Mitchell Epner: A difference between me and many of my friends is that most of my friends believe that manners and decorum mean that a person will not participate in fascism. Maybe it is the lesson that my bitter Jewish grandmother taught me, but I've always believed that aristocrats can push us into the ovens.

A difference between me and many of my friends is that most of my friends believe that manners and decorum mean that a person will not participate in fascism. Maybe it is the lesson that my bitter Jewish grandmother taught me, but I've always believed that aristocrats can push us into the ovens.

30% of Americans will absolutely kill you, or me, if it’s fun or convenient or temporarily popular. The real action is in what percentage can’t be persuaded to give a shit.

Solidarity, my friend. To get to you, they have to go through me.

Adams famously said a third were for the Revolution, a third were against, and a third didn't care. The %s may vary but the basic division is probably right. ...as a historian I'd say this sort of split is true everywhere and everywhen.

A read a similar quote once from someone describing nazism is Germany. “A third of the nation decided to kill another third while the remaining third stood by and watched”

...recent American history is proving to be a distressingly-excellent illustration that properly motivating part of that apathetic third to join with you at key moments can be a life-or-death undertaking, either literally or politically.

30% is a good approximation but I think the precise number is 27%: kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunc...

Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factorkfmonkey.blogspot.com John: ... I mean, what will it take? That last speech literally made no sense . It was crazy drunken bar talk! Islamic radicals are lik...

That's beautiful writing.

On a lighter note, Casey Stengel on baseball: The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.

more than 50% if they are guaranteed to get away with it.

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

The 'World's Best Dad' mug resting on the edge of a furnace used to warm the implements of torture is one of the most chilling images to conjure I've ever read.

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Lots of the fascist movers and shakers were middling business people in Germany. The equivalent to that right wing fail son who inherited his dad's car dealership in your area.

Topf & Sons - I mean they weren’t even committed nazis but they still participated enthusiastically in the murder of millions

The term “good Germans” exists for a reason.

Yep. As a friend said "I don't care if they're nice. I care about who's going to fight against the brown shirts."

That is a nearly universal part of a Jewish upbringing: instilling a background but ever present vigilance about fascist strongmen, and about the banal processes that could turn fellow citizens against you (and against humanity itself). Those ingrained concepts are *screaming* in my thoughts now.

This was largely the message sent by the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds.

I do wonder how much of what's happening today can be explained by the increasing loss of the generation who experienced fascism directly.

Nope. They know fascism is bad. They want it precisely because of how the marginalized were treated in those fascist states. Let’s not excuse them. They’re horrible people who know exactly what they’re doing.

Aristocrats are the specific most likely people to do fascist shit.

Aristocrats in all forms are malignant glioblastomas on whatever country or society they are allowed to exist in and must be treated as such for the common good.

My great grandmother would say “or cossacks”.

When I look in the mirror, I know that some of my great-great grandmothers were not always able to outrun the Cossacks.

Terrible times. Those collective memories of utter horror are the reason why present-day antisemitism feels so painful to so many.

My family certainly couldn't and that's why we're American now.

youtube.com/shorts/9QcYs...

“You hunted my mum with dogs through the snow” Alfie Solomon Peaky Blinders #shortsyoutube.com #peakyblinders #alfiesolomons #scene

Wish some other people with Jewish grandmothers wouldn’t cozy up to fascists and Holocaust deniers because “it’s good for Israel.”

I do not (and will not) make common cause with fascists and Holocaust deniers, even though I care about what is good for Israel. In part (but only in part), it is because I know that they will turn on Israel when it suits them. The bigger reason is: I hate Illinois Nazis (and all fellow travelers).

They simply don’t believe they’d be the ones sent to the ovens.

Yeah and the “never again” people have decided they don’t care if it happens again, as long as it isn’t them.

Aristocrats would never push someone into an oven. That's work for the servants.

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Always be skeptical. Never trust.

Also, this is a time when I'm glad to be a Jew: my people have always been on the outs with the majority and we've had to fend for ourselves. We take the long view of history and the law. We hope it will change -- if not this year, then next year. Or the year after. Don't like the law? Change it.

It seems to be human nature that unless one experiences it for oneself, most bad outcomes are only theoretical. "It can't happen here," or "It cannot happen to me."

It is the most basic defense against the fear of the unknown.

The same type of person who, upon hearing the sound of jackboots, steps aside and holds the door open with perfect civility and decorum.

The ones pushing us into the ovens will feign righteous indignation about us not filing into the line orderly enough, and then not liking "our tone" when we tell them to fuck all the way off.

Also "very nice people" who are confident they wouldn't do anything wrong. At Union Theological Seminary they have the magazines from the Deutsche Christen (pro-Hitler majority faction of the German church)-indistinguishable from American church magazines in most points.

thats where america seems to be headed for what ? a scam artist who paints himself orange

(stares wild eyed in English aristocrat of the thirties)

20C Germany falsified that position - people who were mannered and "decent" chose to participate in fascism and to rob and kill their neighbors for it, with Russia, China, Chile, and other countries providing further horse-beating. Not believing in gravity won't keep you from hitting the ground.

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of the Nazi equivalent of aristocrats.

The Republican Party, like the Nazis, is all about stealing. Execute millions of Americans to steal their property, Republicans would happily do it.

I was just saying that this is a huge problem in elite legal circles. I’ve heard so many times to the effect that “so and so will be a reasonable judge or official, no need to worry,” based solely on the fact that they’re pleasant with colleagues and don’t have two heads.

A lot of people don't know that Franco had the Basque land bombed by Hitler's bombers. I know because I have Basque ancestry and some of my ancestors were killed by Franco/Hitler.

I believe the Germans had names for both Suit Nazis and Boot Nazis. Robes are included in "Suit," I realize, a little too late.

"most of my friends believe that manners and decorum mean that a person will not participate in fascism" harpers.org/archive/1941... Classic party game!

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompsonharpers.org

Goebbels didn't have Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, right-wing radio, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Sinclair Broadcasting, compliant and willful accomplices tech companies and useless other networks (ABC, CBS + NBC). Add a Republican Party with no morals/corrupt Republican Supreme Court Justices.

My grandmother agrees with yours