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Die weiche seite des Führers - a pre-Godwined thread

post #1 of 10
7/15/10 at 12:40pm
Thread Starter 
Apologies to anyone who speaks German. And Sears. And everyone in the world, really...especially anyone whose family was hurt by the Third Reich.

Submitted for discussion, a collection of unreleased pictures of the Nazi you love to hate being nice. Or at least *pretending* to be nice.

http://izismile.com/2010/07/13/adolf...s_39_pics.html

Most of these pictures are ripe for LOL-captions, but in general they struck a curious chord with me because I've been thinking a lot lately about the evil shit that people do, and how it's hard to rectify the deed with the person sometimes. Hitler is an extreme example here, of course. But as evil as the bastard was, he still felt emotion, probably even love and genuine affection towards people. How in the hell does that happen? And what are we supposed to think about it?

My family believes some hateful stuff. And between a Louis C.K. comedy bit in his new show about how he could save starving children by trading in his Infinity for a more sensible car, Roger Ebert's wondering about how people get to be racist, and watching my parents connect with their grandkids on a surprisingly deep level despite major shortcomings in the morals department, I'm finding myself puzzled about how to react to people who are ostensibly horrible in their belief systems or actions. I'm apparently dangerously close to finding nuance in personal relationships, and it's terribly unsettling.

So I'd like to hear how some other folks deal with people in their lives who believe hateful things, but who appear to be genuinely decent people otherwise. I'm sick of trying to avoid people because their belief systems radically differ from my own. I don't have any desire to buddy up to Fred Phelps, but getting to the point where I don't have to grit my teeth when I try to talk to a family friend who teabags in his spare time would probably reduce my overall blood pressure by 10-20%. How do people do it? Do you set ground rules? Do you have it out and develop a grudging respect? I was "bred and buttered" in the deep Midwest, so my genetic makeup makes it very difficult for me to do anything but sit silently and let it fester and grow until it explodes.
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post #2 of 10
7/15/10 at 2:02pm
This idea that 'evil' people spend every waking moment being evil - either doing evil deeds or dreaming of the next evil thing on their evil to-do list - is probably just a nice way for us to tidily file these people away into a different evil category as if they're fundamentally different from us. Which, unless they're genuinely mentally ill, probably isn't the case. I bet we meet any number of pleasant people in our day to day lives who would commit all kinds of atrocities if they'd grown up in a different environment.

As for the other stuff, to be honest I get the sense that the UK is a bit more chilled out about political differences than the US and I find it quite easy to go through life without other people's politics coming up that much. And when they do come up it's pretty rare that they strike me so extreme that I'd feel the need to make a big deal about it. So yeah that probably isn't very helpful.
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post #3 of 10
7/15/10 at 2:11pm
I'm sure Hitler didn't sit around thinking, "I'm soooo evil." He legitimately thought he was doing what was best for Germany. Unfortunately, what he thought was best for Germany involved killing all the Jews and conquering Europe. But he probably didn't see that as evil. It was completely justified and right in his mind. So it's not surprising he didn't spend his free time in angst-ridden torment.
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post #4 of 10
7/15/10 at 2:37pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, this is really kind of a foregone conclusion. I've just been finding it really difficult lately to leave my belief system at the door when dealing with people...especially people related to me. Debating nicely with others wasn't part of my upbringing, and I'm suffering from a case of the mid-life grouchies.

I was serious about how people deal with friends and family members who subscribe to ideas that you find hard to stomach. Avoiding those people is my first line of defense, and it's wearing on me.
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post #5 of 10
7/15/10 at 2:49pm
I think we're in a time where, considering we have Tea Baggers holding up signs containing outright lies and misinformation and yet still being taken seriously, it's downright dangerous to simply roll your eyes and try to get along. This idiocy has to be challenged, because the longer it goes on unopposed, the more emboldened is purveyors will become.
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post #6 of 10
7/15/10 at 3:14pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
I think we're in a time where, considering we have Tea Baggers holding up signs containing outright lies and misinformation and yet still being taken seriously, it's downright dangerous to simply roll your eyes and try to get along. This idiocy has to be challenged, because the longer it goes on unopposed, the more emboldened is purveyors will become.
You said it. But since I'm not very good at separating the argument from the relationship, it's been getting me into more and more trouble lately with friends and family. I tend towards incredibly long email responses to people sending me stupid stuff, and it almost always devolves into me either going too far, or retreating and fuming over it for days. In-person arguments are even worse.

It's really easy to look at a crowd of strangers and say, "what a bunch of fucking dimwits", but it's difficult to think of people that you love, and respect in *other* aspects, tucked into that crowd. When the teabaggers try to defend themselves as not racist, the first thing I think about is my dad...who shares their cause, and most assuredly harbors racist leanings. He's a closet case now, since he has to maintain nice public persona for his job, but it's definitely there.

