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 sebster wrote:

 Testify wrote:
Pretty much all nazis were scumbags, but most of the Wermacht were ordinary German people, not particularly cruel or heartless, though obviously there are always spankers

The point is not that ordinary Germans were somehow uniquely horrible people. The point is that they were ordinary people like the rest of us. And that when a society comes under the control of some particularly evil criminal, a large number of otherwise decent people will go along with the completely horrible actions of that society. And almost all of the rest will simply go along with it.

That's just kind of what people are.

As a lesser example, see: Americans kind of shrugging off our country having entered into a war of choice nine years ago, which led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, was based on false evidence and fraudulent arguments, and not on any real security need. Not to pull a Godwin on my own country, but people are remarkably able to accept evil when it's sold to them with conviction by authority figures.

Which also links in with the earlier discussion about Inglorious Basterds, about how we should be careful about allowing outselves freedom from moral judgement just because the guys we're fighting are terrible people. It's not somehow made okay for us to be brutal monsters, just because we're beating up on even worse monsters.

You see the same phenomenon on smaller scales too. Look at all the people at Penn State that knew, suspected, or were intentionally ignorant about what Sandusky was doing? They can't all be evil, right?

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

 sebster wrote:

 Testify wrote:
Pretty much all nazis were scumbags, but most of the Wermacht were ordinary German people, not particularly cruel or heartless, though obviously there are always spankers

The point is not that ordinary Germans were somehow uniquely horrible people. The point is that they were ordinary people like the rest of us. And that when a society comes under the control of some particularly evil criminal, a large number of otherwise decent people will go along with the completely horrible actions of that society. And almost all of the rest will simply go along with it.

That's just kind of what people are.


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 Squigsquasher wrote:
We already have plenty of valid reasons to hate the Nazis. I wonder if now they're just making reasons up to draw attention away from our own country's crimes (bombing of dams, the firebombing of Hamburg, crimes committed during occupation of Germany etc...)

I think it's entirely possible to condemn the firebombing of Dresden and believe the Nazis were among the most evil regimes of all time.


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 Hordini wrote:
It's complex. It's definitely not as simple as Waffen-SS = everyone is totally evil and Wehrmacht = most of them were okay, although I think it's reasonable to say that there tended to be a higher proportion of war criminals in the Waffen-SS. It's still hard to really understand how the evil ones could be so completely morally bankrupt though. It's some horrid stuff.

Thing is, though, even if you ignore the actions of the SS entirely, the actions of the regular army were terrible. Not everywhere, of course (Rommel for instance was ordered by Hitler to execute any Free French troops captured in Africa as insurgents, but he instead had them treated the same as any other soldier), but on the whole the behaviour of the regular army was particularly horrid.


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 rockerbikie wrote:
Politcal correctness. One of the world's biggest evils.

You remain dakka's most hilarious contributor.

No. I'm serious. Due to politcal correctness you can get sued by calling a person black instead of African American. It has gone too far. Some people even hate the term Manhole.

 rockerbikie wrote:
No. I'm serious. Due to politcal correctness you can get sued by calling a person black instead of African American.

Well, nothing really allows (or prevents) anybody from suing you about anything. I can sue you for kidnapping my imaginary friend. Doesn't mean I'll win.

So, yes, if you'd like, you can pretend that it's political correctness that allows people to abuse the legal system, and not, you know, cost of business in having a legal system.

Me? I like to think that the shrinking number of M&Ms in M&M cookies is to blame.

 Polonius wrote:

 rockerbikie wrote:
No. I'm serious. Due to politcal correctness you can get sued by calling a person black instead of African American.

Well, nothing really allows (or prevents) anybody from suing you about anything. I can sue you for kidnapping my imaginary friend. Doesn't mean I'll win.

Suing people has become ridiculus. It is done for stupid reasons now.

Not really. Mostly it's overblown. Frivolous lawsuits usually get thrown out in court.

 rockerbikie wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 rockerbikie wrote:
No. I'm serious. Due to politcal correctness you can get sued by calling a person black instead of African American.

Well, nothing really allows (or prevents) anybody from suing you about anything. I can sue you for kidnapping my imaginary friend. Doesn't mean I'll win.

Suing people has become ridiculus. It is done for stupid reasons now.

That is truly a well reasoned and nuanced opinion!

Well, usually it's about getting money, but sometimes it's about justice. Sometimes it's just to screw somebody you dislike. Those might not be noble reasons, but if you eliminated greed and vengeance as motivators for human acts you'd pretty much reduce action to chasing tail and getting messed up.


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 Mannahnin wrote:
Not really. Mostly it's overblown. Frivolous lawsuits usually get thrown out in court.

Usually the argument isn't "this case is a frivolous lawsuit," but rather, "that cause of action is frivolous."

 Mannahnin wrote:
As a lesser example, see: Americans kind of shrugging off our country having entered into a war of choice nine years ago, which led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, was based on false evidence and fraudulent arguments, and not on any real security need. Not to pull a Godwin on my own country, but people are remarkably able to accept evil when it's sold to them with conviction by authority figures.

Or gitmo. Or all those terror suspects that have been killed in CIA custody, for which there will not be a single trial.

If people are hungry, then they'll get mad and overthrow a government. Rest of the time they'll just go along with whatever. And if it's a really horrid act like the holocaust, most likely they'll just look the other way and pretend it isn't happening.

Which also links in with the earlier discussion about Inglorious Basterds, about how we should be careful about allowing outselves freedom from moral judgement just because the guys we're fighting are terrible people. It's not somehow made okay for us to be brutal monsters, just because we're beating up on even worse monsters.

Definitely.


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 rockerbikie wrote:
No. I'm serious. Due to politcal correctness you can get sued by calling a person black instead of African American. It has gone too far. Some people even hate the term Manhole.

I know you're serious. I've talked to you about political correctness before. You insist its a real thing, with a clear meaning, and that meaning happens to be whatever you're unhappy with at that moment.

Sue happy culture is not related to the vague idea of political correctness.

So what do you want to know about racists? I grew up outside of the town where the head of the KKK for Ontario keeps his abode and several of my friends have been to Klan meets, one of there fathers has a Nazi flag up in his garage, and when we were young we would run in from recess giving the salute and yelling heil hitler. Kinda just comes with the territory, a few of my friends/associates have committed what people would call hate crimes, we use racial epithets in regular conversation when amongst ourselves and no body bats an eyelid. It's been toned down a lot from what our parents did at our age though. The guy who has the Swastika flag in his garage used to play a game called clean sweep or city clean or something like that. Anyways, what they would do is all get together, drive around in the bed of their buddies truck, find a minority and smack him three times with a corn broom, and then jump back in the truck, last guy back gets left.

I admit it, I come from a racist town, but oddly enough if they see you as an equal they are some of the politest people you'll ever meet. I mean I did the last 2 years of my highschool in an inner-city school. The way people acted there, like how rude they were to teachers and eachother really, was shocking...

So yeah, if you want to ask anything go ahead.

 Ratbarf wrote:
tl;dr: They were flying rodent gak racist, but it's okay because they were good people

Pretty common excuse for racism sadly.

So no where did I make an excuse for them, (except possibly when I said, "it comes with the territory") it's not that I find that the racism is excusable because they are nice people, I find it somewhat, maybe out of character is the way to put it? The fact that these beliefs are held while at the same time maintaining a high sense of etiquette would seem to be mutually exclusive.

And yeah, where I come from is pretty much the racism capital of Ontario.

 Ratbarf wrote:
So no where did I make an excuse for them, (except possibly when I said, "it comes with the territory") it's not that I find that the racism is excusable because they are nice people, I find it somewhat, maybe out of character is the way to put it? The fact that these beliefs are held while at the same time maintaining a high sense of etiquette would seem to be mutually exclusive.

Not at all. You've never heard of the Southern Gentleman? A guy with a little bit of money and class in the historic American South was stereotypicially warm, chivalrous, elaborately polite and gallant toward ladies, and generally courteous. The fact that during slavery these guys might commonly behave like a perfect gentleman toward other white people, while still beating slaves to death out back in the fields during the day, was not exactly an unknown phenomena.

Many people who are full of hatred and contempt toward an external group are perfectly nice toward other members of their own group.

Yet we view our Founding Fathers in a different light.

I have heard of Southern Gentlemen, in fact I'm related to quite a few of them.

As to the original topic if they are pathetic, I find many of the people who I grew up with/around to not be pathetic at all. Yes they hold those views but they aren't pathetic, nor are they deserving of violence visited upon them as long as they do not visit violence upon others, which, by and large, they do not. There is of course the odd exception, but the ones I know of who do visit violence upon others in general do so after having violence visited upon them. Eg, a friend of mine was jumped in a bathroom in a nightclub by a group of black guys who overheard him use the n-word. While many may think he got what he deserved, I do not, all he did was use a word, he made no motion of violence towards them. Afterwards there was something of a scuffle outside of said nightclub between my friend and co with the black fellows but it wasn't by any means of the word unprovoked or really undeserved. I mean they did hit him from behind while he was using a urinal. Knocked him unconcious and worked over his face a bit.

The broom incident described earlier hasn't been done, nor a similar act of violence occurred unprovoked, in my county for decades. In fact my county has the lowest recorded incidence of assault or murder in all of Canada.

 sebster wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
It's complex. It's definitely not as simple as Waffen-SS = everyone is totally evil and Wehrmacht = most of them were okay, although I think it's reasonable to say that there tended to be a higher proportion of war criminals in the Waffen-SS. It's still hard to really understand how the evil ones could be so completely morally bankrupt though. It's some horrid stuff.

Thing is, though, even if you ignore the actions of the SS entirely, the actions of the regular army were terrible. Not everywhere, of course (Rommel for instance was ordered by Hitler to execute any Free French troops captured in Africa as insurgents, but he instead had them treated the same as any other soldier), but on the whole the behaviour of the regular army was particularly horrid.

Yup, this is right on. That's pretty much what I was saying when I said I don't think anyone was completely "clean," especially on the Eastern Front and anyone who didn't realize the Wehrmacht was involved in a significant number of war crimes hasn't been paying attention.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Not at all. You've never heard of the Southern Gentleman? A guy with a little bit of money and class in the historic American South was stereotypicially warm, chivalrous, elaborately polite and gallant toward ladies, and generally courteous. The fact that during slavery these guys might commonly behave like a perfect gentleman toward other white people, while still beating slaves to death out back in the fields during the day, was not exactly an unknown phenomena.

Many people who are full of hatred and contempt toward an external group are perfectly nice toward other members of their own group.

That's one of the most important things about racism. These aren't people who were born evil, they're people who happen to hold some beliefs which are wrong, and can lead to doing some really evil stuff.