trump's political rise. Hell, we were an apartheid state in living memory, and the anticommunist propaganda here truly does rival that of fascist countries (albeit mostly an aspect of the past at thus point in terms of overt propaganda). To many Americans, fascism might seem natural and might feel like home, so an expert saying "this is fascism now" is going to get a very very wide range of reactions.
And even to educated, well-meaning americans, we have a really nasty habit of sweeping our evil deeds under the rug and forgetting what we are capable of. If Trump were to move forward with mass deportations, it wouldn't be the first time, or the second time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback is one particularly nastily named example. Many "experts" on tv don't read history and are oblivious to how close to fascism we already are.
It's also worth remembering that Hitler was a huge fan of America. Liebensraum was inspired by manifest destiny. We built this country on extreme violence, arguably to a unique degree (along with other anglo colonies). That muscle doesn't just go away. We've really only been a "liberal democracy" for about sixty years now.
So yea, I don't think you can write this off as anti-intellectualism or anti-expert, this is just who we are as a people.
noisy_boy
> social media and tech just made this 10x more effective.
Social media took away the hesitation of crowing about stupid things. If many people are saying it, maybe I am not stupid after all. The legitimisation and amplification of dumbness is a big contributor to the current state. Among other things of course.
acadapter
Social media no longer represents "many people are saying it".
The early internet could give an overview of what's being said in general on a particular topic - but today's content is often manipulated to support or attack a particular viewpoint.
jajko
When there started to be money made, and even better real power to be gained by herding such crowds then its not anymore just about self-organization over time, the push becomes very proactive
rixed
Stupidity is when one fails to genuinely see things from some other perspective than their own.
It is not that hard to do, and does not prevent from taking a side eventually, but it helps one to realize that the distance to someone else taking a radially oposite approach is usualy not that large.
Unfortunately, this kind of mind gymnastic is rarely encouraged because it goes against the creation of stronger social circles I guess.
So, all that to say: don't give up. Cynicism is like a drug that feels right at the begining but that will damage a brain eventually.
psychoslave
>there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work.
That’s not what the pointed text is about though. It specifically mention the concern is about those that should be considered of higher education in the context, as opposed for example to a baker¹.
¹ This is the example given in text, not some condescendence of bakers from my part here.
trymas
Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo
Some people won’t change their mind even with contradicting evidence is shoved in their face.
elif
Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.
elif
Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative.
And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.
bsenftner
It's the combination of a desire for student obedience and the intellectual damaging power of religion. Far too often a young student is told their youthful and essentially unsocialized behavior is sinful, including their own thoughts, and that coupled with an Orwellian level of obedience socialization with religion and you create crippled intellects that are afraid of their own thoughts and are perfectly obedient church members and employees. They are minions in the most literal sense and the United States is filled with them, obedient and terribly dangerous.
i_love_limes
I'm having a hard time googling the book you mentioned. Is it by any chance called 'They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45'? That's the closest thing I could find.
gspr
Yes. "They thought they were free" is the main title. "The Germans 1933-1945" is the subtitle.
BiteCode_dev
I remember I once stumbled upon pictures of the daily life of ordinary nazis.
They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.
There is even a video where hitler is shying away from his love companion.
This was a shock to me as a kid: evil doesn't look like the caricature of "the very bad guy", it emerges in every day people.
I think we failed to communicate that. It was too tempting to have a universal vilain you could use in Hollywood movies and instantly recognize. That you can't identify to. Black and white is so easy to sell.
But what it means is a huge part of our society cannot make the link between what is happening in their own life and the past. Because they have a vision of the past that looks like a kid show, not what really happened.
Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.
Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
In the last too decades, we surely spent a lot of time playing with words until they could not be useful anymore. But it made us feel good for a moment.
pjc50
You can find similar images from apartheit South Africa and apartheit southern US states before 1970. And in those cases they believe they are happy because of the protective wall of state violence against other humans.
There was always what you might call a "particle" of fascism throughout the War on Terror (maintained by both parties! because it was popular with the public!) Things like the unaccountable secret prisons in Gunatanamo or Abu Gharib, or the US sniper who amused himself by randomly murdering hundreds of civilians (eventually convicted .. then pardoned). And then in the war on Gaza everyone (bipartisan) was falling over themselves to say that it was children's own fault for being in the same school as Hamas and that the Israeli government was right to bomb them.
Back at home in BLM, everyone stood up for the right of the police to unaccountably murder citizens. Because that power would only be used against bad people, right?
aisenik
> Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.
> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
Do I understand that while the United States is undergoing a radical neonazi revolution lead by the tech industry your take away is that the people who called out the right-wing and tech industry were wrong to do so and bear responsibility for the horrific state of the world?
nouripenny
Well, I think so. Because many didn't understand they were fascists too.
The fascism was always in the vast majority of us, if we wanted to look at it. Just look at the structure of our workplaces, which accounts for half our waking lives. There's no free speech in them. With few exceptions, they're intensely hierarchical, people passing orders downward. Those "unlucky" enough to make it inside one of them, often sleep in the nearby alley.
The bizarreness of this form of organization isn't lost on those on top of the hierarchy. They're used to battalions of people doing what they want, and they seek out philosophers who apply this vision to other aspects of life. It wasn't hard; for example, the US had a 4 year king anyway. Usually a warmonger callous to the vast majority of his population.
