What surprises me is that they (people in the past) didn’t have past examples about similar things happening with very bad consequences, we do.
You would think the knowledge would make a difference…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historian
Systematic historical thought emerged in ancient Greece, a development that became an important influence on the writing of history elsewhere around the Mediterranean region. The earliest known critical historical works were The Histories, composed by Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 – c. 425 BCE) who later became known as the “father of history” (Cicero).
Now how many people had access to this knowledge is another matter, but studying history and learning from it was an important aspect in the education and training of leaders to be since more than a thousand years at the very least.
If we look at Moses and the Pharaoh as well as ancient Greek democracies, we can conclude that the principles of politics have not changed all that much in the past 3000-4000 years of human history. The knowledge was always there and the same mistakes are always repeated, with some very incremental progresses and regressions in between.
They so often did though, how many massive fires broke out in London before the great fire finally convinced them to stop building overlapping thatched rooves.
Even during The Plague of Justinian scholars wrote about what was essentially ancient social distancing practices, 2000 years ago later we still can’t do it properly.
How many times did they have to put up with rat plagues and stinking open cess pits, followed by a big town clean up, and then nothing change in infrastructure or waste management practices, only to do the whole clean up again …until the Great Stink got to close enough to the windows of parliament that those in power decided maybe they should address the root problem instead of applying bandaids every few years.
(I don’t have a history degree so I’m pulling these details out of the memory depths of my dusty documentary viewings, and I’m probably wrong.)
It does feel a bit 1930s at the moment doesn’t it
the decent thing to do for WW3 is to start it on the 100th anniversary of WW2.
i can only hope that the '39s would serve as a reminder each century to just fucking stop. (but more importantly, i hope to be naturally dead by then)
I’ve been working through a few biographies of the top brass of Nazidom, and even with the rather perfunctory understanding I’ve gained from these books of Hitler’s seizure of power and all that followed in Nazi Germany, my ears are pricking up in horror every day as I listen to the latest news from around the world. And I’m not even going so far as the Holocaust. If the Holocaust and WWII never happened, the Nazi regime would still have been an unmitigated nightmare.
The language certain politicians are using is plucked directly from the mouths of Goebbels’ and Himmler’s rotting corpses. How can they not see what lies ahead if they continue with this shit? We know how this story ends. We have examples of it from recent memory, we don’t even need to cast our minds back to the 1930s 🤷
Some of them see it, and approve.
Others are old and mentally ill, and care only for what power they can gain in their remaining few years, regardless of what that will bring later.
Others are merely useful, and go along with whoever is currently in power.
Others are afraid, so they do not oppose the changes, for fear of losing what they have, and desperately cling to hope that something else will stop the worst from happening.
Others…
and on and on it goes, just as it did before, just as it ever was, and quite frankly, now I see that so will it ever be.
The language certain politicians are using is plucked directly from the mouths of Goebbels’ and Himmler’s rotting corpses. How can they not see what lies ahead if they continue with this shit?
What’s even more infuriating is that when you try to point this out to others, they act like you’re insane/exaggerating.
…because most don’t study the rise and causes of what happened. They only study the result. “Never again” refers to the holocaust, but nobody puts that sign on the the road that led to it.
- Wealth disparity and inflation
- Fear of “others” taking what little people have
- Traumatized populations from decades of war
With populations scared and desperate, they’ll latch on to any demigogue that appears.
But it’s not literally the Holocaust again, so it’s fine /s
I’m trans, god help me…
I am not familiar with this, would you share what country you are talking about?
Germany for example. The AfD is gaining more and more support by using phrases like “This development that is happening right now, creation of mixed populations to destroy the national identity and thus give our autonomy to the EU - that is simply not bearable!”, “Such humans we should of course dispose of”, “When a [n-word] in my neighborhood coughs at me, I have to know if he is sick or is he not sick.” or “The reason why we are being flooded with culturally foreign people like Arabs, Sinti and Roma is the systematic destruction of civil society.” https://www.volksverpetzer.de/analyse/10-rechtsextreme-zitate-der-afd/
It is emotionally and intellectually painful using critical thinking while those around you are calling the other side Nazis.
1 Nazis are bad 2 The other side are bad 3 The other side are Nazis Optional: add an example that confirms bias
Both sides calling the others Nazis doesn’t imply that centrists are using critical thinking. It just means that one side is lying. Nazism is a far right ideology.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Nazis and tankies are both totalitarian - people just seem to have forgotten the term.
Boy I sure do love living through historical events that will likely end up in textbooks in the future
Bold of you to presume that people will be allowed to read about these times, in the future:-).
