Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
The first story that made me understand how the Nazis could happen in a Christian society. Writing this as a German, who was taught in school so many of the cruelties of our past. I always wondered how could that happen. And, why nobody stood up against it. Or only some brave few.
To all US Americans, I‘m with you and hope the hate and fear won’t overwhelm your society in the next uncertain years. Europe feels uncertain and shaky as well. In Germany, I will stand up and raise my voice even more.
Thanks for sharing
Edit: it’s still resonating in my mind. The sad is, that this is how we manage the climate change. A slow adaptation to the new normal instead of trying to slow it down. Humans advantage of fast adaption can turn into disadvantage quite easily.
Please don’t take this the wrong way but as a fellow german it is extremely disturbing how our education system couldn’t make you understand how the Nazis rose to power. It’s the core theme of history class or at least it’s supposed to be in all of Germany. I have spent countless lessons learning about all the steps how an extremist minority could take the country by storm with relatively low resistance. While other countries learn about special operations and battles in WW2, we germans learn all about how Hitler could come to power and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. The fact that this little text could make you understand something you should’ve learned in your childhood shows me why it’s gone downhill so much recently. Most germans really do not understand how fascism works, do they?
Isn’t the far right party getting more votes than ever in Germany?
You can teach people all you want the problem is capitalism is very easy prey to fascism.
Yeah pretty much, though the last few elections have been in eastern states or EU related where they always score way above average. I have at least a little hope that coming elections won’t be as bad.
America was changed from the nation of my youth two decades ago, and has become more unrecognizable every year since. Like this excerpt, it’s always small incremental changes, changes you sometimes can’t even pinpoint. You’re called reactionary, or crazy when you point them out. When it’s undeniable such as the Edward Snowden events, people can’t hand-wave it away, so they turn on the person who told them, angry that their sheltered reality was shattered, then they promptly shove it down and cease to think about it further. The populace cannot be counted on to oppose these changes, especially when they’re kept intentionally on the brink, always fearful for their own security, and perpetually distracted. We have ignored history, and now we will repeat it.
I think there’s something to be said for the fact that the country has always had these tendencies. It’s a country founded on conquest and genocide and we just kept the wars rolling ever since. People are just numb to cruelty because it’s so “normal” living in an imperialist country. To complete the Nazi comparison, Germany, like most of the European states, was a decaying colonial empire. You spend centuries dehumanizing people around the world to justify colonizing them and it becomes pretty easy to turn that dehumanizing apparatus inward. The minds of the people are already set up to view some people as being lesser to justify oppressing them.
I think what you and others are experiencing isn’t a significant change as much as it’s becoming conscious of the violence that’s always been there. That’s good. People need to take that step to be able to do something. That said, there’s not NOTHING new about the various developments in the world. Technology always empowers those who already have the power to wield is to do things that they might have only dreamed of before. The industrial scale genocide of the holocaust wouldn’t have been possible without modern technology. Today, surveillance, data science, and automation allows the powerful to optimize their control over an increasing number of people with fewer and fewer people necessary to do it for them. What might once have taken a whole army of spies and police/soldiers can now be done by some computers and a guy controlling a drone.
But people don’t have the framework for recognizing these as the problems they are because they start from the assumption that the US is good and therefore the various violent things it does must be for good reasons. You can try to point out all evidence to the contrary, but the assumption that the “other” is the enemy is so strong that they can justify almost any action against others as being better than the alternative. And some people will try to resist, get others to see what they see, and then get called a hippy, conspiracy theorist, and/or a foreign agent.
What we do in 2026 and/or 2028 will basically seal our fate. If MAGA thrives after our neighbors see what they do while unrestrained, then America is definitely going to become the next Nazi Germany.
If the elections of '26 or '28 get canceled or otherwise don’t happen, then it’s too late. (I’ll go ahead and include typical autocratic tricks like jailing opposition candidates.)
Since MAGA has a trifecta, they are able to go full ham. They will show their whole ass to America, including our neighbors who think they’re just another political party who will do just another political 4 years. And the neighbors who think MAGA was mostly just blowing hot air. Or that MAGA wasn’t so bad for 2017-2021.
If we haven’t ousted every last one of them, by whatever means necessary, before those elections, we’re fucked.
Thanks. I haven’t read that before. Sobering
There are entire libraries filled with histories and psychology studies that all seek to make excuses for “regular German” Nazis. And the whole point of these endeavors, we were told, was to prevent it from happening again.