One problem is "calling out." Name-calling. The current administration is showing direct action, which impresses many who find their lives increasingly intolerable. Many didn't like him, but rather rationally rolled the dice with the change candidate, even if it was probably going to end up as bad change. Like hitting the computer.
BiteCode_dev
No I'm noting that to fight better we must realize what we did inefficiently and correct course so that we can mobilize more people.
Right now If I discuss the events around me, many are apathetic, because they think I'm exaggerating. Because that's what they have been used to.
And your comment is directing your anger at someone that very likely share a lot of your value system while he was trying to make a self-reflecting point. This is a waste, and it divides us.
When everything is an outrage, the outrage is worth nothing.
And while you are fighting on semantics with potential allies, for virtue signaling no less, the real threat is showing a united front, no doubt, no debate.
Dalewyn
No, what you should takeaway is that misoverusing the term Nazi as an insult patently no longer works precisely because noone cares about being called a Nazi anymore due to its misoveruse.
In a different timeline, Trump being called a Nazi or any of the vicinity terms should have been an immediate termination of his campaign chances.
What actually happened is Trump ignored it (as he should) and the American people shrugged "OK" and went to vote for him with complete disregard.
Then Musk got called a Nazi at the inauguration, and the American people shrugged "OK" and went back to facepalming at just how much sheer waste the government has with complete disregard.
The moral you should take away is you should not invoke Godwin's Law. It's probably too late for "Nazi", "racism", "sexism", and a host of other insults the Left have thrown around to see what sticks (none have), but that doesn't mean future originally-valuable-terminology have to face the same fate.
Another moral is that insulting Americans probably doesn't actually work in general. "Deplorables", "Garbage", and others were turned around into rallying cries during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns, not unlike the original meaning behind the term "Yankee" which was originally an insult not unlike "Kraut" or "Jap" but is now one of the fondest nicknames of Americans.
throw0101a
> They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.
You may wish to watch this movie on the banality of the life of those who ran the concentration camps and who lived next to them:
noduerme
That's exactly why this book is so valuable and important. It shows the link between a happy daily life in a nice clean country (that happens to be at war) and the insane things those people ignored at the same time in order to act normal every day. Once you read it, you will look around at America in a completely different way. Because unlike ignoring something done in the past (slavery, colonization) this is not arguably not the fault of the people pretending normal through it. It's happening in realtime. The thing to look for is the mix of apathy and fear.
illwrks
I’ve not watched it yet, but a recent film called the Zone Of Interest sounds like it aligns to this.
It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp.
Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.
cocoggu
Point to be noted is that Rudolf Hoss wasn't the leader of a random Nazi camp. He was the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, making him one of the biggest mass-murderer of the last century.
immibis
> Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.
> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
In my experience, most of the people who get accused of being Nazis do turn out to be actual Nazis. Sometimes they are stupid enough to make overt Nazi gestures (e.g. Elon Musk) which is pretty much the only way the average person will accept that someone is a Nazi. Much more frequently they turn out to agree with Nazi ideas such as ethnic cleansing, but do not do the salute, and people will say they're not really a Nazi because they didn't do the salute.
suraci
> They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.
the reason for this contradiction is that, in their view, some people are not considered human
that's how nazis see jews, how colonizers see natives, how slaveholders see black slaves, how zionists see palestinians
voisin
If you haven’t seen it, the 2023 film “The Zone of Interest” is an excellent movie that shows the banality of daily life in the Nazi regime.
yodsanklai
In France, I remember we read several classic allegories on that theme at schools. Rhinoceros by Ionesco (even watched it in the theater as a school trip), also The Plague (Albert Camus). I didn't think much of it when I was a teenager, but I'm looking at them on the light of these recent events. Especially Rhinoceros on ideological contagion.
wiether
Yes we did, but I think that the people who needed it the most, were the ones who either didn't had to read it (the ones not in a "lycée général") or whent through because it was required but didn't tried to understand the meaning.
More broadly, as teenagers, most of us didn't had the maturity to truely grasp the meaning ; and the ones who did probably already where sensitive enough to don't fall in the same traps.
In the hundreds of people I crossed path with during my school time, I don't remember a single one who was actually enlightened by things in the program. The only ones who had kind of a shift from their original mindset did that outside of school or because of a teacher who went out of their way (and of the official program) to explain things.
noduerme
Odd things can enlighten someone. I was outside a gay bar in Avignon when a guy I knew who was hardcore FN hesitated and then sat down next to me, a Jew, and had an honest conversation. I think it doesn't take too much to enlighten French people, because much of the template for plurality and tolerance is already there and built into the culture. Then again, there are always some true assholes.
yodsanklai
I don't think I was enlightened at that time, but at least, we discussed these topics and they are part of the collective knowledge in Europe. It's probably why Musk nazi salutes resonate differently in Europe vs the US. That being said, populism is raising in Europe too.
fransje26
Is "The Plague" considered an allegory of the struggle against upcoming extremism?
While reading it I saw some parallels with occupation: people trying to escape, some suffering from being separated from their loved ones, those abusing the system and enriching themselves with contraband, help being flown in irregularly, etc. But I didn't get as far as Nazism.
Do you happen to remember which elements supported that supposed theme?
hn_throwaway_99
I think the thing that has been most surprising to me is how utterly transparent our current situation has been. I like to say "When it comes to the end of the Republic, I thought it would have all been quite a bit sneakier."
