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Shadowrun and Antifa

mfb View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 05:44 PM Post #101
Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670	the vilification of the Jews was the reason for, and led directly to, the death camps.

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 05:53 PM

Post #102

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QUOTE (mfb)

QUOTE (Grinder)

I can understand that point of view, but I don't share it. You're right, objectivly speaking, but it seems that I can't take this objective point of view, not in this case.

not to pick on you, but that's exactly why that type of thinking is so scary. if you view a group of people as monsters without any redeeming qualities, you divorce yourself from the need to think when dealing with them. and if you're not thinking when you deal with that group of people, then it's going to be very difficult for you to differentiate between people who actually belong in that group and people who only superficially appear to belong in that group. in this case, for instance, it becomes very easy to lump anyone who expresses anything that remotely resembles antisemitism in with the Nazis, thus killing all possibility of rational discussion when considering any topic related to Jews or Judaism. another danger is that you can be led into (further) irrational action very easily; for instance, an opponent of the highway system in Germany could theoretically gain a lot of support by simply pointing out the autobahn's Nazi roots.

and perhaps more to the point, by joining in with the general groupthink that vilifies the Nazis beyond their due while ignoring their redeeming qualities, you're actually doing exactly what the Nazis are most hated and reviled for.

Very good points, especially your last argument is fucking good. I know that you're right, but as I said before, I can't stand the idea that the Nazis did anything good or anyting that has benefits for other people. That's purely subjective and I know that it's wrong, but I don't want to take another view on it. But hopefully by knowing and admitting that my point of view is not logical, I'm separated from people who're saying "the Nazis are the Evil Guys" as a reflex.

pbangarth

Oct 21 2007, 06:05 PM

Post #103

Old Man of the North

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QUOTE (hyzmarca)

If the number is greater than 0 and this can be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, then I will concede defeat.

The fact that there exists idiots, even racist idiots who have adopted Nazi symbology, does not prove that any German official who planned or ran death camps during WWII is still alive.

So what? The ideology still exists, and there are tools who implement that ideology. It doesn't matter that they did not exist when the earlier tools implemented that ideology.

Does it matter to the promulgation of the democratic ideal that no ancient Greeks exist?

Does it matter to the spreading of a fundamentalist religious ideal that the original prophet no longer lives?

Does it matter to astro-physicists that Einstein no longer lives?

One of the defining characteristics of humanity is its ability to pass on ideas from one generation to the next. It is the idea that helps or hinders humanity, at least as much as the person who believes it. Countering an idea that is destructive will never work as long as the focus is on individuals, and not the idea.

I'm sort of lost now. How does this apply to SR, again?

Kagetenshi

Oct 21 2007, 06:23 PM

Post #104

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QUOTE (mfb @ Oct 21 2007, 12:44 PM)

the vilification of the Jews was the reason for, and led directly to, the death camps.

Not at all. The fact that the Madagascar Plan and Fugu Plan were conceived demonstrates otherwise.

It should also be added that the need for a Final Solution was necessitated by the breakdown of the previous plan of forced emigration. The vast expenditure for the death camps, which quite literally required the development of new means of execution (early methods attempted were slow, prohibitively expensive, and tended to be devastating to the morale and mental health of those assigned to oversee, enact, or clean up after executions), was not undertaken lightly—especially in a time of war, when resources were at a premium.

~J

mfb View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 07:37 PM Post #105
Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670	the Fugu Plan was somewhat less about the vilification of the Jews and somewhat more about other features of the stereotype. i don't consider the Madagascar Plan (or the Fugu Plan, for that matter) to be a deviation from the route between vilification and death camps; just a wide spot in the road along the way. my views on human nature lead me to believe that almost anytime a group of people is singled out based on a shared set of features (physical, mental, or spiritual), the situation will naturally progress towards genocide. it may take a long time to get there, it may even be defused before it gets there, but genocide is at the bottom of the slope that discrimination slides down. i say this because it's only in the past few thousand years that genocide has stopped being the natural response to "other, unfriendly type". hell, the bible is full of stories about how this group slaughtered that group down to the last man, woman, child, and goat. please note that the above is in no way an exaggeration.

Critias View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 07:37 PM Post #106
Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714	The danger with knee-jerk saying "everything the Nazis did was bad" is that it leads directly to thinking "as such, all Nazis were completely inhuman monsters," which is exactly the sort of thinking that people claim to abhor about the Nazis themselves. When you no longer think of the German people of that time period as people, you fall into the same thinking we're all so eager to condemn them for. Even the German military, heck, even those who were members of the political party. They were people, each and every one of them, and they did good as well as bad. The vast majority of them never latched a cattle car shut or flipped a switch or pulled a trigger on a civilian; most of them could every bit as easily have been soldiers on the Allied side. I don't imagine very many of their line infantrymen were hunkered down in trenches taking fire, saying "Man, Hitler sure is cool." I bet their thoughts during the day in and day out drudgery and terror of war were pretty much in line with the thoughts of every other soldier before and after. If you ask me, there's no dishonor in putting on a uniform and serving your country, protecting your people. Ever.