Avoidance make my wife a lot happier. I'm trying to build up a little bit more of a tolerance for disagreement by doing things like arguing with you about Sea World, but lack of time and an even larger lack of finely honed arguing skills make me avoid wading into the shit with the lineup of experienced arguers here.
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post #7 of 10
7/17/10 at 1:35pm
I've had a similar problem with my grandparents from both sides of my family (though more obviously from my maternal grandparents)

My grandmother, for example, has flat out said she doesn't believe white people should date black people. She claims she's not racist, she just believes that the two races shouldn't mix. Yet she is on the kindest, sweetest, most charitable women I know (and racism aside, all that I aspire to be once I reach that point in my life). Same with my grandfather. On the other hand, these people have been through an extraordinary amount of BS for their family, and have provided gargantuan amounts of support and comfort for most everyone. I would have gone nuts long ago if it weren't for them.

Then again, they were poor whites in the thirties and forties in the Deep South, so I have to accept that it's a cultural and generational thing. They aren't actively hateful - if they were, I imagine our relationship would be a lot different.

All in all, I think there is a line in regards to tolerance. A lot of the political drama is sheer ignorance and blatant hate and that's where it becomes unavoidable. Hitler has a right to be an anti-semite, but the moment he began to actively hurt and harm others is when he is moved over to the evil side. As long as he perpetrated and supported and sponsored such horrors, that is where all those 'tender moments' in those photos are rendered null and void. If anything, they're proof of how completely sad and tragic it is to let one's life be ruled by hate and fear.

In regards to the teabaggers and some of the hate and strife encountered in the US, especially in your case Jeff, it looks like you simple have to pick and choose your battles. What avenues are best open to you? Whether it's something like prrotesting, or even sending snopes factcheckers against those political spam emails....hell. Anything. And as always, education is the best weapon against ignorance (which appears to be a major issue of the problem) but little can be done about racism.
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post #8 of 10
7/17/10 at 7:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
I'm sure Hitler didn't sit around thinking, "I'm soooo evil." He legitimately thought he was doing what was best for Germany. Unfortunately, what he thought was best for Germany involved killing all the Jews and conquering Europe. But he probably didn't see that as evil. It was completely justified and right in his mind. So it's not surprising he didn't spend his free time in angst-ridden torment.
Not just Germany, but the world as well. Sickening as it is to think of this, in Hitler's worldview Aryans were humanity's born leaders and jews evil subhumans, so according to his warped ideology he was basically saving humanity full stop.

It is one of history's most sadly well-documented facts that great evil can come from ordinary humans. Germany, the country I was born in, of course has to contend with the fact that a generation's worth of kindly grandparents once marched to Hitler's orders; Portugal, my adopted country, doesn't quite have that level of trauma, but we did have a highly unjust, violent war to preserve our African colonies in the 60's, with copious atrocities commited on both sides*. So you still can catch a cab with a nice old man who then goes on to tell you about "playing football with the black's heads" in his army days.

Thankfully, though, most of us do not live in a time and age where these kinds of ocurrences are a common issue, and I do think the Tea Party is, well, a different kind of problem. Adopting a zero tolerance policy towards hatred gives you peace of mind, but it doesn't really help change you opponent's stance and, as various people have pointed out on this thread, it's not as easy when family is involved. Jeff, all I can tell you is, don't always rise to the bait, don't bring up politics yourself and, when faced with hateful opinions (this is the hardest part, and by no means something I'm good at) keep your cool, refute their bile with pondered facts, and leave them feeling churlish. Most likely if you suceed at this they'll retreat to the sort of passive-agressive victim complex that general pop culture has already made bigots resort to in public, which has its own brand of annoyingness; but hey, maybe it'll actually make them think.

(time for dinner, more babbling to come)

* This is one of the most horrible things about war, too: nine times out of ten, you'll find absolute savagery on both sides, even when one is fighting for something as basically decent as the sovereignity of its nation, the toppling of an opressive regime, etc.
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post #9 of 10
7/17/10 at 8:17pm
I always end up wondering what is it that makes a generally nice and upstanding person adopt such racist, sexist, and anti-gay beliefs. Aside from a person's upbringing, I can only think that it is human nature to blame. If something goes wrong or their life isn't going as they hoped, it is easier to blame something or someone else, rather than take it in stride as bad luck or their own fault.

Those who are easily marked as "different that us" are the easiest to point the finger at and say "they are why my life/the world is the going down the shitter."
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post #10 of 10
7/17/10 at 9:58pm
One thing that I do have a certain degree of faith in, though, is that these theoretical positions, when you're basically dealing with decent people, crumble down as soon as their proponents are exposed to the people they're vilifying - it's so much easier to be a homophobe when your beloved son isn't gay, so much easier to be a racist if your grandchildren aren't biracial. It's when people start being actively hateful towards persons they know, as opposed to making some terribly misguided point about some group they've elected scapegoat, that I think it's really time to just cut them off and have done with it.

There should also be some level of differentiation between those you disagree with, and those whose opinions are actively hateful. I strongly stand against what in american parlance may be called conservatism, because I think it is harmful to the world, but there is a world of difference between someone who espouses conservative ideals and someone who is an active bigot, even if I think that the first person's ideals enable the second person's blindness to a very large degree.
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