Like the way that all of the Republicans in congress folded like a cheap suit and are now completely subservient to Trump - "Profiles in Cowardice" from top-to-bottom, with the exception of a few outliers who have now been ejected from the Republican party. My favorite current example is Bill Cassidy - what a total coward! I knew all of his "concerns" about RFK Jr. were a charade, and then even given his oath and knowledge as a doctor that he would eventually fold, and come out with some BS statement about how "After a really long conversation with RFK Jr. he assured me on some of my concerns blah blah blah..." And it happened like that to a T. Almost exactly like the Susan Collins/Brett Kavanaugh situation "I was shocked pikachu! I mean he assured me he wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade!"
I'm just surprised at how it's all playing out exactly to script, and the "scripts" from previous history aren't even that old or forgotten...
noduerme
Yes, pinning our hopes on Bill Cassidy to head off catastrophe was a bit like hoping your oncologist would show up bright and early with good news...
taurknaut
Watching Gaza get razed has pretty much ended any sense I had that liberal society is capable of learning lessons or improving itself. I grew up a good liberal, but as an adult I realize that so much of peoples' attraction to liberalism is simply inability to resolve conflict, center values in society, or establish a shared culture. There are better ideals to structure society around, like material rights.
Fwiw i also believe we should dismantle our government as it is not, actually, very democratic and doesn't actually function well and mostly exists to serve itself and its corporate clients. The current parties are simply the last people on earth I'd trust to do it.
pjc50
If you hate liberalism, wait until you find out about illiberalism.
taurknaut
What makes you think I hate liberalism? I was just pointing out it's not sufficient for a functional society, contrary to the tenets of our civic religion. If it was, our country wouldn't be such a dysfunctional shithole our citizens log on to China's instagram to talk about how much of a dysfunctional shithole this country is. Hilarious and hugely embarrassing.
Granted, I do abhor the part of liberalism that makes people think their voice has any inherent value and that political action begins and ends with voting. I'd like to remind readers that Hitler was voted into office, but the civil rights act was legislated out of fear of cities burning down, and it took a literal civil war to end slavery in this country (outside of prisons anyway). Most of the few labor rights we have in part because the labor movement was bombing buildings and shutting down entire cities. We live in an arguably progressive society in spite of liberalism, not because of it.
Am I naive for thinking americans are capable of making a government we can ACTUALLY not be embarrassed by? That can actually prioritize its own citizens over its GDP and bombing places that never did us wrong? Whose flag isn't seen by many groups of people as a hate symbol? With a culture not based on being proudly ignorant? Probably. But we all need hope. Liberalism certainly ain't gonna get us there by itself—at some point we need actual values to orient around aside from greed and the right to be an asshole in public.
null
arp242
From a German who lived through the 30s (from memory): "at the time, I couldn't determine if Hitler was a good phenomenon with some bad side-effects, or a bad phenomenon with some good side-effects".
In hindsight the answer is pretty obvious. But in 1934 Germany? A lot less so.
gspr
This is one of the best books I ever read. I picked it up pretty randomly a few years back. It changed me.
Before reading it, I was firmly of the opinion that good people (like me! and everyone I like!) will (mostly) resist a fascist takeover. At least passively resist. As in not actively collaborate. Mostly. Reading that book obliterated almost all of those beliefs. (What little was left was destroyed by having children, and actually directly experiencing what it means when people say "I'll do anything for them").
I think it's the most upset I've been since I was a child and asked my parents why people suffering in a war on the news didn't just say that they don't wanna be in the game anymore. Because that was the rule that applied in kindergarten.
This all sounds very depressing. But read the book. It's a damn important book. (And it's very short and almost free – just read it).
pagutierrezn
To make matters worse, this is not only "rehappening" in the US. It's global
nirui
As I understand it, this wave of US policy change is inspired by a combination of white supremacy and US exceptionalism. But rest of the world is effected by few different things, for example, xenophobia in the case of EU and UK, expansionism in Russia, zionism in Israel, nationalism in China (and Japan, really) etc. It looked the same if you stand far, but they're all different, so I wouldn't call it "global".
There is a documentary from Deutsche Welle titled "The rise of the ultra-right in the US": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrhREluLdBs. Maybe worth a watch if you want to see an "outside" perspective on this.
pjc50
The fear of foreigners or racial "others" is the common element. And some of the propaganda is common, too.
imacomputertoo
The right wing of the US is not driven by white supremacy. It's driven by a belief in a variety of mostly false grievances, about immigration, the economy, the wealth gap, etc. Those bogus beliefs are held by white and non white people.
Consider that Trump won almost 50% of Latino male voters. As a percentage of the vote, Trump did better with racial minorities and women in 2024 than 2020, and much better compared to 2016.
White supremacy is real and it has some effect in US politics, but it's not a driving force anymore. I say this as someone who has lived both in and outside the US. The outside perspective is not always better. Germans may be seeing the US through the lens of their own history.
archagon
I see the overwhelming emphasis on DEI and “woke” as very clearly white supremacy.
nirui
Well, I would like to clarify that I was not criticizing any country. To me, all of those examples are just nations learning and exploring what's good and what's bad again under this new age. The world will adjust and slowly but surely get better. See? This time, so far no body is getting burned for claiming that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
And for all the other points, only time will tell.
BTW, I don't hate Mr. Trump either. When he was elected, I brought in some financial products anticipating his unconventional method (and most importantly, I did not buy in some other products). Now I seeing ~5% return in just half a month. I thank that man for his straightforward.
