Jo

They are trained professionals, not bystanders

That is why them doing bad things is horrific...

I belive cops have used the bystander effect as an excuse to do bad things... and I that is cops being fools because again, the bystander effect does not apply to cops as they are not bystanders...

It was coined after the murder of Kitty Genovese, because false statements were put out saying over 30 bystanders didn't help or call the cops and that's the excuse used for them not saving her... except people DID try to help, far fewer people saw/heard anything in the first place, and hesitancy to call the police is because of fear of police rather than any kind of bystander groupthink.

That being said, the term "bystander effect" is (at least amongst people who aren't as well read as yourself) also used to refer to the diffusion of responsibility (wikipedia that, it's interesting) in crowds and is drilled into first responders (like myself) as a very real thing that you have to fight against to get people to help or to call for emergency services while a first responder renders stabilizing aid. "Someone call 911!" nearly never works, because everyone thinks someone else is doing it. If you single someone out of the crowd and point to them and say "YOU call 911 right now!" then they're significantly more likely to actually do it. This has been a lesson taught in every first responder course I've been in for the past 30 years, regardless of the class or race mix of the trainee cadre, even as several of the other topics have shifted or changed in priority (how to do CPR has changed significantly in the last 10 years, the applicability of tourniquets, etc).

Hell, it's applicable outside an emergency context/professionally as well: if you finish out a meeting and don't make a list of action items and get people to confirm that they're the one taking responsibility for each thing, nothing gets done. I've run into that a shitton in the last 20 years too, it's maddening.

Tags by @malewifesband

As most people know or can figure out by simply searching for the definition, fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. What that means is that it is a highly structured and complex system that is designed to force obedience and maintain it. However one person cannot force an entire country into submission without a support system. There has to be a foundation of support and acceptance in order for fascism to rise to power.

Fascism is not your typical authoritarian movement though. Authoritarianism is a more broad term to define governments that demand complete political control while fascism requires complete control period. Everything is controlled and dictated by the leader under the guise that through this leader, the country can be led to greatness. Through Hitler and Hitler alone, Germany could be made a new and achieve greatness. Through Trump and Trump alone, America can be great again, can be healthy again.

Robert Paxton, a prominent American political scientist and historian, defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

To sum it up; it preys on existing patriotism and exploits it to the highest degree when a country is in perceived distress. It could be true distress like a country facing complete collapse after a violent world war or social distress due to religious extremism as we are seeing in the US right now.

It seeks to eliminate any and all opposition by whatever means necessary; first through more subjective means such as propaganda and turning the public interest which then leads to more physical means such as almost invincible law enforcement groups and violence. Concentration camps were not all death camps and didn’t start out that way. They started as work camps and prison camps to house political opponents and anyone who spoke out against the Nazis.

Now where do white women fit into this?

Women’s role in fascism is to demonstrate her patriotism and support her country by birthing and nurturing the next generation of boys and girls to become soldiers and mothers. Just like how you can’t force an entire country into submission without support, you can’t force every woman in a country to birth and raise more fascists. There has to be some level of acceptance and support for the cause in order for people to submit its demands.

The problem with my explanation of women’s role within fascism though is that it assumes there cannot women who are also driving the rise of fascism when we know that isn’t true.

Here are two lists of prominent women within the Nazi party that I found within seconds of searching “famous women nazi sympathizers”:

1. Female guards

2. Women of the third reich

Imagine the lists I would’ve put together if I had spent 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes researching Nazi women.

Now back to the original post, it is by design that we believe that white women are not capable of being willing and active fascists. It is by design that we think them to be poor little bambis that need to be protected and shielded from the consequences of their actions. They didn’t know any better so we can’t really hold them responsible right?

Bull fucking shit.

If you've never found yourself as the victim of a cult, or sexual assault, or abuse, the only thing separating you from people who have been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse is circumstance. That's it. Sheer luck. Luck over what family you were born into. Luck over who you were surrounded by when you were emotionally compromised or in any way vulnerable. Ect.

You are not better than people who have been victimized. They didn't do anything wrong to ask to be victimized. Anyone can be victimized by these situations given the perfect storm of circumstances. You are not better than people who have been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse.

You need to understand that if you are lucky enough to have never been victimized by cults / sexual assault / abuse, it's very little to do with how smart or strong you are or you doing all the "right" things. Someone can be smart and strong and do all the right things and still find themselves a victim given the perfect storm of bad circumstances.

Bullying.

Funny how when I was being bullied as a kid, I did fight back and I did do everything I could to stand up to my bullies. But that didn't make it stop. All the adults at school just told me that the bullying was my fault because I was "giving the bullies the reaction they wanted, if I would just be quiet and ignore them the bullying would stop."

But now that I'm an adult, I hear other adults saying all the time that kids who get bullied are only bullied because they're too weak and insecure to stand up for themselves.

Isn't that funny? How I spent years fighting back and trying to stand up for myself, and this got me told that it was my fault for not just ignoring them? But now I hear other adults, most of whom are parents, saying if a kid is bullied it's their fault for not standing up for themselves or fighting back?

It's a lose/lose situation, either way if the kid fights back, or doesn't fight back, they're told its their fault for how they respond. It's almost as if, the bullying isn't the victim's fault or smthing 🤔

And this type of victim blaming rhetoric ignores that there's in the majority of cases a power imbalance between the bullies and victims.

Common dynamics we see are: white kids bullying children of color, neurotypical kids bullying neurodivergent kids, gender conforming cishet kids bullying GNC and/or LGBTQIA+ kids, abled kids bullying disabled kids, boys bullying girls (he's only teasing you because he likes you!), rich or middle class children bullying poor children, ect. ect.

And this is exactly WHY adults often victim blame bullied children instead of holding bullies accountable, and these adults blaming the children are often privileged themselves. White adult school staff blaming children of color who are getting bullied instead of holding the white children doing the bullying accountable, neurotypical adult school staff blaming neurodivergent children who are being bullied instead of holding the neurotypical children doing the bullying accountable, ect. ect.