So teach kids what Nazis actually were, the tactics they used, and the items needed for the Nazis to succeed. Rather than just saying Nazis are bad.
Teach what they were. Like any other hazardous material. Knowledge and understanding is key to this issue. Awareness that the "Nazi" exists is a good starting point, but it is useless as education towards prevention.
Where and how do Nazis thrive?
How do they come to access power?
What do they do to spread?
How do you identify a Nazi?
How do you know a Nazi tactic from a non-Nazi tactic?
What did past defenders do? What worked and what didn't and why?
There is more to this than just saying - Make Nazis fearful.
Fascism - is the blanket term for the techniques the Nazis used. It is a series of techniques they used to remove the people from their sense of reason and ability to trust by utilizing fear, hatred, and othering to push their agenda.
The german citizen was economically crippled and felt the German govt and economic elites had led them to this result. This resulted in them being willing to hear anyone out who promised to recognize and solve this glaring issue.
Enter the Right Wing Demagogue Hilter
What's a Demagogue? I've heard it best described as "an ideologically inconsistent opportunist", essentially a conman who will promise anything to anyone if it gets them ahead.
What is Right Wing? Bigger topic but in broad terms it is the side of things that often favors taking actions that consolidate power into the hands of fewer and fewer people the further you go. It is the opposite of Left Wing where the actions and powers are favored to go into more hands.
Brief pro and con of the "Right" - fewer hands holding power creates oligarchy, dictatorship, and profiteering, yet also can be a citizen held right to something the society has yielded.
Brief pro and con of the "Left" - more hands holding power creates bureaucracy and communistic stagnation, yet also encourages socialism for inelastic needs such as health, libraries, police, and military defense rather than allowing for single hand control or profiteering in areas EVERY citizen needs available to them, rather than used against them.
Nuance is the devil the Fascist will hide within. Claiming to be "just asking questions" yet they will never provide actual answers. All promises and goals that "hair tonic" we've heard so much about, but no actual understanding and growth. It simply poisons you and makes you groggy with fear and leadens your growth via isolation.
Why would the Demagogue take hold?
Because the environment is ripe to allow them to do so. So what is the best environment?
Political gridlock between the left and right forcing ever growing concessions toward the right and the enlisting of economic elites to solve societal and governmental problems.
Meaning - stagnation and corruption. Permitted by the citizens for so long that they divest of any interest or "hope" of correcting course WHILE the growing resentment of this situation forces the citizens to seek simple broad solutions from a "charasmatic someone" rather than themselves. In other words - a Right Wing Demagogue
How does a Demagogue flourish in such an environment?
They promise everything to everyone. In a time of division this works. The promises are HUGE and yet empty. "I will fix the _______!", "I will chase out the ________", and "I am your salvation!". They will promise to bring you the moon while never once understanding a rocketship. They will promise a treasure map, yet never show it to you. The promises words used are often common language to promote "slogan thought" rather than critical thinking. Which is understandable, because group chanting in unison is fun and does odd things to our primate brains. Slogans are ripe for that.
The slogans are often a promise of power, unity, safety, yet gloss over the cruelty, violations, and power grabs they portend.
Yet the demagogue cannot take hold, the political gridlock cannot commence, and the concessions cannot begin without the most important ingredient: a cult.
Yep. Weird right? Though this isn't quite the Robes and Hats and cauldrons type. It is simply a group of people who have come to believe the solution to the situation just needs some kind of grand unifying event to come along and magically solve all this nonsense. A kind of magical thinking, if you will.
"If we just got rid of all these ________ then we'd be just fine"
"We're only in this mess because of those _______ and if it weren't for that we'd be on easy street."
So if THIS is how someone is thinking then it's pretty easy to see how someone could come along and just sorta promise to fix those _______ issues.
Nuance, understanding, and coming together to solve together is replaced with abjectification tactics.
Vilification and massively expanding who falls under that vilification.
Who's to blame - (Hollow term that you can endlessly expand the members of while claiming them to be everywhere and dangerous, yet weak and crushable if only the demagogue and supporters were given more permission and power to do as they please. The boogie man in the closet we must fight by all means necessary, and certainly not a fear tactic to attempt to entrench thoughtless devotion and blind concessions into normalcy)
Who's to blame - Foreigners
Who's to blame - Non-Citizens
Who's to blame - Socialists
Who's to blame - your neighbors
This is how "Othering" is deployed. WE make a THEM out of US.
WE are noble. THEY must not be then.
WE are deserving. THEY must not be then.
So WE simply must give the Demagogue THEM. How else can WE be safe from THEM?
WE must simply give the Demagogue _______.
How else can WE be safe from ______?
You don't need to knuckle down, participate in the arduous task or correcting course with your neighbors and people elected to positions of service. You only need to sacrifice ______. You only need to sacrifice THEM.
Solving mistakes and misgovernances is hard and boring. Let the Demagogue do it.
Having rights and privileges is a pathway to danger and hardship. Give them to the Demagogue.
What do you mean you have no rights or privileges? Only THEY have none...you must be one of THEM. The Demagogue will be along shortly to collect you shortly.
Fascists make you distrust any avenues that might provide you with information and power to repel them. Science, education, news stations, your neighbors.....
You start at your strongest, and fascism is naturally erosive. It will take whatever you will give it, and grow.
It will ask for your trust while telling you that nothing is trustable. It will whisper that THEY are out to get you while claiming to simply be your safety. It will claim to know the secrets if only you'd give in to those suspicions it brought to your door.
It is never proof. Simply accusations. It is guilty by accusation until proven innocent via impossibility.
It is a web of suspicion and conspiracy and paranoia and fear that promises certainty it cannot provide, proof it will not provide, trust it will not earn, and safety it will never yield. An endless ouroboros of isolation and fear. That only grows unless starved.
1) A Right Wing Demagogue
2) Political gridlock forcing concessions to the Right and the enmeshment of Economic elites
3) A cult looking for simple answers to complex issues that they will be allowed to "Slogan" instead of "Solve". A cult that is being fed "Distrust of avenues of information and accountability", "Othering and Abjectification" of its neighbors, and "Goals with no plans and divorce from solutions".
Because if those three things are present then I've got bad news for you. There's a hell of a lot of work to do and precious little time to do it.
Listening and community will be your way out. Mutual aid and inclusion.
Don't debate. Listen. Really listen. Then show each other who you are and how you got where you are. Reach out instead of recoil. Bond and Build community. Understand and educate each other. Build momentum together not against one another.
Go listen to the government service members talk on the record. Learn where they lie. Learn who is already trying to help solve issues and render aid to something you care about. Provide support to those in need. Learn and meet those who are different than you, especially WITH each other.
Fascism fails if we don't allow it to grow from feeding on our fear, our ignorance, and our neighbors.
But as I said at the beginning - WE, the myriad of humans, are the solution. WE are not OUR enemy.
Be safe. Be kind. WE can do this.
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