@bastianallgeier thank you for sharing.

I can't imagine being a young child and brought up to believe Nazism is good and proper. If you learn it from childhood, it must also be extremely hard to change, too. I'm sorry you had such a person in your life but I'm also glad his influence actually had the opposite effect on you in the end.

Never again.

@bastianallgeier thank you for calling out the opportunists. They are the most dangerous because when they inevitably can't control the monsters they helped take power they have a sunk cost so they do nothing.

Thank you for the courage to write this.

@bastianallgeier Thank you. Please don't delete it. One of the things that stood out for me:

"He once told me how you did not need to fear anything back then. If someone committed a serious crime, they would be executed, so nobody would dare to."

They promise: "All problems can be solved if we just dare to use enough violence. Crime exists because we are too soft." Who judges right and wrong based on what? Injustice doesn't exist because we are not cruel and brutal enough with each other.

@bastianallgeier Danke für den Text. Mein Opa ist kurz nach meiner Geburt gestorben, er hatte einen ähnlichen Werdegang und Überzeugungen. Ich hab schon oft überlegt, wie ich mich wohl mit ihm verstanden hätte.

Packen wir’s an.

@bastianallgeier @hankg

«My grandpa taught me that Nazis are fantastic storytellers. The new Nazis are on Tiktok and elsewhere on social media, telling great stories. Stories of safety, of simplicity, of order and justice. Stories of lives without crises. Adventure stories.»

@bastianallgeier This is a brilliant, brave piece of writing. Thank you for posting it.

I've also recently been thinking a lot about my German grandparents. Their story is very different from your grandpa's (they were Jewish refugees from the Nazis, and very lucky to escape in the 30s) but learning about their lives led me to the same conclusions as you, and, also like you, to an anti-fascism I feel in my bones.

@bastianallgeier

“My grandpa taught me that Nazis are fantastic storytellers. The new Nazis are on Tiktok and elsewhere on social media, telling great stories.”

I think the economy and clarity of conservative storytelling contributes enormously to cultivating conservatives. Conservatives think linearly. Their stories pit good guys against bad guys without the clutter and confusion of nuance. Thus Fox News. Thus Bill O’Reilly histories. Thus the Redemption. The list goes on.