Kagetenshi

Oct 21 2007, 07:55 PM

Post #107

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QUOTE (mfb)

the Fugu Plan was somewhat less about the vilification of the Jews and somewhat more about other features of the stereotype. i don't consider the Madagascar Plan (or the Fugu Plan, for that matter) to be a deviation from the route between vilification and death camps; just a wide spot in the road along the way.

They were both ways to pick up the general idea of "take this group of people and move them far away", at least from the Third Reich perspective.

QUOTE

my views on human nature lead me to believe that almost anytime a group of people is singled out based on a shared set of features (physical, mental, or spiritual), the situation will naturally progress towards genocide. it may take a long time to get there, it may even be defused before it gets there, but genocide is at the bottom of the slope that discrimination slides down.

Considering how long it would have taken for the Third Reich to be needing lebensraum in, say, Madagascar, I consider this (while accurate) somewhat less useful than the statement that life naturally progresses towards death—it's true, but on a timescale that's generally not useful. The Third Reich's immediate goal was to remove people identified as undesirable out of territory controlled by the Third Reich and the society within. This goal is not identical to the goal of genocide, though in general the latter implies the former—the converse is not true, however.

QUOTE

i say this because it's only in the past few thousand years that genocide has stopped being the natural response to "other, unfriendly type".

I'd argue that the issue becomes clouded past the point of usefulness due to differences in scale—with small tribes, there can be no useful distinction between "killing those who can fight" and "destroying the tribe wholesale".

~J

Fortune

Oct 21 2007, 08:45 PM

Post #108

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QUOTE (Critias)

If you ask me, there's no dishonor in putting on a uniform and serving your country, protecting your people. Ever.

QFT.

HappyDaze

Oct 21 2007, 09:04 PM

Post #109

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QUOTE

If you ask me, there's no dishonor in putting on a uniform and serving your country, protecting your people. Ever.

Nor in doing so without a uniform with whatever means are available against a far superior foe.

Kagetenshi View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 09:12 PM Post #110
Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802	For what it's worth I disagree that there is no dishonor in serving a country or assuming its trappings, but I don't expect agreement. (I guess that's pretty vague, so while I don't intend to get into a big discussion on my views, I'll just note that my objection is to serving "a country" (where country is used synonymously with state), not just limited to considerations about the worthiness of any particular country) ~J

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 09:22 PM

Post #111

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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

QUOTE (mfb @ Oct 21 2007, 12:44 PM)

the vilification of the Jews was the reason for, and led directly to, the death camps.

Not at all. The fact that the Madagascar Plan and Fugu Plan were conceived demonstrates otherwise.

It should also be added that the need for a Final Solution was necessitated by the breakdown of the previous plan of forced emigration. The vast expenditure for the death camps, which quite literally required the development of new means of execution (early methods attempted were slow, prohibitively expensive, and tended to be devastating to the morale and mental health of those assigned to oversee, enact, or clean up after executions), was not undertaken lightly—especially in a time of war, when resources were at a premium.

~J

Sounds a little bit like "oh the poor wardens at the death camp couldn't stand the mass murder they saw, so their superiors developed industrialized annhilation." Hm.

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 09:25 PM

Post #112

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QUOTE (Critias)

The danger with knee-jerk saying "everything the Nazis did was bad" is that it leads directly to thinking "as such, all Nazis were completely inhuman monsters," which is exactly the sort of thinking that people claim to abhor about the Nazis themselves.

When you no longer think of the German people of that time period as people, you fall into the same thinking we're all so eager to condemn them for. Even the German military, heck, even those who were members of the political party. They were people, each and every one of them, and they did good as well as bad. The vast majority of them never latched a cattle car shut or flipped a switch or pulled a trigger on a civilian; most of them could every bit as easily have been soldiers on the Allied side. I don't imagine very many of their line infantrymen were hunkered down in trenches taking fire, saying "Man, Hitler sure is cool." I bet their thoughts during the day in and day out drudgery and terror of war were pretty much in line with the thoughts of every other soldier before and after.

If you ask me, there's no dishonor in putting on a uniform and serving your country, protecting your people. Ever.

I use the term "Nazi" for the people during the Third Reich who actually believed in the bullshit and helped its cause by killing civillians, working in death camps, oversee labor camps and similar things.

A lot of people didn't go en par with the Nazi ideology and maybe even worked against it, that's true.

