Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. Additionally, the program was highly unpopular in West Germany, where many Nazis maintained positions of power. Denazification was opposed by the new West German government of Konrad Adenauer, who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament.
Honestly; I’m curious how does one de-program another person. How do you denazification, defascism etc.
When I look at the world right now, it feels as if these things never left. Nazis stayed Nazis, fascism stayed with fascistic people.
All the while capitalism uses it to gain more money and wealth while looking at the world and not giving a care.
It’s probably a similar kind of approach as would be taken for cult deprogramming - fundamentally, a form of therapy, to deconstruct the harmful beliefs and brainwashing of the ideology from first principles.
Obviously though it should have began with a complete ban of anyone who supported the nazi regime ever holding a position of power and authority ever again, and the fact that it didn’t, tells me everything I need to know about the “effort”.
Unfortunately to your second point, I don’t think that’s the best approach either. Check out the first 6-12 months of the Iraqi government rebuild during the Iraq war. The Americans basically fired 20,000 Iraqi officials and military members who then had nothing to lose anymore. They then immediately started an insurgency.
Also after these fascist take overs, it’s not as easy as simply saying “you’re a Nazi, therefore you go to jail” because if you didn’t swear fealty to the new government (i.e. if you were Democrat you would now have to call yourself Republican) you could be summarily executed on the spot (check out the video of Sadam’s take over).
So you could resign. But then you get called a coward by armchair generals for not trying to stay in the system and slow it down as much as possible.
So you stay in and keep your head down, and may try to slow the processes down enough to hopefully save some innocents without getting pulled out back and shot. But then you’re called a Nazi collaborator. Idk, I would probably just as well resign, but that could put a target on your back, too, because you’re basically outing yourself as hostile.
Personally, i think how we handled it after WW2 wasn’t perfect, but should be the goal. There’s always clean up that can happen even years afterwards. But if you go purging an entire country’s worth of government officials, you have to replace those you purged with equally qualified people. And you often find that those who are eager to step in, are often just eager to enact revenge, or in some cases, even worse than their predecessors because they are just opportunists who now have the good graces of the new regime who just wanted a quick transition to a friendly government.
Pure copium, sorry. The US invasion of Iraq should never be used as a template for anything. The US itself is a fascist nation and has been since its inception.
“I’m fighting the system from the inside” is mostly cope, too. There was plenty of german resistance to the Nazi regime from outside the system. For most people who feel that they can do more good fighting the system from inside, they’re just rationalizing. The stories of people like Oskar Schindler are interesting because they are exceptional.
Eh, 100% pure cope is a bit hyperbolic.
There are at least tens of thousands of accounts of Jews who lived, in part, because of the intercession of people who existed within the Nazi infrastructure. We just don’t most of the names because people couldn’t actually use their names when operating within resistance networks, but there are some famous accounts, like Schindler and The Pianist.
It is not always possible for people to work outside of a fascist system, and to pretend that it is is absurdly idealistic.
Yeah, you’re right, I’ve amended my original comment.
Oscar Shindler: pure cope.
To be clear, I’m not saying that it never happens, I’m saying that for most people who feel that they can do more good fighting the system from inside, that’s pure cope. The story of Oskar Schindler is interesting because it is exceptional. The other commenter is right that my original claim was hyperbolic, so I’ve edited it.
I never said Iraq should be the template, I implicitly said Post-WW2 recovery should be. I was referring to Iraq as an example of what not to do, because it was specifically called out for a purge of Nazi officials at every level, which is exactly what happened in Iraq.
As for German resistance, yes of course there were forces outside of government, and they used insiders for information. To believe anything otherwise is just being willfully ignorant, and a waste of time.
So this often comes up and there’s a lot of opinions. I often reference the Nuremberg Trials as an example of how a society expresses the consequences of not changing behavior and ideology. You know, if the failure of their war, and the craven suicide of their fuhrer hadn’t already.
But, probably the best example is Pu-Yi and how the CCP handled the Chinese emperor that collaborated with the Japanese.
In short: education and work. Teach them the right way and make them work a job that satisfies the material conditions of a common citizen.
Your suggestion sounds dangerously close to “work will set you free”
It’s about what happened with leadership of fascist imperialist movements. Do you know about Puyi? (Or Nuremberg?)
But if you want to build that connection though, of all things, that’d be your effort. That’s on you.
The French executed a lot of them, like 10,000 to 15,000. (Exact number is unknown, but there are lots of known mass graves.)
Shutting their brains off entirely seems effective.
Fascism is a social disease that is injected by the bourgeoisie into the petit-bourgeoisie during times when capitalism is in crisis. They do this through propaganda and economic warfare like austerity coupled with tax cuts for the rich. This results in an economic downturn that hits the “middle class” the hardest (relatively - poor people are also fucked, but they had less to lose in the first place). Economic woes coupled with divisive and authoritarian propaganda and — boom — fascism.
So how do you stop it? Well, ultimately by dismantling capitalism and removing the power of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise fascist crises will just keep being manufactured.
I read that while denazification largely failed, the cold war got going and Germany realized they needed to pass pro-Democracy policies to garner aid from the rest of the free world. The next generation of Germans largely turned away from nazism and here we are today.
Someone similar happened in Taiwan. The KMT under Chiang Kai-shek weren’t really pro-Democracy either, but they knew they had to steer policy in that direction to win international support.
The Israeli Knesset is democratically elected, too. Under capitalist economies, a democratic system just means that the state is for sale. I’d argue that’s why western-backed powers moved towards democracy, it’s a progressive-seeming veneer on the reality: these nations are functionally oligarchies, backed by US imperialism.
We don’t give the fact that people can be effectively brainwashed enough attention.
Just as people can be programmed, they can be deprogrammed.
How do you deprogram 30% of a nation? Not without yourself committing atrocities.
Time is a flat circle.
Does not committing atrocities against 30% of a nation, itself, constitute an atrocity though? When the consequences of not killing authoritarians and a critical mass of their supporters leads to them further entrenching and committing more atrocities than simply eradicating them, wasn’t a choice already made to be party to the atrocities through inaction?
Hey look, it’s both sides of the trolley problem.
Prisons and therapy.
you can’t unless the other person wants to. they need to realise their mistakes and be willing to never commit them again and attempt to amend them if possible.
a lot of people taken in by fascism were originally and continue to be in poor living conditions. if they are first guaranteed all basic human rights & the required needs to live, talking to them about their politics will be a lot easier.
does this mean people who helped commit genocide should be allowed to live as if they’ve done nothing wrong? definitely not, they should have all tools that they used removed from them, be separated from their pervious co-conspirators, and all other measures required to keep society safe. does that mean that they should all be forced into concrete boxes with no rights? also no, as that is depriving them of their humanity, and removing any chance of them cooperating.
the real method of removing fascism is very complicated and highly dependant on the specific situation. the consent of the broader community needs to be taken into account, and restorative justice needs to be achieved.