Been saying this for a while, but will repeat it for emphasis: “I was only following orders” was rejected as a defense at the Nuremberg Trials.

@Strandjunker

Agreed, but the defense of "I was only increasing shareholder value" was accepted as a defense for corporations.

It successfully got those corporate interests acquitted, the same ones who funded the Nazis from 1933 onwards.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5815470-fossil-fuel-industry-accountability/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/business/oil-liability-shield-laws-climate-lawsuits.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/06/utah-fossil-fuels-legal-shield

We can be assured that the kleptocrats of Project 2025 are laying the groundwork to escape culpability.
Bradley, Koch, Coors, Scaife Mellon, Seid, Uihlein
https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/

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Trump and the money men: Billionaires are repeating the Hitler mistake - Salon.com

Germany's business elite thought they could control the demagogue. Steve Schwarzman and Peter Thiel think that now

Salon.com
@Npars01 none of the wealthy and corporate supporters of Hitler on either side of the Atlantic thought that he was a “mistake.” That was just the narrative that they invented when he started losing and they knew that they might be held accountable. Unless, we the people everywhere (I have started a preliminary list of the Canadians involved), start holding our current crop of thesearseholes to account, they will do the same again.

@Lynnd

Charles Stross's science fiction novel Glasshouse got me interested in how The Moneyed manipulate narratives about history for self-advantage.

Why is the murder of historians & destruction of their work so critical to the powerful in the prelude to war?

Self-serving narratives about the Civil War and "Slavery is Good for You" feeds the financialization & entrenchment of inhumanity, for example.

Just like how banking & private equity hedge fund managers fund ecocide now.

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@Npars01 @Lynnd

"Why is the murder of historians & destruction of their work so critical to the powerful in the prelude to war?"

Just like you said: "Something, something controls the past controls the future: something something controls the present controls the past. "