this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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Sounds like a bunch of shitty historians.
Of course the motives matter, most of all for a good historian. Those who wish to reconstruct the past shall not be deterred from their goal just because "nobody cares anymore". Fidelity to an accurate representation of the past is the only acceptable rendition of history, otherwise why even bother.
The history of Western Europe, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas is littered with "reformed Nazis" who came out of the 2nd World War pledging themselves to the cause of US/UK Capitalist Imperialism. It is not merely that we disregarded the intentions of the Reluctant Wehrmacht. It is that we found many of these fascists to be useful - either as expendable shock troops during the Cold War or as spies, scientists, and bureaucrats in postwar states still invested in a politically correct form of apartheid.
You can find the breadcrumb trail of German Fascism leading out of Berlin and into Buenos Aeries, Cape Town, and Huntsville Alabama. These fuckers never actually went away.
Don't forget about the regular capitalists. Many of the richest German industrialists today are direct heirs of Nazis who actively helped Hitler gain power, built a personal empire from slave labor, faced no consequences for their actions, and were allowed to keep operating after the war.
They never went away because their ideals were not defeated. They went away into a USA that segregated blacks from whites and had Japanese internment camps. You blame Nazis as the source, but they are merely a symptom of a human condition. And as long as we don't collectively uplift ourselves, it's never going to be overcome, no matter how many proponents are killed off or muffled in the background.
Ok so what would you call them?
Well, I'd like to call them people. Wanna know why? I'll tell you even if you don't. It's because despite our choices in life, we are all people. We can hate each other, renounce our humanity or run away from the truth with a myriad of excuses, but at the heart of the matter we are all people.
As long as you never let go of that concept, you will understand that those that do let go become capable of incredible harm to one another. And when that happens, the main point to be wary of isn't when they will do incredible harm, but whether to join them in letting go as well. Because once you join them in this, you too will be capable of causing incredible harm.
Is that train of thought wrong? Or is killing each other the only real answer?