So if I'd say, fearmongering is useless and opportunity for goodness is still reachable.
michaelhoney
What's happening in the US is in a whole other league of fucked
twixfel
Yes the US is uniquely fucked, really. At least the previous global hegemon fought two world wars to lose its place. The US is basically committing geopolitical suicide at the top of its powers because of gender neutral toilets and the price of eggs. A rather pathetic country and people, sadly.
yubblegum
The British Empire was not inflitrated and was not pursuing policies that prioritized another entity's interests.
> powers because of gender neutral toilets and the price of eggs. A rather pathetic country and people, sadly.
What is sad imo is thinking that the above the actual reason for the shenanigans. US has been unlike itself since 9/11. Everything changed.
archagon
We’re getting fascism installed because a bunch of chuds want to be able to say “retard” again.
MathMonkeyMan
Triggered. If we are pathetic, then look forward to our enlightened successors.
I don't know what will happen in American politics, nor what effect it will have on the world or the permanence of those effects, but there are demagogues everywhere, America is not exceptional.
blooalien
What a way to utterly waste the likely last few generations of "civilized" humanity on Earth... :(
whatever1
Nobody really remembers, hence, the same mistakes will be made.
labster
Some people remember. I have a neighbor who was a child living in Berlin in ‘45. Looks like the story of her life will have literary bookends.
dr_dshiv
[flagged]
aisenik
>2. The USA will likely avoid war.
The USA is currently experiencing an autocoup prosecuted by an unholy alliance of tech industry elites and dominionist christian white supremacists. Its president, who presided over an attempted violent coup in 2021, has called for the annexation of Canada and Greenland, ethnically cleansing Palestine and acquiring it as US territory, military incursions into Mexico, seizing Panama, and suggested the annexation of the United Kingdom.
He is openly aligned with radical white supremacist militias that are entwined with our sheriffs, police, and military. He's installed a white supremacist as Secretary of Defense with the support of congress and numerous others in powerful positions throughout the remnants of the US government.
We are on the precipice, staring into the abyss.
pjc50
> these are hypotheticals for a reason!
Because they have zero connection to reality? Can I have a pony in this hypothetical too? How do we get to any of them while having to climb over the additional hurdle of a far right anti-science government?
myrmidon
> The USA will likely address climate change directly through technology (geoengineering) vs rapid degrowth (the only two plausible means of stabilizing the climate)
How is "rapid degrowth" a solution to climate change? we have "degrowth" in population in basically every industrialized country already anyway, but more extreme rates like South Korea are already destabilizingly low, and still not even close to enough for keeping CO2 emissions in check: That would probably require us to slash population by at least 60% (and quickly, even if we kept enacting CO2 reducing measures).
There is already a "solution" for climate change on the table-- electrify everything, de-carbonize electricity generation and help roll out this change globally, but all the major players are dragging their feet because this is obviously not free...
amarcheschi
>The American scientific establishment and education system are likely to be transformed to create massive jumps in productivity (in the age of AI)
And this presidency will ensure that this jump in productivity only benefits the wealthy. Proposed tax cuts by Trump would make middle class people pay more and wealthy people pay less
>There are very few ways to compete with China without very strong leadership — and now, it seems, we have that chance.
Oh yes, the guy that wanted to have a say in what the fed does. The guy who proposed and eventually rolled back tariffs on its neighboring countries, sending a lot of companies (both in usa, Canada, and Mexico) in panic. I could go on for hours
gspr
> 1. The USA will likely address climate change directly through technology (geoengineering) vs rapid degrowth (the only two plausible means of stabilizing the climate)
That climate change can be addressed through technology is of course true, but equating that with geoengineering is pure insanity. Also, there's _nothing_ that indicates that the US will address this area at all, especially not now, with an administration that doesn't even believe that there's anything to address!
> 2. The USA will likely avoid war.
I do not understand how you can draw that conclusion after seeing the new president threaten even _allies_ with war in just a few weeks in office.
> 3. The USA will likely experience large-scale economic growth due to regulatory change, efficient government services, compounding industrial ecosystems and robotics
Which efficient government services are you talking about? The ones provided by skilled bureaucrats being replaced due to lacking "loyalty"?
> 4. The American scientific establishment and education system are likely to be transformed to create massive jumps in productivity (in the age of AI)
Transformed by having their funding slashed?
> We already have smarter AI than 99% of humans
You seem to be sampling a very strange subset of humans.
> There is little doubt that this will be applied across society at an unbelievable scale and speed.
There's, in fact, lots of doubt.
> In short, China’s economic model (low-corruption communistic capitalism) is working way better than liberal democratic models.
For certain things, sure. For other things (like freedom of speech, personal liberties): very much not.
> There are very few ways to compete with China without very strong leadership — and now, it seems, we have that chance.
So, you want a "strong leader". How does that go down in history again? Anyway – do you think that in addition to being "strong" there are other aspects of a leader that you might want to have in addition? Like, I don't know, intelligence and compassion? Or are you just going for strength to smack everyone over the head?
> And, with the global distribution of high-intelligence AI, there is plenty of room for distributed, decentralized local growth that can enable all people around the world to participate in economic development and super-abundant resources.
Absolute meaningless dribble. It just needs a sprinkle of blockchain or something.
> Things will continue to accelerate. And the biggest wellbeing challenges will come from overabundance of resources rather than their scarcity.
