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Comment by OtterCoder | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there is much more of propaganda than insight in this piece. For one, because it looks specifically at Nazi-ism, and collaboration, rather than at fascism from the home front.

Secondly, it reeks of 'The good old boy' and the idea that a good man could never be deceived. It promotes a sense that, if you are simply American enough, you can escape the feverish grip of nationalism or public panic.

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I didn't get that from the article at all.

I think this sentence in the last section of the article is the central point:

> Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi.

That Nazism is a product of cruelty, unhappiness, and insecurity.

Fascism is about dominance. About being a part of the group to which the other is subordinate. Which is something that appeals to people who are deeply bitter, delight in suffering (of their own or others), or lack a sense of self-identity.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never... become school shooters, or terrorists, etc. At some level, people want to be winning at life: if they are, they're invested in the current system. If they aren't, they may seek change (or at least immerse themselves in some subculture).

'winning' implies that there has to be someone 'losing' and I don't feel like that represents my view of my life though I do feel very satisfied.

I am very glad that I was able to purchase a modest house that I can work on and modify. I'm happy with designing and implementing solutions to the technical problems my job entails. I'm happy that I have the opportunity to save so that I have a financial cushion should many unexpected events occur.

And I don't think this situation requires anyone else to lose.

Now I would admit that I might not be and likely am not representative of everyone in our society but isn't that more of an attitude towards expectations than some sort of static rule? I might have the expectation that I should have a Ferrari and an attractive and doting partner, or a happy perfect family, but there is no reason my expectations justify hurting others.

I think if we look closer at social dysfunction in general we would see that the people lashing out have either unrealistic expectations or have someone been marginalized even beyond what we all might agree about as a baseline of expectations: that we have the opportunity to take part in society without being treated shabbily for no reason, that we are appreciated at some level by someone, and that we can be vulnerable and rely on others without being neglected or ostracized.

There will always be people who are naturally dysfunctional due to mental health issues but I have to think most of the worst problems society faces could be greatly reduced if we cared about each other more.

By buying a house, you've put upward pressure on house prices in your area, thus making them more expensive for everyone else. Some people would be nudged over the edge from affording it to not affording it.

I think the loss, if it actually exists, is distributed thinly over a lot of people so it's hard to see.

> I don't think this situation requires anyone else to lose.

I don't know enough macroeconomics, nor enough about the veracity of macroeconomics, to determine whether this is true. I'm not calling you out, or asking you to defend your thesis to strangers. I'm just wondering whether you're able to reason end-to-end about this in your own mind, to reach this conclusion.

Also, whether or not your good fortune depends on losers, there are losers. An exchange at dinner the other night went like this: What slogan did Obama run on? Change. And what is it that people want to change? They want their lives to stop sucking so hard.

Whether their lives are "sucking" is a matter of perspective. There are billions of people around the world who would be only too grateful for a life that "sucks" as much as theirs do. You'll find people from all walks of life who have convinced themselves that their life sucks and that, if only they got that raise, or if the economy grew at x % or if the guy who talks like them became president, it would suck less. As long as the majority of people keep looking to external factors to determine their happiness and satisfaction with life, your society will always be vulnerable to populism.

At best, I think this could only be a solution for an individual. Perhaps I'm simply lacking imagination here, but the U.S. adopting some alternative to materialism is one of the last things in the world I can picture.

What did you anchor these modest goals upon? Chances are they were based on your perception of how people around you are doing. If you lived in the Paleolithic, perhaps winning would have been having a decent cave, and enough game to feed your family. In another world, perhaps you'd require only one or two modest robot butlers, not a fleet like many others have. Dumb analogies, I know. The point is that, most people's goals are derived from what seems achievable based on perceptions of how everybody else is doing at "the game" we call capitalism. As soon as you start doing that, there are winners and losers by definition.

The winners and losers in your description seems more a ranking, rather than causal. In most games, a winner causes there to be a loser. What about GP's stated goals and achievements would cause someone else to lose at the game of life?

I have friends who would consider me a "loser" by rankings (no house, no wife, no kids; I rent, have a fiancee, and, well, no kids). But their achievements have not caused me to be in this state. It's just facts of how life has played out, and differing priorities.

You can be winning at your own self defined game. And you probably should be.

Not all games are zero sum. I'm not saying that you need to win in order for others to lose. The cause and effect are almost the inverse of that. What I'm saying is, your definition of success and winning is defined by either achieving what others have, or avoiding situations you know are possible because other people are in them.

You know you're winning because your not in a third world country, homeless, starving, immediately dying, etc. You wouldn't know those were states to avoid unless others were in them.

This is what I was hinting of when I mentioned subcultures: https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society

The summary is that everyone needs to be a winner, and we can be as long as we all play a different game.

