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Comment by blastbeat | Hacker News Reader

It's like watching a documentary about the last summer before World War 2. People enjoying themselfes, everything looks peaceful and fine on the surface. Some people suspect what is about to come, but don't dare to really watch into the abyss. Only a few really know. Those people of back then, we are today. If you ever wanted to experience, how people in the past were so clueless and stupid to change the course of the future for the better, now you've got an VIP-ticket for the live show.

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Yes, it’s horrifying, isn’t it? I’m in Italy but I follow American and British (I’m half Italian, half British) and there’s a never ending display of constant hysteria.

I used to be very harsh with Germans collectively for having ‘allowed’ Hitler to come to power and for having been complicit in the crimes he perpetrated. But now I’m not so sure. I’m not sure if the grim spectacle going on in the US is proof or refutation of my distaste. Does it show how easily dysfunctional evil can mesmerise the population into allowing it to govern, or is it proof that many people are putting up a damn tough fight to make sure that evil does not flourish and take root? I’m not sure.

> I used to be very harsh with Germans collectively for having ‘allowed’ Hitler to come to power and for having been complicit in the crimes he perpetrated. But now I’m not so sure.

As a German, so did I. But my illusion of control dissolved in the face of doom. There is nothing you can do but hope for the best.

The Germany thing, it’s odd... I’m of German descent too (my Italian father had a German father himself, so I’m a quarter German, a quarter Italian, and half English).

There’s something truly amazing of the enormity of what was done, and the knowledge that one oneself is somehow tethered or rooted in it, that just causes one to instantly condemn. The more nuanced view... it feels like weaselling out and making excuses, like apologists do.

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