So when can people suffering under these authoritarian strongmen expect this abundance? How much suffering will they have to take before utopia hits? Or, alternatively, before we can laugh you lot off for a few generations again.
hn_throwaway_99
I'm curious if what is happening in the US and what has happened in Britain with Brexit actually ends up slowing some of these marches towards illiberalism in other places. Like when people are upset at the direction of a country or current policies, they may take a "throw the bums out" attitude even if the alternative is far worse. But perhaps they're looking at the complete shit show in the US and how unproductive Brexit was and are thinking "OK, maybe not like that..."
I mean, it sounds like Canada is more united than it's been in a long time in its shared opposition to Trump.
CalRobert
Unfortunately, one key difference is that Britain didn't have a leader who wanted to expand their territory.
Europe is already weak, economically and militarily. I don't know how long our votes will matter when we have a belligerent and powerful neighbour.
ok_dad
Ask Hawaii what happened when a bunch of businessmen wanted more profits and less government oversight! Back then it was Dole (the PERSON) and sugarcane companies, today it is auto manufacturers and probably access to the northern sea route that is rapidly becoming de-iced and relevant for shipping to bypass the Panama Canal. Canada better take this threat seriously and treat the USA, at the very least, like a neighbor who is shooting a rifle at a massive tank of propane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1887_Constitution_of_the_Hawai...
littlestymaar
In France at least, Brexit made the idea of leaving the EU obsolete in political discourse, both on the left and far right.
But at the same time French media just repeated the “it's a clumsy handwave from an autistic dude” narrative after Musk's Nazi salute so I'm not sure it will work this time.
throw310822
Notice that this benevolence and protection by the media is granted to Musk (and Trump) by their complete subservience to Israel's demands and wants. Trump just proposed ethnic cleansing the Gaza Strip and cleaning up the rubble with American money and work so it can be handed over to Israel in a nice shape.
ZeroGravitas
In the UK, the political party (which is a actually a privately owned company) owned by the guy who drove the initial wave of Brexit is apparently topping the polls now.
The only policy they talk about is getting rid of all the immigrants because that's what caused all the problems, not decades of right wing government culminating in Brexit.
But underdeath that is the usual US-style Turbo capitalism stuff like destroying the NHS and handing it over to American corporations.
dgb23
Also not surprisingly immigration increased after Brexit. It has always been a wedge issue and a red herring for those in power.
ben_w
> In the UK, the political party (which is a actually a privately owned company) owned by the guy who drove the initial wave of Brexit is apparently topping the polls now.
Oh god. There I was thinking it couldn't get worse and hoping you'd made a mistake, but no, you're right, somehow it is.
pjc50
Reform is such a corporate op. It's so obviously astroturf .. but the media are also astroturfing it, because the hate for immigrants is universal.
hn_throwaway_99
Damn, you're right :( Thanks for killing my attempts at holding on to some threads of optimism! (Being sarcastic, but really I'm just laugh/crying). Oh well, guess I should just stock up on more boxed wine...
null
girvo
The right wing party will take power in Australia shortly too, for similar idiotic reasons.
morkalork
I don't think it changes anything on a base level for how humans behave en mass. Unfortunately it looks like we will always be susceptible to populism and propaganda. At best what you're seeing is a temporary inoculation against illibralism.
pjc50
Wait until you have the Liz Truss budget. That's going to be economic chaos.
bigbacaloa
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Waterluvian
> "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow.
I felt this for four years straight last time.
But what scares me far more is if very large, recklessly shocking occasions occur and the resisters are nowhere to be seen. I keep hoping to wake up to footage of mass protests and riots and fires and anger and aggressive intolerance of these shocking occasions.
Loughla
When he was first in office there were protests all over. I attended multiple.
Where are they now?
etchalon
I was recommended this book a few months ago, by a friend's partner.
Reading it was difficult, and impossible not to see the parallels of what we were approaching.
This excerpt is phenomenal on its own, but the full book is worth your time.
ed
For those who want to do something, what is the 2025 version of Indivisible?
nycticorax
Indivisible still exists, and is still active: https://indivisible.org/
kzrdude
There are protests planned for today (Wednesday) across the US
tomohelix
Honestly, what would these protests do? Serious question.
Let say you manage to achieve the unthinkable and bring a huge amount of people on the street, heck let say you are so successful that you also get a full on national strike going, what then?
Do you think it would affect those in charge right now? He would not care. He is already ruining the US economy and alliances. Why would he care if some people he does not answer to get on the street and complain? In fact, it may even give him the excuse to declare an emergency and enact even worse acts.
And you know half the country support him. He has the army on his side. The court is on his side. And worst of all, the law is beneath him, literally. What would these protests do?