I think the article addresses that, too, with Mr. C: "...he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism."

> a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery

Wow. How little things change.

I love to read ancient documents that have survived to our days, all the way back to the first written forms of documentation.

The conclusion taken from almost 4 000 years of written information is that indeed things change very little regarding human politics.

Fascism, for the people who shape it as such, will be pushed forward by some of the kinds of people the article mentions. However, Germany was and is and always will be peopled by mostly reasonable, kind, stout folks, because most people everywhere are reasonable, kind, and stout.

Even the cream of a country can be goaded and led and pushed into fascism, as the tide sweeps across a frightened or depressed people. The soldiers of Germany had to be shown the horrors and crimes of their superiors in gory detail, and still they had to be marshaled by strict speech laws to prevent the resurrection of a horror that largely benefitted the masses.

Compare how Germany was treated by the world after WWI, and after WWII. Big difference in treatment, and consequences for that treatment. Fortunately the lessons of WWI hadn't been forgotten when it came time to cleanup after WWII.

Even if a punitive approach had been taken, it would have been a very different post war period. Germany was utterly destroyed, beaten and occupied. In WW1 that wasn’t the case and while there had been massive loss of life, Germany was intact.

> Fascism is about dominance. About being a part of the group to which the other is subordinate.

This is utterly correct.

> Which is something that appeals to people who are deeply bitter, delight in suffering (of their own or others), or lack a sense of self-identity.

This is absurd, and does not follow from the first part.

Here's the truth (and you do get this from the article) : anyone who rises a lot in the world, or has that as an ambition, in either popularity or money, would "go nazi". That is very different from actively persecuting people, and that should be clearly understood.

I feel like dropping another 10 points on this site, so may I just make the point. Someone who was born a man (or woman) of some privilege (not necessarily much, but some) and does not really seek to advance, someone who gets his life pre-planned for them, and follows the plan. "Dad was a doctor, and I will be too". Those are the people that do not go Nazi, that, no matter what, will never join.

In other words : rich republicans would be the bastion against Nazism. They would be the people that, no matter what efforts are done, cannot be converted. Doctor families. Lawyer "dynasties".

The Bay Area ... would be a hotbed of Nazism in America. No doubt about it. Nazism has everything that SF wants : loads of young people. Support from universities and "follows science" (read the newspapers from the time). It sings the praises of the poor, gives a clear reason for the poor getting repressed (rich jewish bankers), Nazism hates the status-quo and wants to change it at all costs (even though most people don't nearly realize just how big those costs were going to get. Please keep that thoroughly in mind before judging people).

Charlottesville. A rich Republican president says 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides' about people who self described themselves as Nazis and chanted Nazi slogans. Yes many other Republicans distanced themselves, but nevertheless he has not poisoned the well too much for them, because he's still useful otherwise.

Birtherism to me is Nazism. It is his original sin entering the political scene, and the party did not do anywhere near enough to repudiate it. The passivity was tacit acceptance of it. That's not a bastion.

> This is absurd, and does not follow from the first part.

It doesn't have to follow from the first part (I can imagine several things it could precede from), but it is entirely credible that bitterness/resentfulness might go hand-in-hand with a desire to dominate. If you've been told long enough that you've gotten the short end of the stick, if you feel you've been looked down on, not given enough respect, or even if you're doing quite well for yourself, but of course you've earned it, and there are all kinds of hangers-on and disgusting and lazy people who are still somehow getting a piece of your labors... it's quite plausible that you'd love nothing more than either (a) to be in a position of dominance over your oppressors (real or imagined) or (b) watch someone else who is in such a position really give it to 'em good.

> rich republicans would be the bastion against Nazism. They would be the people that, no matter what efforts are done, cannot be converted. Doctor families. Lawyer "dynasties".

Presumably engineers in that professional class as well.

Amazing that nazi Germany was able to do as much as it did without the help of doctors and engineers and other respectable and conscientious members with a place society. Almost recommends nazism as a philosophy if they were able to basically conquer Europe primarily with the poor, young, faux-science disrupters and others who had no stake in the status quo.

Yeah, this article was very "See if you're a good person like me you'd never go nazi".

If the SJW's taught me anything it's that the people loudest yelling that they're the good people would be the first people to go nazi. It wouldn't be the same nazi's nowadays - their uniforms would be different, their slogans would be different, the group they scapegoat all their problems on would be different.

But they'd still be plowing through imprisoning and killing people who fit into their nearly arbitrary category not caring what kind of people they actually are because "their group is the reason why bad things happen!".

They'd simply go on their facebook feed, be told who they should hate this week, and gleefully post about how they're being put in camps to slowly die, all the while convinced they were doing the right moral thing.

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