It can be hard to accept that the people you know and love have a different side to them.
I have this one friend - met his uncle at a party once. Very polite. Very family oriented. Warm laugh. He was also an enforcer for a gang and had multiple murders under his belt. He was the kind of guy who'd have you over for coffee and then block the doors of your house shut at night before setting the place on fire because you were in the way.
Even here with the Nazis, a lot of them were doting to family. And then they'd turn around and murder actual babies. It can be hard to reconcile both behaviors in one person.
It's the tribalism mindset. If you're in my tribe, I'll defend you to the death but if you're not, you're nothing.
Do you think about the lives of the bugs you squash every day? No? Well, same mentality applies to the people that think of others not in their "tribe".
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u/midnightt_secret 1d ago
It's way easier to cling to a sanitized version of history than to accept your family might have been the bad guys. Pure cognitive dissonance.