Disabled people were among the first victims of the Nazis. What I did not know was that this program of eugenics through murder was very furtive at first. They knew that "do gooders" and "the church" would object to killing disabled people, often children just to save money.
They were careful not to have too many deaths at any one center at first. But as the stress of war created further chaos they become more open about these murders.
Thinking about it, it doesn't make sense that they would be open about doing such a thing. There were people who objected. Those people were called sentimental and unreasonable. And of course the murders would expand.
The killing centers were disguised as care facilities. Sometimes they billed families for months after their relative was dead.
There is something to learn from how defunding state care for disabled people played an important role in winning doctors and nurses over to the idea that just killing these people would be a good idea.
Funding was cut for state care facilities and they became miserable places. Patients acted out and a gulf grew between those providing care and their patients. Meanwhile propaganda suggested that these people would be better off dead.
How are people turned into problems? Into "burdens on society" into objects of contempt?
I think about how people get annoyed and angry when a sick homeless person is on the subway. Yes it's annoying that this guy is sprawled out over 3 seats, or yelling and making noise, but why has this happened. Did he choose to come and make my commute more difficult? Or is this the only place he can lay down for a bit where it isn't outside and freezing?
I see articles claiming he "apologize" but I don't see how you can apologize for:
“Or involuntary lethal injection… or something. Just kill ‘em.”
We know what you really think, my guy. He should have been fired.
I often think about a curse that would cause everyone in the world to look at Brian Kilmeade the way that people often look at homeless people. As if your whole life means less than my temporary comfort.
The centers also collected state pensions and social security for months after killing the people sent there for care. So they were very scammy in a way that I don't think we recognize enough in the Nazis, one state sponsored but privatized operation mooching off of public benefits.
That I have heard more about "welfare moms" than this in my life is something to ponder.
Unfortunately I've heard people say that our Stephen Miller could not have such evil ambitions because he is a part of a regime that is too petty and criminal and the nazis were more "ideological"
I think this is a troubling trend where people believe that the nazis were "at least efficient" which is just ingesting their old propaganda uncritically.
@futurebird the nazis were incredibly prolific in disseminating propaganda that people would still believe 90 years later. From the efficient governing, over the consistent ideology, to the "german" engineering of the war machine
But like they were full of people with idiosyncratic ideas and beliefs, full of yes men only out for personal benefit.
Himmler was obsessed with some weird germanic pseudo myth,
Hitler with impractical architecture…
They gave the appearance of "suspending" it but they went back to doing it not long after, this only really helped people who were Catholic and had family.
I would add that the resistance saved lives. It was risky. Although I wish it had gone much much further. I don't know who was scared to go further and who didn't care.
In the end history will only remember the actions your take, not what is in your heart.
Reading about the sneakiness of Aktion T4 (the murders had started and most people did not know, or looked away if they did)... and then the limited resistance from the church. (But still brave some lost their lives.)
And knowing what came after it just makes this current moment feel very cold. Like we are on a dark road and there isn't any good way to turn back.
But, that's just a feeling. The reality is that there is still time. But this shows how it can be hard.
There is a lesson here I think. Aktion T4 blew up in media after killing about 70,000 disabled people. The German public and the international public were broadly disgusted. Hitler said he would shut down the program. Made a new center that people could visit without any gas chambers. And this sort of worked?
The lesson is you can never trust people who do such things if they say "oh we will stop."
Now we can consider how we might apply this to our lives today.
Big LOL here. As we learned from Eichman, Evil can be very boring. It doesn't usually walk and talk grand like villains in Hollywood films. Evil is very middle class: Just gifted enough to keep up the bureaucracy to keep a system doing evil working sufficient effectively. Evil suffers from a certain lack of fantasy. It's enough if the machinery of evil "just works".
And now, anybody, please tell me, Stephen Miller is not up for the role.
Frankly, the outright pettiness was also what characterized the Nazi regime. People need urgently to read up on the third Reich before they get those ideas that the Nazis were somehow people with a grand ideological vision that enabled their evil deeds.
I am German and a hobbyist student of German history. The Trump regime reeks practically like Hitler's. The very texture their actions and their talk have is the same.
@futurebird @emilychwiggy over the past few years in the UK we've had at least a couple local councils found to be talking about "warehousing" disabled people:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/25/warehouse-disabled-people-bristol-city-council
Which, as a disabled person in the UK living somewhat locally to these areas, has been terrifying to watch (especially given these are just tge ones we know about, and because I've wstched peopke brush this off as unimportant)
It's not "unimportant" any time the state or a company hired by the state is charged with "keeping" people be they disabled, or people jailed but not convicted like many collected by ICE that system ... if it should exist at all needs to be transparent.
Don't tell me I can't visit, I can't take photos, I can't talk to anyone.
What are the odds that DHS and ICE are going to do the same thing with the hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans they are going to be sticking in their death camps?
I cannot say "no no that's impossible it's not worth worrying about"
When politicians and media try to visit the detention center they won't let them in. When you ask for a list of who is in there they won't say. It can be very difficult to simply find someone once they are picked up they might be flown across the country ... which is odd right? Why move people around so much?
I think we need to bang on the gates more.
@Quasit @futurebird @emilychwiggy
What are the odds that they haven't been, already?
Who are the people in all those unmarked graves behind that one prison in Jackson?
And how many more are there?
Considering we're dealing with people who traffic children for all that Epstein stuff, I don't think we can rule anything out when asking what ELSE they traffic people for-- on all these planes flying with their transponders turned off, passing prisoners to places that still have overt slavery, like Mauritania. I put nothing past these monsters. Nothing. The sort of people who double-tap elementary schools and hospitals... There is no line they won't cross.
How many Mengeles and worse could be operating right now that we'd never hear about? And how many more, going back over the years?
In Germany most people didn't know what was happening until the camp were liberated and the footage came out. Oh, they probably heard rumors but they shrugged it off. Nowadays, we can't even trust photos anymore, what kind of coverage would it take for people to face it, much less do something about it?
@MonniauxD @violetmadder @Quasit @futurebird @emilychwiggy
It seems to be that if you offer the public the faintest thread that they can deny a massacre, they will deny it.
The Holocaust was unique in that the whole thing was blown open with thousands of photographs and witnesses, and shoved into the face of an occupied nation who had no option to reject it.
@violetmadder @Quasit @futurebird @emilychwiggy
Among other things, it's heartbreaking that the mother in the Mississippi article said she would escalate to the federal government for help.
If she did, today's regime would have buried the case by now.
In 2011 an Italian actor and director, Marco Paolini, made an impressive theatrical piece about Aktion T4.
A lot of people didn't know that.
Nazo
myrmepropagandist
Andrew Deacon
Joseph
Emily Stronk 
Wolfgang
Glitzersachen
lez-anya
Quasit
Violet Madder
David Monniaux
Brie Mmm
rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua
Paul Chernoff