I swear, serious question. Help me understand. What do you hope to achieve?
internet_points
The point isn't to sway the emperor. (When the facts change, he changes the facts.) But there are many people answering to him who currently don't have the backbone to say no to him. Seeing a million people out there shouting that the emperor has no clothes on may give them that little extra bit of courage necessary to make the right choice in one of the many daily situations where they have the choice between being pandering yes-men and doing the right thing.
joakimbr
A successful protest with a large turnout shows people that they are not alone with these opinions. This instills confidence so that they dare to act "rightfully" later on.
gtsop
The purpose of a protest in general should not be to affect the people in power, it should be for enpowering and bonding the people to further enact post-protest. A moralle boost, a conversation starter, an ignition to call more people to action. Having sayd that, a very successfull protest does affect the upper ones, only temprorarily and tactically. A policy maker will still want to make X move, but ever so slightly delay it or figure out a differnt narrative to bring it back some time later.
ok_dad
> He has the army on his side
I mean, technically he controls it, however as a former officer in the military I have to believe (perhaps stupidly) that the majority of officers in the US military will refuse to be deployed illegally to squash protesting, even if it's a bit violent. If not, then I guess the people I served with were extraordinary. I hope they were run of the mill, I really do.
samiwami
is your argument that protests do nothing, therefore people should stay home?
mcosta
This is a scam to get dollars
aqueueaqueue
Protest outside your senator's residence. Every day. Until Trump is impeached (again!) and removed.
cheesemonster
[dead]
hcfman
This part is interesting:
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security."
That has already happened here in the Netherlands. Except it was organised crime. It's so difficult to fight we can't just convict them in court anymore, we need to fight them extrajudicially". So the RIEC was formed "Regional information expertise centrum". And extra judicial actions called "interventions" do happen and they do commit crimes to innocent civilians not related to organised crime in anyway. And they get away with it. And the Dutch population is by and large blissfully unware of what has happened. Most have no idea what that organisation is, but that organisation controls the police, the council, the tax department and about 13 sub-parts of government and gives them orders to carry out as part of their "interventions".
The general population would not even know the name RIEC. All they know are recent advertisements on TV encouraging people to report any suspicious behaviour happening in their neighbourhoods. These people are stupid. They could report something they misinterpreted and unwittingly destroy some innocent persons lives with the extra-judicial interventions that followed.
But yeah, as someone below has said, what's now happening is on a whole other level.
jvdongen
As far as their public website tells (https://www.riec.nl/) the RIEC is about a targeted bundling of knowledge, experience and resources to better deal with the effects of organized crimes, instead of everyone working in their own little silo.
The "interventions" are basically the forming and supporting of work groups / special interest groups around a specific organized crime phenomenon, with the intent of devising an approach to deal with the specific phenomenon. They publish a report of those so-called interventions here: https://www.riec.nl/documenten/publicaties/2024/12/18/interv...
vintagedave
> How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
The rest of this excerpt is harrowing.
groby_b
It is probably good to remember that this talks about the experience of a German, under Hitler's Nazi government.
This isn't a text that refers to current events. It talks about what happened. How things progressed. Why everybody just ambled along. How it was possible that so many just went along.
If you think there are parallels to current times, or if you feel this attacks you or your beliefs, there is value in thinking about "why". What is it about this story that reaches you? What are you willing to learn from it?
cyberlurker
I don’t see the call to action. It describes perfectly the feeling of hopelessness I’ve had for years now. The election was the last chance and everyone blew it.
UniverseHacker
There is still a lot we can do. Every demagogue and authoritarian regime collapses eventually, often quickly- and they haven't even succeeded in seizing total control yet. As long as we are alive, we can resist.
Moreover, even under the worst possible situations, individuals can find meaning and purpose. Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning" on surviving concentration camps as well as James Stockdale's books on surviving as a POW in Vietnam show firsthand that it is possible.
"You have a right to make them hurt you, and they don't like to do it." -James Stockdale
smaudet
It is ironic that the most useful thing Musk and Trump will do is wake people up to the fact their house is on fire...
Intralexical
Vladimir Putin first took power in 2000, and never really gave it up. Russians were still holding large-scale pro-democracy protests over 10 years later.
Of course, that didn't go so hot for them. But Russian democratic culture was only 20 years old, and the fall of the Soviet Union had gutted their economy almost on the level of the Great Depression. They weren't really set up to win.
Poland has been doing comparatively better. PiS first took power in 2005 and then again in 2015, and began taking over the media, compromising the courts, and attacking the constitution. But even so, they lost their majority in parliament in 2023.
US democracy is as old as the country, and the US has the strongest economy in the world. You probably have at least one more chance in 2028, which will be shaped by how effectively the authoritarian movement can consolidate and how well opposition manages to mobilize.
Democracies, and countries in general, are big, lumbering, slow-moving things. They take a long time to die, and you never know if there's a surge of vitality that will shoot forth from somewhere hidden inside them.
lelanthran
> You probably have at least one more chance in 2028, which will be shaped by how effectively the authoritarian movement can consolidate and how well opposition manages to mobilize.
The opposition blew their chance in 2024. They are going to have to either back-off on the identity-oppression olympics or accept the loss in 2028.
They need to stop blaming the voters while being out of touch with said voters.
whatever1
Τhe promise of the NRA+ folks is that guns in the hands of citizens will avert such a situation. Let's see if at least one of the things they claimed is not a lie.
brigandish
There may be a tipping point, but as we can see by the comments here and elsewhere, and the intent behind writing and reading things like the shared article, being able to see it before it happens is the hard bit, maybe the impossible bit.
Certainly, I've heard the same apocalyptic messages about every big vote in the past 25 years, whether elections or referendums. Usually, not much changes, things happen in increments. Right now there's an incremental change going on in the opposite direction to the one that was happening, but the noise seems (to me) to outdo the reality.
As the dead (currently) sibling comment writes, it's a matter of perspective. Certainly, I hope you begin to feel some hope soon.
michaelhoney
I don't know what you would consider radical if you think what is happening now is incremental.
frangfarang
[dead]
0xEF
This is hard to read.
