Nazis and the Nature of Evil

[Yukaphile]

@Mecha82 I think calling it "revenge" also ignores a lot of economic and societal factors that went into their society that made it possible, such as extremely crude patriarchal views, and being deprived and starved for too long, and how the conflict made them feel strong because they could finally lash out after what must've felt like the world shitting on them for much too long, that they were entitled to the finer things in life like food, drink, and women, and as we all know, power is a drug to some people. The personal choices they made like heavy drinking. And so on and so forth. I do know this. We've blamed the Germans for being evil Nazis for 70 years, and after a while, the old Allied propaganda myths are hard to beat once they've filtered into the public perception so that it becomes what people believe. That only works on a systematic level, not an individual level, for even if somebody was indoctrinated to believe that way, unless they're actually committing a crime, they're not to blame and not even bad people unless they're bad people, just victim to an oppressive state, yet when you throw words like "collectively guilty" into the mix, especially given victims of assault already tend to suffer from guilt, it frames a subconscious perception, that coupled with insisting those guilty were suffering from "war traumas" also puts them into a sympathetic light, because our minds are instantly drawn to vets who wake up screaming in the night remembering what they've done. It is a false perception and it's one that's been damned hard to beat over the last seven decades because the winners won and then rewrote the history to absolve themselves and treat the enemy like shit. When the survivors today have to still frame it in the context of "I know what we did was bad," then that's horrible. She should not be forced to take the burden of responsibility onto herself, yet here we are. The narrative of "Germans collectively guilty, Soviets traumatized war veterans" is also dangerous because with crimes these severe and these outrageous and far past the pale, then there is always the human tendency to blame the wrong people, because we just get so damned emotional, and want to avenge them so badly. I care about all the victims, from every ethnic and national background and age group and gender, and to me, this is very black and white morality, with a clear good and evil, at least on the individual level and not the abstract ethnic and national level, because my thinking was those guilty were always rotten people and they proved it, what more do you need than by judging their clearly despicable actions, but when you put it into this context, and treat it only as Soviets (ethnic minorities) versus Germanic white women, then I think people tend to be very biased because of our own modern views, and they engage in bad messaging and bad history. There is stigmatization towards white people in our modern society, of course, because we've been the rulers for centuries, but there's also stuff like people shoving their own agendas into this, or being too modern in their thinking, while ignoring stuff like how every Western nation back then suppressed women getting into any real positions of authority, or that there was social pressure for women to conform to what men wanted. Casual historians fail to see this. Casual media to try and raise awareness does not get it. It's very discouraging.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

even if I accepted that sometimes, different values lead to horrible actions, what about those who act on no values at all? nine times out of ten, serial killers do the things they do just for shits and giggles.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

even if I accepted that sometimes, different values lead to horrible actions, what about those who act on no values at all? nine times out of ten, serial killers do the things they do just for shits and giggles.

Christ, it's not a matter of the values leading to bad behavior. It's the selective nature of it. Family for instance. The Sopranos. The whole series involves Tony as a protagonist who has upstein values when it comes to his personal family. When it comes to his business though, he does horrible horrible things. It's not because "he doesn't have empathy." It's because he only applies it to certain people.

[CharlesPhipps]

Nazis are an extension of all the worst impulses of nationalism, racism, conquest, colonialism, and military worship into one package.

Their evil is not terrifying because it was different but because it was the same only more so.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

sorry, I still cannot comprehend that. and I wasn't talking about Nazis but serial killers who kill just for it's own sake. also, Jane Toppan was the real life Bad Seed.

[CmdrKing]

Usually when we say people kill "because they could" or "because they enjoy it", we're simplifying for the sake of our own well-being.

Like, with serial killers there usually is an internal logic to things, some "crime" the victim had committed against them or internal guilt that was served by murder, and usually the main difference between them and most people is the threshold at which "kill someone" is an acceptable solution.

That said, a lot of times the basic mentality of the evilest of people, be they nazis or serial killers, aren't meaningfully different except in access to victims and ability to wield power to your everyday domestic abuser. The mental hoops by which you can physically assault someone while claiming to be victim, because they "made" you do it due to trivial slights against your authority and sense of entitlement, are nearly indistinguishable from the sort of testimony you got from Nazis at Nuremberg, or the likes of Ted Bundy, or the rambling ass manifestos of today's mass shooters.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Usually when we say people kill "because they could" or "because they enjoy it", we're simplifying for the sake of our own well-being.

Like, with serial killers there usually is an internal logic to things, some "crime" the victim had committed against them or internal guilt that was served by murder, and usually the main difference between them and most people is the threshold at which "kill someone" is an acceptable solution.

