This was the horrifying thing about the nerenberg trials, not that the Nazis were somehow inhuman shape changers who condemned millions to slavery, torture and death, but the fact that they were regular hamuman beings with regular families, thoughts and desires who condemned millions to slavery torture and death.
It is known as “the banality of evil”, the point of the concept isn’t to excuse the Nazis but to make people aware that ordinary people in the “right” environment can absolutely become evil.
If you believe Nazis aren’t people you are avoiding the work of ensuring you don’t act like them, more critically you are avoiding the work of ensuring your friends and family and other “people” you know aren’t acting like them. I don’t mean hats with skulls on them and building has chambers, but I mean the intentional “othering” of people, in the Nazis time Jews, homosexuals, gypsies etc. today probably some other groups. The root of the Nazis evil is that they considered these people sub human and therefore any actions taken against them, no matter how vicious were morally correct so long as they benefitted “real people”.
A similar root exists behind many of the worst institutional evils in the world today, e.g. the active genocides in Sudan and Palestine.
This is why the nerenberg trials were and are important.
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”
Speaking of Pratchett; I recently re-read the last continent and I was amazed at how there was a mention of drag queens (probably alluding to Priscilla; Queen of the Desert?) but it was handled very tastefully, no obvious/lazy jokes.
This struck me since most media from 20 years back hasn’t aged nearly so gracefully.
Between that and your comment I’m starting to realise that Terry Pratchett was probably a very wise very kind man who happened to write funny books. Which makes me so happy because the bromeliad trilogy were the first books that really got me into reading as a child.
yeah he really is incredible, you would think across forty one books (and that’s just the ones from discworld) in the time that he came from there would be at least a couple bad takes but he never misses.
i started mort as my first from him and got halfway through it but misplaced it :(
think I’m gonna get it on my kindle i really love his personification of death as a kind being who loves cats and desperately wants to understand humans haha
I think most people take away the wrong lesson, though. Yes, they can be anyone, yes we shouldn’t willy nilly go around labeling people as sub-human.
… but when does, “some uninformed fool” become an “enemy combatant”? Far too many people think doing a “bad” thing for ANY reason is bad over humanization reasons. Yes, they’re humans, but sometimes humans deserve to die.
No one really deserves to die. Sometimes that’s the only option to stop them from harming others, or we have no capability to protect society from them in a reasonable manner. The former is usually in situations that qualify as self defense or the defense of others, the latter is more often a financial issue more dependent on the level of civilization and I would say doesn’t apply to most of the world at this point in time.
There is never a reasonable need to kill another person unless that is the only option to stop them from causing harm to others. Anything else is just lazy and/or inhumane thinking.
Nazis. I don’t think there’s a way around that one. The only human nazi is a dead nazi.
Nazis are awful and horrifying, not because they’re not human, but because they are.
This was the horrifying thing about the nerenberg trials, not that the Nazis were somehow inhuman shape changers who condemned millions to slavery, torture and death, but the fact that they were regular hamuman beings with regular families, thoughts and desires who condemned millions to slavery torture and death.
It is known as “the banality of evil”, the point of the concept isn’t to excuse the Nazis but to make people aware that ordinary people in the “right” environment can absolutely become evil.
If you believe Nazis aren’t people you are avoiding the work of ensuring you don’t act like them, more critically you are avoiding the work of ensuring your friends and family and other “people” you know aren’t acting like them. I don’t mean hats with skulls on them and building has chambers, but I mean the intentional “othering” of people, in the Nazis time Jews, homosexuals, gypsies etc. today probably some other groups. The root of the Nazis evil is that they considered these people sub human and therefore any actions taken against them, no matter how vicious were morally correct so long as they benefitted “real people”.
A similar root exists behind many of the worst institutional evils in the world today, e.g. the active genocides in Sudan and Palestine.
This is why the nerenberg trials were and are important.
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”
-pratchett, once again
Speaking of Pratchett; I recently re-read the last continent and I was amazed at how there was a mention of drag queens (probably alluding to Priscilla; Queen of the Desert?) but it was handled very tastefully, no obvious/lazy jokes.
This struck me since most media from 20 years back hasn’t aged nearly so gracefully.
Between that and your comment I’m starting to realise that Terry Pratchett was probably a very wise very kind man who happened to write funny books. Which makes me so happy because the bromeliad trilogy were the first books that really got me into reading as a child.
I should re-read the discord series 🙂
yeah he really is incredible, you would think across forty one books (and that’s just the ones from discworld) in the time that he came from there would be at least a couple bad takes but he never misses.
i started mort as my first from him and got halfway through it but misplaced it :(
think I’m gonna get it on my kindle i really love his personification of death as a kind being who loves cats and desperately wants to understand humans haha
I think most people take away the wrong lesson, though. Yes, they can be anyone, yes we shouldn’t willy nilly go around labeling people as sub-human.
… but when does, “some uninformed fool” become an “enemy combatant”? Far too many people think doing a “bad” thing for ANY reason is bad over humanization reasons. Yes, they’re humans, but sometimes humans deserve to die.
No one really deserves to die. Sometimes that’s the only option to stop them from harming others, or we have no capability to protect society from them in a reasonable manner. The former is usually in situations that qualify as self defense or the defense of others, the latter is more often a financial issue more dependent on the level of civilization and I would say doesn’t apply to most of the world at this point in time.
There is never a reasonable need to kill another person unless that is the only option to stop them from causing harm to others. Anything else is just lazy and/or inhumane thinking.