Shadowrun and Antifa Options

[Zhan Shi]

Not directly related to the discussion, but interesting. From the October 18th edition of the New York Post:

"German Poll's Nazi Shocker

Berlin-A quarter of Germans believe there were some positive aspects to Nazi rule, according to a poll published yesterday-a finding that comes after a popular talk show host was fired for praising Nazi Germany's attitude toward motherhood.

Pollsters for the Forsa agency, commissioned by by the weekly magazine Stern, asked whether National Socialism had some "good sides, (such as) the construction of the highway system, the elimination of unemployment, the low criminality rate (and) the encouragement of family."

Forsa said 25 percent responded "yes"-but 70 percent said "no."

Stern commissioned the survey after Germany's NDR public broadcaster last month fired talk show host Eva Herman over comments she made about the Third Reich. AP"

[Kagetenshi]

Of course. One would be hard-pressed to find a regime in the history of this earth so awful that no aspect of it can be look at as better than what came shortly before or after. While horribly regressive in a larger sense, for the time the National Socialist treatment of women was closer to what we might term "enlightened" than abroad or in Germany previously.

I'm more shocked at the 70%, though human blindness doesn't really surprise me much these days.

~J

[Critias]

It's such a loaded question that I'm surprised 70% just reflexively shook their head and insisted otherwise.

Yes, there were SOME positive aspects, or it never would have become popular. I'm saddened that only one German in three was willing to admit that.

[mfb]

i'm not. like you said, it's a loaded question, especially since it was asked in Germany. it's like going up to a recent mugging victim and asking if he thinks crime is going down. regardless of the (lies, damn lies and) statistics, i imagine there are few mugging victims who would answer "yes".

for that matter, i don't think it's a very fair to formulate it as yes-or-no. Nazi Germany has, pretty much since WWII, been presented to the public at large as Bad Guys with no redeeming qualities. you are either horrified (in a learned-in-history-class sort of way) by the Holocaust, or you're a Neo-Nazi. there's no in between, or at least that's how the world has been raised to believe. the core problem isn't the selection of facts that are presented or not presented to us in the course of our education, it's how the presentation is made--namely, in terms of black and white, yes or no. framing a question like that in terms of yes or no just reinforces those notions. of course 70% of Germans (and, i'd bet, similar figures for other nations) are going to reply that no, Nazi Germany had no redeeming qualities, because the only other choice the question gives them--regardless of how the question is actually worded, so long as it's framed as yes-or-no--is "yes, i am a skinhead and i want to burn Jews."

[martindv]

[Kagetenshi]

I'd go more towards the cultural rage and shame at the Treaty of Versailles (combined with the vast economic damage caused by it), but your kilometerage may vary.

~J

[Gerzel]

[Kagetenshi]

You don't see a problem? You grant that the 70% are wrong, but it's ok for some reason? Care to explain that?

~J

[Eurotroll]

The 70% aren't wrong. They're responding carefully to a loaded question, as mfb noted.

Personally I think it results from the fact that it is an accepted historical perspective (worldwide, I should note) to view 1933 and 1945 as the "breaking points" of German history. Before and After differ like (or at the very least are considered to be as different as) night and day. This view has influenced most of post-war historical education AND THUS political thinking in Germany. Intellectuals know that there is no such thing as a complete and perfect break between two systems, but that's not the view held by the man on the street. (Who is, incidentally, the one answering the questions of the Forsa agency.)

Whatever the reason, however, I rather living around people that consider the Nazi regime irredeemable than around people who generally do not think so. But this has nothing to do with the (entirely reasonable) question of which aspects of the years from '33 until '45 have been carried over into postwar society.

[Gerzel]

[CircuitBoyBlue]

First of all, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Holocaust was a bad thing.

Of course I'm being flip because I'm a jackass, but also there's a relevant point; systems of thought don't enter societal consciousness on the basis of what they should be, they enter it based on what they've been. Maybe in some classroom in some ivory tower somewhere, there's a bunch of eggheads talking about the philosophical underpinnings of communism and fascism, but I don't think that affects most people on the street. Just because a corporation acts like a bunch of fascists (and yeah, I use the term derogatorily) doesn't mean they'll come out and say that they're fascists. Once a system is seen to be a failure--like fascism--the terminology falls out of vogue, if nothing else. It's not like Hitler was the last dude to get his people to put each other in camps and fill up mass graves with bulldozers full of civillians, but the other despots haven't come out and called themselves Nazis, no matter how much they've acted the part. Corporations and governments in the Sixth World aren't going to call themselves fascists. But throwing the term about has a lot of advantages for the Neo-Anarchist crowd. If you need any evidence of the effectiveness of sticking a label on your opponents, just look at the fact that we don't have universal health coverage in the US because it's "socialist."

Also there's the fact that the term "fascist" just seems more authoritarian than "communist." You can argue all you want about how bad Stalin was, but the fact that this country flipped out for such a prolonged period of time over communism and oppressed its own people in order to fight it gives "communist" a sort of rebellious panache that "fascist" just doesn't have. The Man is always a fascist, whatever policies He's imposing. Perception is way more important in this sort of thing than whatever ideals the Doctrine of Fascism lays out. I mean, fascism as Hyzmarca describes it seems like rocking good times. But I'm still going to judge it by a) the things Mussolini and Hitler and Franco did, and b) the actions of all the people I've known that have described themselves as fascists.

[Critias]

[Grinder]

[Kyoto Kid]

[martindv]

[Grinder]

[Kagetenshi]

Fuck the ethnicity. The Third Reich death camps claimed between nine and eleven million people.

Nevertheless, the question asks something very specific, which is whether it had good sides. I am deeply disappointed that people will either fail or refuse to see good sides that existed, especially in historical context, or will mentally transform the question in the way mfb notes.

~J

[Grinder]

[Fortune]

[Grinder]

[Eurotroll]

[Kagetenshi]

[Grinder]

[Kyoto Kid]

...personally, I do not really see freeways (the Autobahn) as necessarily an improvement.

For example: here in the US:

By bypassing "street level" commerce districts they have impacted local economics. In the rural areas they bypass towns that were once dependent on passing traffic for commerce.

In cities they became barriers between or even bisecting neighbourhoods while displacing homes and businesses.

In our metropolitan areas, they encouraged an even greater use of and dependence on the private car over other modes of transportation. This in turn brought new ills such as the traffic jam (& it's modern day side effect of road rage) as well as increased air & noise pollution. Furthermore as more cars stream into the CBDs of a city, there is the increasing dilemma of where to put them all. Eventually more high rise car parks will need to be constructed on what is already very expensive property which, were there an office or commercial structure there instead, would be generating tax revenue.

Related to the above, Freeways also contributed to the decentralising of cities.

They swallow up tremendous amounts of state and local tax revenue for maintenance and continued expansion as the traffic load increases.

Expansion only promotes an ever increasing cycle of traffic congestion rather than alleviating the situation (the "if you build them they will drive" syndrome) and thus worsens a number of the side effects mentioned above.

...nah, I agree with Grinder, this one wasn't worth the millions of lives it cost either considering the associated ills.

[edit]

...oh and please, keep the plascrete brick tossing to a minimum. Thanks. :grinbig:

[hyzmarca]