I see myself in some of these words. I am by no means complicit in what is currently happening in the US as a US citizen, but I genuinely have no idea how to fight any of it. People want to throw words around like "resist" and "disrupt" and any other revolutionary buzz words, but the fact is I still have to get up every morning, pour my coffee and go do my job because that paycheck is what allows me to do anything else at all, in my life. I don't have the luxury of risking termination because I decided to call in sick to go to a march at my state's capitol.
I voted accordingly, I signed the petitions, I followed the rules and keep a strong moral compass to be a good human to other humans, upholding a "do no harm" policy that I take quite seriously. None of this was supposed to happen, and yet it did.
Reading this excerpt makes me feel like the Germans the book is about, the ones that history can look back on with a heavily judgemental 20/20 vision powered by the historical perspectives that came _after_ these people's lifetimes. I am not capable of being so self-righteous that I can look back on German citizens during the Nazi regime and say "well, they should have known better."
We never really know how we will react to circumstances until we are impacted by them. People go around thinking they won't fall for phishing emails and yet it is one of the most successful methods employed by predatory scammers. We might believe all our decisions are our own, while marketing has mastered the art of subtle manipulation and dark patterns that heavily govern our consumer habits. Our minds imagine arguments or stressful situations where we are able to consider multiple paths, choosing the one where we come out on top, but when we are actually in those moments, we fall back on irrational decision making and emotional reactions.
I think we got to now the same way the Germans did back then, pointed out in the article;
> It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about the fundamental things. One had no time.
We are busy, distracted, inundated with things that want to control our attentions and have been for years. We were primed for this exact thing to happen to us, and now we are in it. The story of the frog in boiling water comes to mind.
Thanks for sharing. I, and so many others, have much to think about and reconsider about what we want our lives to mean.
RangerScience
> What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
Welp.
panarky
Fascism took over Germany not by foreign attack, not by domestic civil war, not by subversion or trickery.
Fascism came with a whoop and a holler.
It was what most Germans wanted, or came to want under pressure from both reality and illusion.
They wanted it, they got it, and they liked it.
winrid
I recommend reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Third...
computerthings
No, that's a gross simplification, and leaves out all the violence and constant deception. This is a good primer on just how far off the pop culture understanding of the Nazis is: https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism/
"Without subversion or trickery" is flat out wrong. And it's also wrong for the US today.
lucianbr
I really have no clue about history, and what you say sounds very reasonable. I guess it is true.
But I think any person who wants to live in a democracy needs a bare minimum ability to detect trickery. Because there has not yet been invented a system where none of the politicians lie, and you can make good decisions based on taking them all at their word.
Now, maybe the level of subversion and trickery in pre-WW2 Germany and/or in the US now is beyond reasonable. I don't know. But in general, if "people were lied to" is a good reason for people to choose bad politicians, I don't think there is any hope for a good outcome, ever. The world just does not work that way.
BytesAndGears
Edit: thanks for all of the replies, I’m questioning my framing here now due to some smart people’s thoughts.. I suggest reading the full thread, as there are some interesting comments.
I see the obvious parallels to Trump, and I agree completely (and hate that it is happening). But I feel like I also see a lot of parallels to the democrats. Deciding Kamala would be the candidate without any public vote, for example. They both have aspects that heavily mirror the article.
I normally am not a fan of both-sides’ing an issue, but this seems like a literal case of everyone in the government basically performing that they disagree with the other, while marching down similar paths. They fight on issues that get people excited, while conspiring together to inch towards a “mystery government” which we must just trust.
I believe the path forward is to find things in common with our neighbors rather than politicians. Even if we disagree on some political views with our neighbors, we likely still have a lot more in common with them than any politician.
And, if you disagree, really truly read this with a critical eye, imagining the other side. Listen to their complaints. Because they feel the same way about your side. I’ve literally heard smart people in both political parties call each other authoritarian. So maybe the issues are actually with both sides.
tmpz22
You’re being gaslit.
Democrats did not subvert the checks and balances of our system - they faced opposition in all their initiatives in the judiciary, house, and senate.
What Musk is doing now amongst a silent government is unprecedented. His youth group is marching into federal offices walking past security and taking everything because people are afraid. They’re afraid of being fired. They’re afraid of reprisals.
The next step will be for Musk to USE what he’s taken from these IT systems. There’s a reason he beelined for the IT systems.
They have everything they need now to make lists. That is the next step. Lists of names.
BytesAndGears
Your comment comes off as alarmist, but then I realized the content of the article, and think that you may be right.
I still stand by my point that most of our politicians have done this to us, on all sides of the political spectrum. And that we would be better off empathizing with our neighbors rather than any politician.
But the scale of the jump from previous actions to this one is enormous and shouldn’t be dismissed at all.
pseudalopex
> That is the next step. Lists of names.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/federal-health-wo...
smaudet
Musk is a traitor per US legal definition and his actions highly resemble a hostile foreign national takeover, he deserves nothing less than the maxumim punishment under current US law...
rectang
> Because they feel the same way about your side.
Yes, this is surely true.
> So maybe the issues are actually with both sides.
Not necessarily.
Is Russian resentment of Ukraine equivalent to Ukrainian resentment of Russia merely because both citizenries feel their own resentments passionately?
BytesAndGears
I see your point, however, in this case the democrats and republicans are part of the same entity.
I am suggesting that the politicians’ interests are somewhat aligned, in regard to grabbing power. Their techniques are different, but the outcome is that we become more normalized to the behavior of “being ruled”, bit by bit.
Don’t forget the right-leaning protests in 2020 over democratic governors telling people they had to get vaccinated or fired, and they were not permitted to have their small businesses open or go to the gym. That was also authoritarian, regardless of how necessary some people thought it was at the time. You may not have agreed with them, but they were upset about the same things as you.
a_puppy
Rather than thinking in terms of "left vs. right", I think in terms of "extreme left vs. moderate left vs. moderate right vs. extreme right". I support moderates over extremists. I support democracy and rule of law. I care about this more than I care about left vs. right.
lelanthran
> Rather than thinking in terms of "left vs. right", I think in terms of "extreme left vs. moderate left vs. moderate right vs. extreme right". I support moderates over extremists. I support democracy and rule of law. I care about this more than I care about left vs. right.
This is a great position. I wish more people adopted it.
The problem I have seen over the past few years is that those who are on the extremes are not aware that they are on the fringe. They believe that their ideology is widely shared and common amongst everyone.
BytesAndGears
Agreed - I think we say similar things. I am mostly suggesting that authoritarians currently live in all sides of the aisle in our government right now. And they’ve all been ratcheting up in intensity, getting us used to “their” version of it. This latest jump being by far the most severe and scary.
handoflixue
> Deciding Kamala would be the candidate without any public vote, for example.
I have never really understood this parallel. What laws got broken, there?
lmm
No laws were broken. But it's very much in line with what the article is talking about:
> What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
oasisaimlessly
Don't confuse legality with morality.
dontlaugh
I think you are correct precisely because both US major parties are on the same side, the side of capital.
michaelhoney
But they are not the same. One party is weaponizing racism and ignorance to illegally destroy institutions that have taken decades to build.
suraci
and the side of israel? which happen to be the solidest evidence to prove someone is a nazi
no matter who you voted for, no matter if you voted or don't vote, you can not change this, you have no power to change it
pjc50
As a purely mechanical point: having a D president with R house and senate and supreme court is a very different situation to having R all across the board, which is why the "checks and balances" have stopped working.
goos
I see what you're saying, but listening to partisan rhetoric on both sides here does not really get you any closer to the truth here.
If you were you were to look back at the political discourse in 1920s and 1930s Germany, you'd find extremely scathing critiques from the Nazis lobbied against the Social Democratic party. Did this mean that the two were equally bad?
While it's true that Biden's actions during his recent term were frequently called unconstitutional by the right – be it for trying to raise the minimum wage or forgiving student loan debt – it was rarely from a perspective of solidifying his executive power. In the case of the Trump v. United States, he was avowedly against how the ruling implicitly expanded his executive power.
On the flip side, Trump's openly pushing the expansion of his executive power with his firing inspectors general, overruling the senate by freezing funds and appointing his own pseudo-agencies that take control over independent agencies in the executive branch.
These are fundamentally different things, and should be treated very differently, even if people from either side complain about both.
nycticorax
And of course January 6, a literal coup attempt, was perpetrated by the Rs. Nothing remotely like that on the D side.
null
LarsDu88
HackerNews is suddenly getting political content at the very top, right after PG slams the "woke" agenda.
Is the HN crowd finally waking up to what a danger to the US the "most successful startup entrepreneur of all time" is?
9dev
…and the YC CEO defending the hostile takeover of government agencies by (smart, I give you that, but still) teenagers.
LarsDu88
A 20 something is hardly a teenager. Alexander Hamilton was like 21 years old at the start of the American Revolution
fransje26
I don't think you can compare the maturity of a 21 year old from the time of the American Revolution with the maturity of a 20 year old nowadays, no..
mandmandam
I hadn't seen that, and am not finding it.. Have you got a link?
9dev
This is the tweet I was referring to:
> Whoever made the original graphic doesn’t understand the scale and speed of smart high IQ people who can program, and what they can do in a moment when intelligence now on infinite tap using LLMs
praptak
Closest I found is this one: ```I'm generally sympathetic to what you're doing. But I hope you will take your time and do it carefully. This isn't just a company," Graham wrote on X during a back-and-forth with Musk on Tuesday.```
While not technically defending it's still pretty disgusting.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tech-investor-paul...
praptak
Trumpists may be against democracy but they seem pro capital or at least pro big tech capital.
thrance
Fascists always are, that's how they gain enough support to gain power. Hitler had a lot of friends in the capitalist class, and the socialists and communists were the first to go under his rule.
jajko
How can anybody here like or admire musk (yeah, very small m) these days is beyond me. I would be properly ashamed to drive tesla, and have 0 sympathies to numerous keyed owners, its not like he became fascist overnight if you actually listened to him. I would stop giving any money to company doing any work with his companies.
Heck, there may soon be some new badges 'musk-free' as some sort of moral badge for businesses to attract and retain young customers.
null
"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so after the war, by an American Jewish journalist. It shows, in first hand accounts, the banality of evil and how easily it can prevail if people do nothing. It is an account of modern tyranny and everyday collaboration. The parallels in the feeling of what's happened in American society, particularly the silence, confusion and cowering now of anyone who should oppose a hostile takeover and dismantling of our democracy and our laws, are striking. It should have been required reading in American schools, when there was still time to educate people against these dangers.