That said, a lot of times the basic mentality of the evilest of people, be they nazis or serial killers, aren't meaningfully different except in access to victims and ability to wield power to your everyday domestic abuser. The mental hoops by which you can physically assault someone while claiming to be victim, because they "made" you do it due to trivial slights against your authority and sense of entitlement, are nearly indistinguishable from the sort of testimony you got from Nazis at Nuremberg, or the likes of Ted Bundy, or the rambling ass manifestos of today's mass shooters.

I don't buy that, what did Jack the Ripper's victims do to him, what did the little girl Albert Fish killed and cannibalized do to him? and back to Jane Toppan, she said herself her life's ambition was to murder more innocent people then anyone else in history and the only way she could have done that is if she systematically wiped out the entire human race.

[CharlesPhipps]

It's not a hard thing as, "They like it."

Killing and torturing and assaulting people has historically made a lot of people feel strong and powerful.

There's an episode of Highlander the Series (odd reference I know) where a guy summarized it in a surprising concise way.

"Some people want to destroy you because they feel you're abominations? As for me? I get off on it."

[CmdrKing]

There's a reason "Crime" is in quotes there.

Like, we can't definitively say what Jack the Ripper was thinking of course. We're not definitively sure who all he killed. But it's no large stretch to say what they "did" to him was... be prostitutes. It's not at all uncommon for society to look at prostitutes as objects of sin, and so their existence was a crime and Jack enacted justice upon them.

But sure, we could also suppose he's a case of "I want to prove my superiority", which is basically the same as the "I wanna kill more people than anyone ever" so we can talk about them together. And this comes back to Nazis too: you kill them because they're not as important as you, and killing them advances my goals. Proving you're smarter than the police, becoming famous for your killing prowess, strengthening and preserving the German People by eliminating the Undesirables, it's the same basic mentality: I'm the center of the universe, and everyone else is just an obstacle between me and my destiny.
The "Crime" is "their existence keeps me from having the life I should." And usually there's a strong undercurrent of "how dare they make me kill them".

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, hi, I'm here. Probably still won't be posting much given how I've been caught up in other pursuits. Anyway, point remains, there are still inhuman monsters out there, and they don't deserve sympathy or people trying to misrepresent their motives as in some way being a lot kinder than they are. Going with the example I keep harping on, it's bad because I think most people disconnect stuff like that from themselves, because they are decent blokes who wouldn't behave that way, and focus purely on the "power," ie "mental" aspects to that kind of violence, ignoring that it goes hand-in-hand with 50% physical as well. And I think to make excuses and disconnect it from yourself and only look at it as violence is a gateway to victim-blaming if you have constructed a strawman in your head that the victim was a cackling hate-filled monster. Thinking of it only as physical will do that too, but so does going to the extreme end in the other direction, and it also ignores the underlying issues of patriarchy and just how TWISTED human sexuality seems. Like how I have my own kinks and so forth. I reject collective guilt, psychology culture, and political correctness because I've SEEN how those can be used as a weapon to shame their victims, ever so subtly, and elevate those guilty, ever so slightly, past a point they really should be elevated to.

DBF, it's really not worth thinking about. Some people think it's mental disorders, and granted, it might be, but psychology still isn't anywhere close to forming a definitive thesis as to what, conclusively, makes humans tick. Some think it's environment, that a bad environment will bring out the worst in people, but while that's true for some, a person hailing from a similar background with near identical personality traits will refuse to go as far as the first one did. Either most people SERIOUSLY underestimate just how powerful free will is, given how most people don't want to face responsibility and don't want freedom, or there are forces tugging and pulling on us now that are past our ability to comprehend given our limited nature, and words like "evil" are just a word for something we don't understand. Some used to think it was the devil, magic, and so on. We still don't know, even in the modern era. But because of herd mentality, we are more inclined to side with them and shame those who fell to them because the weak get left behind and trampled, while the strong prove their worth. My feeling is it's a combination of all of that. The mental stuff, your environment, and forces beyond our ability to understand given how primitive and limited our grasp upon reality and our senses are. This needs hard-line condemnation, and they truly don't need people defending them. Take Adam Lanza. This is how it happens. Some disconnect it from themselves because they're decent creatures despite flaws, who would not butcher twenty children like cattle. So they think he himself is the victim of some "innocent" mental illness. I think that's really just... awful, since it pushes the "darker" motivations guiding him to the side to focus on something past his ability to control, that a lot of other people suffer through, but don't act that way. In conclusion, people will still lash out and be the selfish, cruel, spoiled, disgusting animals we are. But perhaps you need a bit of larceny in you to understand them. I do. Every one of them made a conscious decision, and power is tempting. That's all we need to know. Literally, you could drive yourself mad over this. It is not worth it. Let it go, really. I need to do the same.