Damn, if only there was someone in history other than Hitler to praise for investing in infrastructure, speaking charismatically, and being in power while other people built cool buildings. 🤨
Guess we’ll have to ignore the extremely obvious context of praising Hitler for any reason whatsoever, because it’d be terrible to be unnuanced about a mass murdering bigot.
I’m not praising Hitler at all. I’m only saying that people are deliberately ignoring that he didn’t do everything he did because he wanted to be evil, but because he had a (horrible) vision for the world. And not all aspects of that vision where inherently evil.
Humans just have the tendency to put everything into boxes of good or bad. It’s uncomfortable if something is not fitting 100% into one of those boxes. And from my experiences people almost never fit 100% into those boxes.
Even serial killers sometimes have grandmas they lovingly took care of.
Even child-rapists have friends they support when they need help.
Sure they still are monsters - but they still are humans, too
I thought given the subject of the thread it was obvious that I was referring to Trump praising Hitler, not that I was accusing you of praising him.
And given the state of the world, I devote about as much energy to caring about the dehumanization of Hitler as I do for the welfare of Guinea worms. In a perfect world, sure, everyone should have an understanding that everyone is a person and not a cartoon caricature. And that world is never going to exist if you stand around letting presidents praise fucking Hitler.
I’m not sure I’m particularly clear about the distinction you’re trying to make between wanting to be evil, and having a world view that requires you to do a ton of evil stuff.
If we humans have agency, then surely our worldview is at least somewhat a decision we’re culpable for.
Also, there are times it’s appropriate to discuss certain topics, and times it is not. A dissertation about the upsides of Hitler is not relevant to Trump being compared to Hitler, unless you intend to make the argument that Trump being like Hitler might also have some upsides.
There are people that get off on other people suffering and that want to create as much suffering as possible.
Those people are evil.
Hitler had an agency that saw people suffering as a means to an ends. That doesn’t excuse any of it and taking that route to get to that goal certainly is an evil decision, but that doesn’t automatically make the goal a bad one (in this case it was since the Holocaust was pretty much the goal and not just the way there).
Perhaps I’m using the wrong words as it’s not my native language but I think there are things he did that aren’t automatically bad just because it was Hitler who did them. That’s not praising the guy - it just acknowledges that even a broken clock is right twice a day and not always showing the wrong time by default.
I never said he was a good guy? I just said that not everything he did was bad.
Are you disagreeing that his vision about the Autobahn or the founding of Volkswagen or the construction of things like the Olympiastadion are not good things despite the huge amount of horrible shit he did?
Are you not acknowledging that he was more charismatic in his speeches than many other people despite all the hateful things he fueled using that skill?
How is it so hard to see someone that’s clearly an enemy of everything we stand for today as a human and not as some supernatural evil? I think doing this is just helping the populists divide their countries even faster. There needs to be an understanding of why people follow those kind of guys and which things they are doing are not inherently evil to see why people were drawn to those characters.
I’m not saying you should compromise with Nazis. I’m in fact politically active here in Germany to oppose the CDU making deals with the AfD on a local level. I’m only saying that even the Nazis didn’t do things because they wanted to be evil - they did it because they had a different (horrible) vision of the world. I think it’s important to not see anyone as 100% evil as that is just a very cheap way to not have to think about uncomfortable things
Volkswagen used forced labor from concentration camps. I don’t think there’s any way to argue that a company built upon human suffering isn’t evil - or at least wasn’t at the time.
The Autobahn was built using forced labor of re-education camps, prisoners of war, prison inmates, and Jews from concentration camps. If the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight in an aircraft built of human flesh from murdered victims, nobody sane would be celebrating their achievement.
There is NOTHING honorable about causing harm to others so you can have more for yourself.
It was just an example because just last week someone was claiming Germany should stop using the Olympiastadion in Berlin only because it was constructed for propaganda reasons.
The fact that Hitler is responsible for that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. A horrible person can also do a few things right. You can acknowledge that without praising the guy.
No of course not - Trump’s a huge buffoon that loves dictators just for the fact that they are dictators. I was just referencing the “Are You Really Going to Elect a Guy Who Has Good Things to Say About Hitler?”-Part, since that in itself for me is not automatically a negative.