Well, now that it’s happening again, I’m pissed off because all of it was a lie. Nazis are bad people. And you don’t get to whitewash it because your loved ones, friends, and relatives turned out to be fucking Nazi assholes.
Damn
This is a phenomenal way of illustrating what is meant by the “moving of the Overton window”
Great and scary book.
I keep waiting for the police to be installed as having domain over the fire department in my county just like they did in NAZI Germany.
The police would stop the fire department from putting out the fires set on synagogues.
It will happen here in 2025.
The other thing I think that I have figured out is that NAZI-ism is just another way to get slaves. Pre-war Germany became a slave state. And that is what Trump wants in my opinion.
Trump, in my opinion, wants a plantation system for him and his friends.
And the US will create slaves again when Trump starts his night of long knives.
Don’t US police departments typically consume the majority of municipal funding, dwarfing what’s spent on preventative measures, and have military-style equipment? Giving them authority over the rest of government would be a small step.
Given the crossover of people displaying “thin blue line” flags with those showing “thin red line” flags (which is stupid, who is against the fire department??), and with their success in harassing corporations into dropping DEI initiatives, I wouldn’t put it past right-wing crazies to try bullying their fire departments into ignoring incidents for their progressive neighbors
Drag has seen people on this website saying that it’s wrong to advocate violence against Nazis. And drag thinks the mods and admins should remove those comments. They have no place in a free society. They do what this post is explaining, which is part of how fascism functions. Fascism requires the existence of moderates that believe violence is always wrong, so that fascism can come into being.
When I was a kid, I was taught never to hit someone unless they hit me first. There were, of course, exceptions. Is someone hitting your brother? You’d better bust his nose. I did that too. I did it and I faced the consequences, whatever they were.
Do we still have the ability to act without violence? We shouldn’t be violent if the answer is still yes. But, we’re animals who were born from the chaos of a violent and terrifying world. Our ancestors had to outrun predators and enemies at least long enough to reproduce or we wouldn’t be here, and that is written in our blood as far back as we can see in time.
It is in every one of us to take things to extremes. Our ancestors done it over and over again, and under the right circumstances any one of us would stand over our enemy, covered in blood, breathing and smiling like a chimpanzee with the bloodied corpse of his former foraging mate at his feet.
It is in our nature to identify with one group or another, and as we become more connected, all of the splintered groups that the world had before are forming into two large consolidated groups. What really makes me sad is that I don’t think there is a permanent solution. That makes me wonder if violence is even worth it, again, when there are still ways to solve problems without violence.
If we colonized another planet right now with likeminded people and built a perfect system of government, it wouldn’t take very long for our humanity to get in the way of it. Someone would always be convinced, and then convince others, that they could do it better. Their identity would get lost in the group and then war would be inevitable.
Violence is a temporary solution. You kill your enemy and then wait for your new enemy to come. That is what I see in history, and I’m very thankful that I live in a time and place where violence doesn’t have to be a part of my life. I spent the first 17 years of my life in violence, and ultimately violence was what brought it all to an end. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss seeing that wild look in the eyes of men. I don’t like seeing people become animals.
I believe that we can still solve it without becoming monsters.
Of course, I didn’t forget what I just read. I have seen the incrementalism here and I realize that things that would have seemed absurd 10 years ago are just par for the course now. We still have good people in the right places. I’m not a religious man, but as a father of small children, I pray that they succeed over the next four years and that things will ultimately go back to normal.
COVID threw a lot of people off. It made a lot of things excusable that wouldn’t have been in any other time. We’re still not really past all of that.
I just hope that people don’t turn to violence. I have lived in that world and it is very, very, very ugly.
If it does ever come to that, I hope that the people who push for it with words have the balls to get out there and crawl around in it. I hope that they aren’t just sitting around inspiring that in other people.
I don’t know. I’ve got a lot more to say but I have a lot to do today.
Let’s be good people while we can and pray that we don’t have to be anything else. Too many people have been pecked to the bone by vultures and crows throughout our history. If we don’t have to litter the world with corpses, let’s not. Please.
Nazis are going to commit multiple genocides and start world war 3 if they get the chance. Choosing nonviolence against Nazis means permitting violence against everyone. Choosing violence against Nazis means preventing violence against everyone. True pacifism is active.
Well, if you really believe that then organize and get your hands dirty. I wish you luck.
I believe we can win without violence.
under the right circumstances any one of us would stand over our enemy, covered in blood, breathing and smiling like a chimpanzee with the bloodied corpse of his former foraging mate at his feet.
“Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”
- Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space 9
