Alternatively, I think there is value in modern culture setting a high bar on this, if we could manage it. Perhaps it's better not to preemptively excuse the easier path of aligning w/ fascist causes, even to avoid one's own persecution. Better to reinforce that such alignment is reducing yourself, for future observers at least, to a similar distinction (despite of course the overwhelming cruelty of such a fate). I fear this ship is sailing however.
> Perhaps it's better not to preemptively excuse the easier path of aligning w/ fascist causes, even to avoid one's own persecution. Better to reinforce that such alignment is reducing yourself, for future observers at least, to a similar distinction
I don't think that's what this everyone-was-a-Nazi language is accomplishing, though. When someone uses the word "Nazi" they mean someone who is entirely unlike themselves or most people they know.
If we lean into this language, we risk forgetting that the vast majority of Germans in the 1930s were no different than the vast majority of us today—they had lives, jobs, families, and they looked the other way or even participated because they didn't want to rock the boat and risk those things. They were not Nazis, they were just citizens, but they enabled genocide.
I don't think that embracing the label "Nazi" for everyday Germans who never joined the party (and maybe even voted against Hitler when there was still a vote!) will scare people into standing up if they end up in a similar situation, it will just serve to create the sense that "1930s Germany was a really awful place with a lot of awful people and aren't I glad that I don't live there?"
If we take the approach instead of talking about how many ordinary people aided and abetted the Nazi cause by being silent—how they committed war crimes without ever being a Nazi—I think that will actually be more effective at teaching people how to avoid recreating the Third Reich.
Yes, I could indeed see that being the more effective approach to stir reflection in those who would reflexively & categorically reject any such association with the label. Cheers.
Nazi imagery now symbolizes ultimate evil, but that's the effect of history and reflection and cultural symbols changing. Fascism, including in 1930s Germany, is always packaged up in appealing packaging. It seems appealing, promising national revival and cherished values.
People didn't sign up for overt evil; they got swept up in something that appeared reasonable and popular, or just said nothing about the same.
This is the real lesson that I think we're losing; that it's possible to be an ordinary person of ordinary good morals, and to support terrible crimes happening if one isn't careful.