Ignoring that Hitler had positive traits, too, and pretending that people voted for a guy that was evil in all aspects is convenient but very dangerous - especially since it enables people voting for populists like Trump to pretend that he can’t be as bad as Hitler (which is probably the case - but if Hitler is painted as this absolute evil it’s actually very easy to make this claim without a second though. If you see Hitler as an opportunistic asshole that wasn’t inherently evil just for the sake of it then that comparison is a lot closer.
Demonizing Hitler as some kind of comic-book villain is ignoring how complex the situation leading up to him becoming leader of the Third Reich was and how people didn’t see him for how bad he was until it was too late.
Under the circumstances it seems such a small quibble to spill so much ink over, unless you are trying to make the larger point that we ought to be more aware of the conditions that make the rise of a bloody-handed dictator possible in the first place? I think that would be worth talking about, but the point was difficult to see at first.
He said he wanted his military generals to look like Hitler’s
In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?”
[…]
According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.
[…]
This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.
Democracy is all about that gray area where compromises are found
That gray area which allows for oppressing the masses in order to enrich the few? I am happy to say that human economic activity, as immoral as it is, seems to be reducing the chances of humans surviving. Good riddance to this kind of ignorant trash, and I hope your money helps your descendants when your decisions kill them.
I’d live to overthrow capitalism today rather than tomorrow - I just know that there are too many egoistic assholes out there that would just abuse whatever socialist system we would implement to fuck people over. The same kind of people that today have established themselves as billionaires - only that today it’s only a couple that managed that and I’d assume that between 20 and 40% of the population are completely ignorant of others if they think it helps themselves in the short term.
All I’m saying is that we should work together towards a goal that helps everyone instead of splitting the population and creating infighting which only helps those that are already on top.
If there was a common ground between Democrats and Republicans that certainly would be a shared interest to limit the power and wealth of “the elite” - it’s just that both sides have made it impossible to even talk about common ground and within both parties those wanting to reduce the wealth and influence of rich people are the minority and to divided to act.
Removed by mod
Damn, if only there was someone in history other than Hitler to praise for investing in infrastructure, speaking charismatically, and being in power while other people built cool buildings. 🤨
Guess we’ll have to ignore the extremely obvious context of praising Hitler for any reason whatsoever, because it’d be terrible to be unnuanced about a mass murdering bigot.
I’m not praising Hitler at all. I’m only saying that people are deliberately ignoring that he didn’t do everything he did because he wanted to be evil, but because he had a (horrible) vision for the world. And not all aspects of that vision where inherently evil.
Humans just have the tendency to put everything into boxes of good or bad. It’s uncomfortable if something is not fitting 100% into one of those boxes. And from my experiences people almost never fit 100% into those boxes.
Even serial killers sometimes have grandmas they lovingly took care of.
Even child-rapists have friends they support when they need help.
Sure they still are monsters - but they still are humans, too
You very much are, just not praising him for the bad things he did
I thought given the subject of the thread it was obvious that I was referring to Trump praising Hitler, not that I was accusing you of praising him.
And given the state of the world, I devote about as much energy to caring about the dehumanization of Hitler as I do for the welfare of Guinea worms. In a perfect world, sure, everyone should have an understanding that everyone is a person and not a cartoon caricature. And that world is never going to exist if you stand around letting presidents praise fucking Hitler.
I’m not sure I’m particularly clear about the distinction you’re trying to make between wanting to be evil, and having a world view that requires you to do a ton of evil stuff.
If we humans have agency, then surely our worldview is at least somewhat a decision we’re culpable for.
Also, there are times it’s appropriate to discuss certain topics, and times it is not. A dissertation about the upsides of Hitler is not relevant to Trump being compared to Hitler, unless you intend to make the argument that Trump being like Hitler might also have some upsides.
Save it for where it belongs: a history book.
There are people that get off on other people suffering and that want to create as much suffering as possible.
Those people are evil.
Hitler had an agency that saw people suffering as a means to an ends. That doesn’t excuse any of it and taking that route to get to that goal certainly is an evil decision, but that doesn’t automatically make the goal a bad one (in this case it was since the Holocaust was pretty much the goal and not just the way there).
Perhaps I’m using the wrong words as it’s not my native language but I think there are things he did that aren’t automatically bad just because it was Hitler who did them. That’s not praising the guy - it just acknowledges that even a broken clock is right twice a day and not always showing the wrong time by default.