So yes, I agree with Critias. And this topic makes my head spinning around.

Kagetenshi

Oct 21 2007, 09:30 PM

Post #113

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QUOTE (Grinder)

Sounds a little bit like "oh the poor wardens at the death camp couldn't stand the mass murder they saw, so their superiors developed industrialized annhilation." Hm.

That's pretty much the case—that and the fact that the other methods were, not even taking into account the stress on the staff, typically extremely expensive.

Of course, that wasn't my main point, but you've made a correct observation here, even though your tone suggests you may have issues with it.

~J

mfb

Oct 21 2007, 09:36 PM

Post #114

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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

They were both ways to pick up the general idea of "take this group of people and move them far away", at least from the Third Reich perspective.

"move them far away" is the procrastinator's genocide. i'm not trying to draw any moral equivalence between moving people and killing them, but i think it's useful to remain aware of the logical conclusion of this sort of behavior.

QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

I'd argue that the issue becomes clouded past the point of usefulness due to differences in scale—with small tribes, there can be no useful distinction between "killing those who can fight" and "destroying the tribe wholesale".

that would be a good point of this sort of behavior were limited in any way to small tribes. it isn't, though--it's present at all scales of human organization, from small tribes to large, industrialized nations.

Grinder View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 09:36 PM Post #115
Great, I'm a Dragon... Group: Retired Admins Posts: 6,699 Joined: 8-October 03 From: North Germany Member No.: 5,698	n/p

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 09:37 PM

Post #116

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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

QUOTE (Grinder @ Oct 21 2007, 04:22 PM)

Sounds a little bit like "oh the poor wardens at the death camp couldn't stand the mass murder they saw, so their superiors developed industrialized annhilation." Hm.

That's pretty much the case—that and the fact that the other methods were, not even taking into account the stress on the staff, typically extremely expensive.

Of course, that wasn't my main point, but you've made a correct observation here, even though your tone suggests you may have issues with it.

It makes sense that the people in charge tried to minimize psychological stress for their troops, even when these troops are wardens in concentration camps - but I don't have much sympathy with the assholes who worked in concentration camps or similar places.

mfb View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 09:46 PM Post #117
Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670	i don't think anyone's asking for sympathy (as in feeling bad for them). what's being asked is that peope view the wardens and such as people, rather than cardboard cutout villains. not for their sake, but for yours.

Kyoto Kid

Oct 21 2007, 09:48 PM

Post #118

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QUOTE (Penta)

To join in the freeway debate:

KK, the street cars only made sense on an intraurban level, within cities. Intercity, you had the rail lines, which had capacity limits.

The Interstate highway system was incredibly necessary - those who say it wasn't don't realize how bad the long-haul transport system in the US was before it was built.

It's instructive, perhaps, that the Interstate was built under Eisenhower. Besides his WW2 experience, he'd been one of the army officers that took part in the 1919 transcontinental motor convoy - a simple idea, right? Just send trucks along the roads? (It didn't go offroad once.) Nope. It took 2 months, thanks to delays that included getting stuck in mud.

You can move a lot over rail - but railways have a capacity limit that is even firmer than that of freeways.

(McDonald's is a similar story - yes, they've now wiped out a lot of decent places in...everywhere, but they initially were a hell of an improvement over the roadside eateries that were common before McDonald's brought at least a level of quality. You think McD's sucks? Be happy you never risked what came before.)

...not wishing to derail (arrgh!) this much further. My initial comment was basically that the autobahn concept wasn't all that good of a tradeoff for all the lives lost in the "Great War".

Good highways, yes we did need them, but they came at a heavy price here as well and that was the demise of the intercity, interurban and surface transit lines. The government could have just as well nationalised the railways as a "Strategic" part of the infrastructure. They didn't, they chose to build roads instead.

Yes rail as it is today has a finite limit, however many lines were abandoned over the last four decades reducing the total rights of way. Meanwhile, highway construction (both new and widening projects) continued unabated.

For the long haul, four diesel electric locomotives can haul the equivalent of 100+ 53' tractor trailers and do so with a crew of 3 - 4. Twin rail lines take up a smaller right of way than a four lane highway. Rail is also less impacted by weather than road or air transport.

Security? An interstate highway is no more secure than a rail line. Bombs can take out either. With the exception of bridges (and both modes are incredibly vulnerable in this respect) a damaged rail line can be brought back to full service more quickly than a damaged highway (keep in mind the term "full service")

Since the Autobahn was brought up, lets look at Germany. They did not abandon rail when the autobahn was built. As a matter of act the DB is among the finest most relible rail systems in the world. Furthermore many cities I visited also had a network of trams (streetcars). So yes superhighways and good transit can co-exist.

