Today I Learned

One method was locking them in an idling truck and suffocating them with exhaust.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van

Very few people understand what fascism is in the concrete day to day sense. Fascist politics are very normalized in the modern world. They obfuscate everything they do. The more they can confuse and entangle antifascists the better. While we try and deconstruct their empty statements and lies they spend the whole time making confusing and conflicting statements, trying to garner as much support from bigoted people as possible. Its a union of bigotry, greed, and manipulation.

Fascists are themselves parasitic to democracy. Their existence within democracy whatsoever steadily nurtures them. The more tolerable their ideas are the faster they will grow. Tolerating Nazis at all is the same thing as promoting them. Their ideology spreads like a virus, it doesnt try to convince you merely overwhelms you. It harkens out to the priviledged masses fear of the other, and then surrounds them in a fog of conflicting information and symbolism. It says "believe in me and I will keep you safe" before outputting a barrage of rage, hatred, disgust, fear and dread. It uses language like symbolism itself. It preoccupies itself with definitions, centralizing itself as authority over reality itself. Once someone has become a fascist it is statistically impossible to change their views. Once someone has become a fascist they are overwhelmingly likely to never change. There is no scientifically proven way to deradicalize them. That's how powerful a hold it creates. True believers in fascism exist in this perpetual state of anger and confusion. The rest see utility in fascism, to advance their bigotry or to profit off of corruption.

I was watching the PBS American Experience episode on Nazi City, USA.

Hearing literally the same words that came out of the American Nazi party in 1930s that have been spewed by Republicans in the last 10 years was frankly TERRIFYING.

What is wild is that MOST people had no idea about the Holocaust as it was happening. That when we learn of WWII and all that was around it and you hear about the camps you think "no shit we went to help with that." But then find out that wasn't really a motivation for the masses is crazy.

Interesting debate, and certainly has some truth to it. Because individuals seek personal gain, they fulfill someone else's ideology they don't really care about but it helps them to get promoted or get rich. But Hitler definitely planned the holocaust as a "final solution to the Jewish question" in Mein Kampf.

In that sense Trump is very different from Hitler - he doesn't really believe in anything but being the strong man. He has no ideology. He's not really a racist. But he adopts ideology that enchants and beguile the masses, so it works similar to the functionalist view.

I believe that MAGA functionaries actually look for things that would shock and pain liberals, and then make that real, simply because it would be "fun" for the MAGA crowd and enrage the libs, and keep them constantly in a confused and shocked state. Just to keep it all going.

Another great book about the actual process of the holocaust is IBM and the Holocaust. Lots of detail about how the victims were targetted and then how IT really made a lot of the horrors possible

Recommended read for anyone curious about the logistics.

It's also very worth noting that disabled people (many also Jewish, of course) were the first group systematically exterminated en masse by the Nazis. Disabled people were legally required to be sterilized starting already in 1933 when the Nazis came into power, and mass euthanasia started in 1939 (called Aktion T4). Mass killings of other victims in concentration camps began in 1941.

The people who were considered disabled was subject to interpretation. Alcoholism, epilepsy, paralysis, blindness, and "work shyness" were all conditions considered unworthy of life.

Autistic people, then believed to have a form of schizophrenia, were also a main target. In fact, the term Asperger's syndrome was coined by Hans Asperger as a means of determining which autistics were bound for work camps versus death camps. This is part of the reason why Asperger's is no longer considered its own syndrome but is considered part of the larger autism spectrum. The delineations between the former autistic subtypes were too vague and subjective to be accurate.

Unfortunately, disabled victims of the Holocaust receive little recognition to this day, but it's not surprising when disabled people still have reduced status under the law in most countries.

Few countries offer enough welfare benefits to ensure a decent standard of living. Even then, you lose access to those benefits if you manage to build assets worth more than a few thousand dollars/euros. We cannot get married without reduced benefits in many countries. Few countries have sufficient accessibility laws. Things like obtaining a driver's licence can cost much more with certain disabilities. Many countries prohibit immigration with certain disabilities.

Disabled activists have been sounding the alarm on all this for decades, because we are historically first on the chopping block when shit gets real. Keep that in mind when RFK Jr. starts talking about an autism registry or work camps for psychiatric patients.

One of the most well know and influential anti Nazi songs of the era The Peat Bog Soldiers was composed in 1933 as well.

Even years before the outbreak of war in Europe these camps had already had a storied history.

I also recommend In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson. It follows the US ambassador to Germany in the 30s and how he tries to warn his counterparts back home how bad things are getting. Again, many parallels.

I'm sick of parallels, when are we gonna do orthogonals

You're right.

And the big social media platforms will censor any information about it. We already saw with January 6th that Americans are perfectly happy to just ignore what they can see with their own two eyes, so I suspect, it won't be too heavy a lift for them to step over dead bodies in the streets as long as the smell isn't too much.

I try to make it a point not to use the word 'detention' since it's so purposefully sanitized.

You're not wrong.

Having read a lot of history on the subject, the hope I do have is in the thousands who resisted the Nazis and Russians in small ways. Most of their names are forgotten (or fake, as is the way with resistance), but their stories survived because many of the people they helped told those stories after the war. Not everyone can be a Schindler or a Winton, but there are going to be more than a few who find a way to help people where needed as things get worse.