There aren’t many things in life that are truely black and white. That being said, hitler IS one of those things.
Hitler = bad guy.
There is no arguement. None. NONE.
Zip it.
I never said he was a good guy? I just said that not everything he did was bad.
Are you disagreeing that his vision about the Autobahn or the founding of Volkswagen or the construction of things like the Olympiastadion are not good things despite the huge amount of horrible shit he did?
Are you not acknowledging that he was more charismatic in his speeches than many other people despite all the hateful things he fueled using that skill?
How is it so hard to see someone that’s clearly an enemy of everything we stand for today as a human and not as some supernatural evil? I think doing this is just helping the populists divide their countries even faster. There needs to be an understanding of why people follow those kind of guys and which things they are doing are not inherently evil to see why people were drawn to those characters.
I’m not saying you should compromise with Nazis. I’m in fact politically active here in Germany to oppose the CDU making deals with the AfD on a local level. I’m only saying that even the Nazis didn’t do things because they wanted to be evil - they did it because they had a different (horrible) vision of the world. I think it’s important to not see anyone as 100% evil as that is just a very cheap way to not have to think about uncomfortable things
Volkswagen used forced labor from concentration camps. I don’t think there’s any way to argue that a company built upon human suffering isn’t evil - or at least wasn’t at the time.
The Autobahn was built using forced labor of re-education camps, prisoners of war, prison inmates, and Jews from concentration camps. If the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight in an aircraft built of human flesh from murdered victims, nobody sane would be celebrating their achievement.
There is NOTHING honorable about causing harm to others so you can have more for yourself.
Nobody needs to invoke Hitler to say infrastructure spending is good.
It was just an example because just last week someone was claiming Germany should stop using the Olympiastadion in Berlin only because it was constructed for propaganda reasons.
The fact that Hitler is responsible for that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. A horrible person can also do a few things right. You can acknowledge that without praising the guy.
Do you actually think that’s what Trump likes about him? It appears black and white to us because we know that ain’t it.
No of course not - Trump’s a huge buffoon that loves dictators just for the fact that they are dictators. I was just referencing the “Are You Really Going to Elect a Guy Who Has Good Things to Say About Hitler?”-Part, since that in itself for me is not automatically a negative.
Ignoring that Hitler had positive traits, too, and pretending that people voted for a guy that was evil in all aspects is convenient but very dangerous - especially since it enables people voting for populists like Trump to pretend that he can’t be as bad as Hitler (which is probably the case - but if Hitler is painted as this absolute evil it’s actually very easy to make this claim without a second though. If you see Hitler as an opportunistic asshole that wasn’t inherently evil just for the sake of it then that comparison is a lot closer.
Demonizing Hitler as some kind of comic-book villain is ignoring how complex the situation leading up to him becoming leader of the Third Reich was and how people didn’t see him for how bad he was until it was too late.
Under the circumstances it seems such a small quibble to spill so much ink over, unless you are trying to make the larger point that we ought to be more aware of the conditions that make the rise of a bloody-handed dictator possible in the first place? I think that would be worth talking about, but the point was difficult to see at first.
He said he wanted his military generals to look like Hitler’s
[…]
[…]
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/
That gray area which allows for oppressing the masses in order to enrich the few? I am happy to say that human economic activity, as immoral as it is, seems to be reducing the chances of humans surviving. Good riddance to this kind of ignorant trash, and I hope your money helps your descendants when your decisions kill them.
I’d live to overthrow capitalism today rather than tomorrow - I just know that there are too many egoistic assholes out there that would just abuse whatever socialist system we would implement to fuck people over. The same kind of people that today have established themselves as billionaires - only that today it’s only a couple that managed that and I’d assume that between 20 and 40% of the population are completely ignorant of others if they think it helps themselves in the short term.
All I’m saying is that we should work together towards a goal that helps everyone instead of splitting the population and creating infighting which only helps those that are already on top.
If there was a common ground between Democrats and Republicans that certainly would be a shared interest to limit the power and wealth of “the elite” - it’s just that both sides have made it impossible to even talk about common ground and within both parties those wanting to reduce the wealth and influence of rich people are the minority and to divided to act.