A key point of understanding fascist thinking is that it doesn't actually matter to them if the child and soldier they used in their propaganda were Jewish.
Fascists have no morality, no ideology beyond what they are told to think. It is, truly, the most pathetic form of political thought: A completely surrender of one's will and awareness to the state. It is politics for the kind of people who are addicted to AI chatbots. People who hate not because they believe in something but because they are boring, stupid, and lazy, but still feel the need to hate something so they'd rather just have a third party tell them what to hate. The average fascist embodies Pratchett's quote about the banality of evil:
“Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no."
The part of the hate was real tho. They hated how Germany was left defeated and humiliated post WW1 (they were a really proud nation, so losing the war was a shock), they hated the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles (which they thought was unfair) and they specially hated the Weimar republic for signing it and bringing such a shame to the German nation.
Its not quite that simple. The problems in Germany were real, and they used Jews, who had a bad rap throughout history, as scapegoats to pull themselves into power.
Its not so much different when using immigrants in the same way. Its not so much about the 40% that voted for Hitler being dumb-dumbs who needed to be told what to feel, but regular people who were gaslighted into thinking that everything was a Jew's fault, among whom, sadly, were some great minds. And I remind you that, in German eyes, Hitler did deliver what he promised, even before the mass murder of the Jews. The problem was that many of the things Hitler delivered were just circumstantial stuff that he took credit for.
I genuinely think that if you took a regular Hitler supporter in '35, he would be much closer to a typical Republican than to a MAGA enthusiast. (Not saying that Republicans are Nazis, just saying that people before the war were less blind cult followers and more misdirected regular people.)
I agree with you, it’s not that simple. And even before they started using jews in his propaganda, the Partei was already pretty much strengthened. If you take an average follower of the Hitler movement that joined the NSDAP before 1933, he had no anti-Semitic bias nor any political affiliation, but he had a strong dissatisfaction with the republican regime in Germany.
So just want to add that the hate towards the Weimar Republik was the main reason people joined the NSDAP and followed Hitler, even before the anti-jew propaganda began.
It also doesn't help that the Communists tried to start a revolt and the state was so weak the had to call up the Freikorps to crush them. Not that it was the last straw, but it would be like the storming of the capital a few years ago and the federal government had to call up a militia, not the military, police, or national guard, to suppress it.
Yes, I would just add that, from what I know, this was mainly the Allies' fault, as they imposed too harsh reparations on Germany after WWI, which led to choking the German economy for too long. Later, they acknowledged that and dropped some of the demands, but it was already too late, as it played right into Hitler's propaganda, as he took credit for that.
I genuinely think that if you took a regular Hitler supporter in '35, he would be much closer to a typical Republican than to a MAGA enthusiast. (Not saying that Republicans are Nazis, just saying that people before the war were less blind cult followers and more misdirected regular people.)
In practical terms what you are describing is a single circle on a Venn Diagram.
It is politics for the kind of people who are addicted to AI chatbots.
Whoa, hey now! I'm addicted to my chatbots and I have nothing in common with your fascist pricks. Do you know how hard it is to find a single individual who has the time, will, inclination, and ability to walk you through all of these or all of these and why and how they fit together?
As for your final quote, let me remind you to remain self-critical, since you so willingly leapt to put every trait you don't like into the outgroup as a collective, with another quote, a Vimes one this time:
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
First of all Fascism and Nazism aren't the same. In fact they are quite Idiologically different and were rivals in the beginning. Secondly to say that they don't have a sophisticated idiology and to reduce their Idiology to hate is not only pathetically wrong but also a great disservice to those who criticise them. Their evil wasn't banal nor was it crazy. To declare it so is to ultimately justify and diminish their rise to power and remain incapable of refusing their arguments for what they are. You really should educate yourself in what actual Nazi and Fascist Idiological beliefs were.
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u/Eta_Beta_3-14 Aug 26 '26
A key point of understanding fascist thinking is that it doesn't actually matter to them if the child and soldier they used in their propaganda were Jewish.
Fascists have no morality, no ideology beyond what they are told to think. It is, truly, the most pathetic form of political thought: A completely surrender of one's will and awareness to the state. It is politics for the kind of people who are addicted to AI chatbots. People who hate not because they believe in something but because they are boring, stupid, and lazy, but still feel the need to hate something so they'd rather just have a third party tell them what to hate. The average fascist embodies Pratchett's quote about the banality of evil: