this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
525 points (97.5% liked)

World News

38977 readers
1948 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One other problem is how history is taught.

At one point, fascism was taught as "evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil". Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.

This gives an opportunity for modern nazis. And since most people don't know what kind of manipulation tactics they use, they can still use the same ones in new costume (see "great replacement", the "groomer" panic, etc.).

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

At one point, fascism was taught as “evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil”. Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.

That really wasn't my experience when I went to school in Germany. Nazi Germany was a major topic for many years and across different subjects and included a visit to a former concentration camp. At some point it got a little tiring but it was definitely not simplified in any way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Same in Czechia. Though I guess we were taught from a slightly different angle than you guys.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe it was better taught in Germany, but in the UK I don't recall any discussion of how Nazis were ordinary people, both educated and uneducated, rich and poor, people like ourselves. Perhaps that was obvious to the generations that lived through the war, but for later generations, and especially since the people who were adults during the war have died off, it needs emphasizing. I think for a few decades younger people were able to think of fascism as a strange, historically specific aberration from the norm of liberal democracy, something relegated to the past, and to think of Nazis as almost a different species. To see fascism resurging all around the world in recent years has come as a surprise, even though neoliberal governments have spent decades creating the conditions that produce it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is absolutely not how it is taught in Germany. If anything, our education concerning the WW2 era is what is making germany lag so far behind the other EU states when it comes to far right votes.

We are taught at length the underlying issues that were plaguing germany after WW1; social, economical, political, and how all of them contributed together to the rise of the third reich.

That’s why Germans are also very very wary when we spot developments in our country (or other countries, for that matter) that mirror the conditions in that time.