Now I can almost hear the argument "Germany is much smaller than the US," and taken at face value, that is correct, but it is also a convenient excuse. Where good interurban transit is important is usually in "corridor" areas which are usually comprised of several municipalities in close proximity (such as the Great Lakes Region, the California coast, the Pacific Northwest) This is where the European model would work. Unfortunately unlike Europe, our "express" trains (save for the Northeast Corridor) are forced to share the rails with and at times give right of way to slower freights.

I remember between Milwaukee and Chicago there were two sets of tracks, one for freights, and the other called the "400" line (named after the passenger trains that operated on it) . Both lines were double tracks. When I returned for a visit to my old neighbourhood recently, the freight right of way was turned into a freeway spur that created a barrier (which required you go out of your way to get around) and the 400 line was down to a single poorly maintained track used by local freights.

I'm not advocating abandoning roads for rails, but our nation seems to have pretty much gone in the opposite direction over the last 50 years. I believe both are important and should be a complement to each other rather than be at odds. My biggest beef with freeways is how they changed cities on an interurban and livability level (as illustrated above).

In a way, I am fortunate that the city I now live in does have several interurban lines (Portland's Max). However as of late, light rail is being "promoted" at the expense of surface bus service (basically the streetcar of today) instead of the two working together. This is no fault of the transport modes, this is the fault of management's short sightedness. Extremism on behalf of any cause is a bad thing.

...oh & BTW, I agree on Micky D's. I always know what I am going to get whether I'm in Seattle WA, Sioux City IA or Zagreb Croatia. The same bad case of nausea and indigestion. :grinbig:

...now let's put the train (eg this thread) back on track

Kagetenshi

Oct 21 2007, 09:58 PM

Post #119

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QUOTE (Grinder)

It makes sense that the people in charge tried to minimize psychological stress for their troops, even when these troops are wardens in concentration camps - but I don't have much sympathy with the assholes who worked in concentration camps or similar places.

But why did it produce stress? Consider the implications of that—what does it tell you about those "assholes"?

Add one part reflection on the Milgram experiment and shake well. Top with a review of research on the effects torture has on torturers.

~J

Fortune

Oct 21 2007, 10:12 PM

Post #120

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QUOTE (Grinder)

but I don't have much sympathy with the assholes who worked in concentration camps or similar places.

You act as if most of those 'assholes' had any choice about where they were assigned to work, and what that work consisted of.

Fortune

Oct 21 2007, 10:14 PM

Post #121

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QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)

My initial comment was basically that the autobahn concept wasn't all that good of a tradeoff for all the lives lost in the "Great War".

Nobody asked about a 'tradeoff' or merit ratio or relative worth of each as compared to the other. Merely that something considered 'not evil' could have grown out of what is considered an evil regime.

Kagetenshi View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 10:19 PM Post #122
Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802	Actually, I did suggest that the tradeoff might have been worthwhile. As I'm not writing any theses on related topics, though, I don't have time to follow up with the kind of analysis required to actually provide an answer to the question. ~J

Fortune View Member Profile	Oct 21 2007, 10:22 PM Post #123
Immoral Elf Group: Members Posts: 15,247 Joined: 29-March 02 From: Grimy Pete's Bar & Laundromat Member No.: 2,486	Fair enough.

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 10:26 PM

Post #124

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QUOTE (Fortune)

QUOTE (Grinder @ Oct 22 2007, 07:37 AM)

but I don't have much sympathy with the assholes who worked in concentration camps or similar places.

You act as if most of those 'assholes' had any choice about where they were assigned to work, and what that work consisted of.

They had. The police batallions who commited mass murder in the occupied states of Eastern Europe were formed by volunteers. The wardens in death camps where SS men who volunteered to get in there.
I don't how much choice a Wehrmacht soldier had, though. But there has been a detailed investigation of it with the title "Verbrechen der Wehrmacht". There may be a couple of offender who weren't volunteers, but they were the exception, not the rule.

Grinder

Oct 21 2007, 10:30 PM

Post #125

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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)

QUOTE (Grinder @ Oct 21 2007, 04:37 PM)

It makes sense that the people in charge tried to minimize psychological stress for their troops, even when these troops are wardens in concentration camps - but I don't have much sympathy with the assholes who worked in concentration camps or similar places.

But why did it produce stress? Consider the implications of that—what does it tell you about those "assholes"?

Add one part reflection on the Milgram experiment and shake well. Top with a review of research on the effects torture has on torturers.

I have no sympathy (Mitleid) for either kind of people. They had their choice.

The industrialization of murder in the Third Reich was "improved" to reduce the stress on the employees and to maximize the number of people to be annihilated, agreed, but that doesn't mean that the Nazi rulers actually cared for their soldiers and wardens. They wanted to reduce the stress on them to maximize their workforce.

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