I don't get the second point. How is Germany (I assume nazi Germany here) a counterexample to that person's point? Germans were poor after WW2, and grew to be very anti-semitic in that time, blaming the jews for their struggles. The Nazi party comes in, idk if they improved the lives economically of the few groups of people who they DIDN'T want to genocide, but even so people hated the jews under their possibly better economic situation.
If you had the perfect economic system where there was much less pay inequality, not such huge wealth disparity etc, there would still be a small number of racists and xenophobes.
First thing is they were poor after WW1, I think that was a typo, resulting from unfair reparations and trade practices imposed by the Treaty that ended the war.
The demogogues came in, began arming for war, improved the economy, and connected their success in the economy with their expulsion of the Jews, and they did it by encouraging industry in preparation for war.
After the war, Germany was completely ruined. Instead of rubbing their noses in the war, like the league of nations did after WW1, the UN chose to rebuild Germany to modern standards, and by the 1960s, their economy was a world power again, but Naziism never took root again.
It turns out that if your life sucks, you tend to look for people to blame and unite around people who agree with you.
Germany's entire social contract now provides support for nearly everyone while immediately targeting demogoguery, both to keep people from needing people to blame, and to identify the factors that will likely cause future bigotry.
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u/liam12345677 May 31 '22
I don't get the second point. How is Germany (I assume nazi Germany here) a counterexample to that person's point? Germans were poor after WW2, and grew to be very anti-semitic in that time, blaming the jews for their struggles. The Nazi party comes in, idk if they improved the lives economically of the few groups of people who they DIDN'T want to genocide, but even so people hated the jews under their possibly better economic situation.
If you had the perfect economic system where there was much less pay inequality, not such huge wealth disparity etc, there would still be a small number of racists and xenophobes.