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Anyway, the interesting parallels (mainly) aren't in the workings of the fully fledged Nazi state, they're in the rise of that entity.
Mind you, as discussed above, and given the way history works, it's not entirely unlikely that the current lunacy will eventually manage to produce it's own holocaust(s).
Unfortunately for mankind, but fortunately for those who wish to draw historical comparisions, most things the nazis did has been done to a larger or lesser extent somewhere else, so it is only a problem if you either a) don't know any other examples or b) want to draw on the emotional content of evil nazis. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
But I place much of this discussion on an analysis of certain repercussions that have not yet been dealt with.
Frankly, I've been shocked at the depiction of Greece and Greeks by the German media and German hierarchy. Given Germany's history vis-a-vis Greece, I did assume Germany would be more chaste in its approach.
This is what sticks in my craw more than anything: when discussing Greece's history of poverty and defaults on its loans, it's apparently OK to go back centuries and insinuate there is something rotten in Greek genetics or DNA, but with Germany, it's verboten to go back in history to make the same examination. As well, we hear of heeding the dangers of inflation given Germany's pre-war experience, but such references block out the experiences of lesser countries that suffered under the Nazi boot by focalizing events solely through German eyes.
To sum up: there's a double standard at play in the revision and analysis of history. If you're going to look back, you can't delimit the discussion. It presents a skewed context if you do.
in a lot of southern vacation spots, they have two areas - one for Germans, and one for the other guests.
I know scientists who went to do some work in Germany and could not stand the arrogance of the scientists they were working with, who did not have the knowledge or experience of my North American friends but would simply say "We are German, of course we are better scientists". This, while my friend is a consultant to help them set up their apparatus.
Germans are super defensive and consider that they should be supreme in all aspects of everything. For example, in my last job, the Germans would tell me that while I knew American movies, I did not seem to know German movies so well - maybe because Germans haven't made such a big impact as Americans have on the field!
And on, and on, and on.
They are no longer so military, but their aggressiveness and superiority complex needs to be toned down quite a bit. They are obnoxious.
I am, of course, speaking in generalities here and not every German fits into this type, but a LOT of them do.
And as I said, I AM German, speak it and have a German passport. And I had real problems tolerating them.
The rest of German history is another matter. Blame them for the Latin empire, or imposing that deadbeat German prince who failed to pay his bills and I don't think you will get the same reaction. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
The Nazis were more extreme and systematic about pursuing their aims, and they did the militaristic jack boots and pantomime thing, which the corporadoes don't do to anything like the same extent.
But it's desperately naive to believe that just because there are no jack boots and sieg heil salutes the corporadoes aren't inherently fascist and totalitarian.
It may be a more a sophisticated form of fascism with more indirect violence and abuse. But for anyone who can be bothered to do some basic research, there are obvious similarities between the pre-war fascist doctrine of violence and war as inherently virtuous, and the corporado ethic of 'competition' as an unarguable social good.
Likewise with the explicit social Darwinism of the Nazis and the implied social Darwinism of the corporadoes, where individuals who cannot be forced into delivering value to the state must be punished - see e.g. the current Tory pogrom against those on disability benefits.
And so on.
I think it's more dangerous not to acknowledge the parallels, than it is to flee shrieking from them because they break some imaginary rule about Godwinism.
All of which have happily been purged from the modern union.
I don't think that calling the modern manifestation of that "fascist" is helpful. It's more the ground fascism and other fun weeds can grow in.
But arguably the older colonial European cultures were equally fascist - concentration camps were a British innovation, after all. They simply called it 'patriotism'.
Now we have a different and more sophisticated brand, which uses financial dictatorship as an excuse for political oppression.
Financial dictatorship has denuded Africa and swept third world populations into corporate slavery, so I'm not sure it's any less morally acceptable in practice than Nazism was. There are fewer outright wars - more or less - but I'd guess the body count is similar, if perhaps less specifically targeted.
The one key difference is that the stated reasons for violence are more subtle - in the sense of not really making any sense - and therefore more difficult to challenge directly.
And if there's any talk of a class - perhaps not a race, not quite - which deserves everything at the expense of the disposable and defective, it never goes far beyond board rooms. (Although from what I hear it's not an unusual sentiment at public schools in the UK.)
I'd suggest this understatement is a feature and not a bug.
Really, the Nazis were terribly vulgar, and one doesn't need to be quite that blatant to get what one wants.
I'd guess the body count is similar
I'd guess it's at least an order of magnitude bigger.
If I was using it as a synonym for evil I'd be including extra goodies like paedophilia, top-down drug dealing, and certain brands of media ownership.
From the corporate point of view a disadvantage is that any given corporation has to share the control of the political system with other corporations. Hence my analogy of the US being run by a cabal of pirates. But they are all united in their insistance that the government let business be business, especially when business is giving the business to some hapless mere individual. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The history of the Albanian fascist party might actually be enlightening.
See, Albania had accepted help form Italy with loans, army training and a central bank located in Italy. Gradually they became totally dependent and when Italy finally invaded - because Albania could not pay their debts - the armed forces with its many italian officers did not even put up a resistance. Then the Albanian fascist party came to power. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
I think it's more dangerous not to acknowledge the parallels,
spot on. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
I think it's more dangerous not to acknowledge the parallels
I think it is ineffective communication to bring up the Nazis.
Italian fascists, Spanish falangists, the Albanian fascist party and so on contain similar stories and are less likely to immediatley trigger an assocation to the Holocaust. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
So when soup-kitchens form around Greece, and thousands of people go homeless as a result of policies widely perceived to be instigated by the German government, it isn't the Shoah people have on their minds when carrying plackards with Merkel in a Nazi uniform. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
Quite apart from the facts, in the consciousness in Germany the Second World War is the holocaust and then the eastern front in the Soviet union. It is a bit as if you would ask if the americans remember slavery and not the civil war.
Anyway I was very much not talking about any protest signs in Greece but about comparisons partly to the nationalsocialistic dictatorship, partly explicit to the holocaust right here on this blog.
You have read Talos's post above (btw, I have been to Crete, and I have seen impressive memorials there). It's not only Greece: many Europeans connote "occupation and starvation" rather than "holocaust" when they make a nazi reference. They think they can make themselves understood that way.
Germans connote "holocaust" before other concepts. They too think that everyone connotes in the same way.
perhaps that cruelty was par for the course for most any invading/occupying war machine, while the holocaust was novel, in its sheer scale and industrial efficiency, so that's why people in germany blow off any other parts as just normal behaviour during wartime. all armies are perceived as more or less inhumane after all. no saints on the battlefield...
ethnic cleansing is as old as time, whereas the holocaust was organised genocide on an historically unsurpassed level. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
A swedish kind of death:
Within a national discourse in a country that was occupied by Nazi Germany I guess the occupation may trumf the Holocaust as primary reference and thus be instead if you mention nazis you better say something about the occupation because that is what your audience will have on their minds.
Of course, when this get quoted in Germany, the perceived meaning shifts. But then again media in Germany has showed little willigness to understand the situation in Greece at all, so anything said in Greece is likely to be misunderstood by the general public in Germany after the German media has interpreted it.
What I am primarily concerned about in this discussion, is communication on this site. And here, I think it is important to notice that a lot of people (not at all limited to Germans) read nazis as a reference to the Holocaust and thus it becomes ineffective communication (or at least communication with a high probability of being ineffective) if you want to highlight something using, lets say Nazi sports policies. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Such collective punishments happened in Greece, in Belgium and elsewhere. This attitude is in spite of the fact that the countries from which they come have committed and continue to commit similar atrocities, even if the memory has been suppressed and/or the PR handled much better. The Nuremberg precedent and the UN Charter of Universal Human Rights are a high point when most of the world agreed to a higher standard of behavior. It is being eroded and that erosion needs to be opposed.
I would hate to hold up the USA as an example of proper behavior, given such incidents as the infamous helicopter press slaughter in Baghdad and the slaughter of witnesses to atrocity in Iraq by US soldiers, but, at least, this is not official policy. The regular troops get themselves involved in trying to execute plans in virtually impossible situations and take their frustrations out on civilians, but I blame the leadership, right up to the President, more than the troops for such occurrences. I do not hold Germany to any higher standard than I hold my own government. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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