Sunshine (she/her)Three children zip-tied at the San Antonio immigration court, ages 9-12
BCsvenAll immigration officers that follow orders are like Nazi SS, a human would refuse to carry these ideals through
The Nazis were very much humans. We need to stop “othering” evil. The Nazis weren’t some grand anomaly of people and Fascism works by prying on the same vulnerabilities that are present in all humans when it gets enabled through capitalist policies
Es waren nicht Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler oder wie die anderen heißen, die mich wegschleppen und prügeln ließen. Nein, es war der Schuster, der Nachbar, der Alte, der Milchmann, der Postbote, die Formlosen bekamen plötzlich Armbinden und eine Mütze auf dem Kopf und dann waren sie die Herrenrasse.
-Karel Stojka, Ausschwitz survivor
“It wasn’t Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler or whatever the others were called who had me dragged away and beaten. No, it was the cobbler, the neighbor, the old man, the milkman, the letter carrier, the shapeless suddenly got armbands and a cap on their heads and then they were the master race.”
I recognize biology, but if you choose to follow nonsense and have no critical thinking, you are a rascist Nazi.
I think the point is: anyone can end up acting out a facist fantacy, even you, if you’re not careful. The quality of ‘evil’ is surprisingly all-too-human… If you’re interested, the film “Jojo Rabbit” explores the idea a bit. Worth a watch!
I boils down to the level of Empathy one has.
Empathy is a scale, not an absolute, and plenty of people who do have some Empathy can switch off the little they have easily enough, whilst some can’t or, if they do, doesn’t last long.
That’s why if you look around you can sorta see that people can be roughly divided into three groups, a minority who are really good people who care for others and help them out for not gain for themselves (often even at a loss for themselves), another minority that couldn’t give a rats ass about others and are willing to destroy other people’s lives if they themselves personally benefit from it (sometimes in petty ways, such as just the feeling of being powerful) and the majority who are in the middle and just float towards whatever they perceive is the main mode of being of the time and place they’re living in, which in America now is Selfish Individualism.
So yeah, you’ll always find individuals who won’t bat an eye at doing this, and in the right time and place most people will be in practice living with their empathy switched off hence will look at this and feel nothing (because they won’t empathize with the children at all), and at the same time as the other poster pointed out some people find it impossible not to look at this and feel disgust and even rage because they can’t switch their empathy of, or at least not for long.
I get what you’re saying, but you’re talking about people as if they were immutable. Empathy only works if you see the other side as human or deserving — which is why there’s always a concerted campaign to dehumanize the victims of a genocide to the aggressors. Never believe you are above falling into that trap, because the second you believe you are the exception is when you’re most easily duped into losing your humanity. You may see it plainly here and now, but you might not another time when the circumstances are different…
Well, yeah, the whole point of dehumanizing other people is to switch off empathy for them, which is why that’s pretty much a core Fascist practice.
My point being twofold:
- The massive middle floats around and can be made to feel more empathy for others, or less empathy for others, including through tricks like dehumanization of people and on the opposite end things like good Theatre and Film to bring close to people the experience of others whom they never met.
- There are people, at both ends of the scale who are pretty close to immutable on this, on one end those who can’t empathize at all and never will because they simply don’t have the brain wired for that (such as Psychopaths), and on the opposite end those who can’t switch off their empathy and can at most temporarily suppress it.
More specifically to your point, this also reflects in how easy it is to convince people of the inhumanity of others - those with little or no empathy will easily believe it, whilst those with very high Empathy will not, and even if indeed everybody can somehow be made to feel nothing for a select group of others, the high empathy types would require a lot more work and a lot more direct than the rest of people, and that’s beyond what modern mass-media and social media can achieve by themselves - the system is setup to brainwash the bulk of people, as turning those is enough to make happen whatever the puppeteers want to see happen.
Your point is entirely correct and appropriate for the bulk of people but isn’t correct for everybody - you’re jumping to conclusions about everybody by observing the norm and, worse, in a society that currently is pretty much anti-Empathy: I mean, if even gender in humans is a lot more fluid than looking at the norm would lead us to believe, why do you think that it’s possible to make any statement about Empathy that applies to everybody?!
This is how its possible for both you and the other poster to be correct.
That said, I agree with you that everybody should just in case not assume themselves immune to modern manipulation and thus should be eternally on alert for attempts by others to make their minds against “outsiders” (and similarly, make their minds favor “insiders”, such as the phenomenon of “copaganda”).
Your last paragraph I completely agree with and is exactly the point I’m trying to make. No matter how sure you are that you’re in the right and championing the right cause, the only way to make sure that you really are is to be in a position of constant doubt about it. The second you stop reflecting on it is when you can be made to anything. The ones that think themselves outside ideology are always those most deeply inside of it.