On Nazis And Self-Pity

I broke down and bought The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on Audible. I'm currently devouring it. I've gotten up to the point where Hitler is just taking over the German Workers' Party. I'm trying to figure out why the Germans fell for Hitler. I read a good deal of Mein Kampf and it was trash. Illogical, ignorant and badly written, the thing is a giant warning sign to stay away from that Hitler guy.

So what happened? In short, the Germans fell for the guy who blamed their problems on an external them. In particular, the loss to the Allies in the First World War was someone else's fault. Dig this tidbit from Rise and Fall.

(Hitler) could bear even less the disaster which befell his beloved Fatherland in November 1918. To him, as to almost all Germans, it was “monstrous” and undeserved. The German Army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home.

Thus emerged for Hitler, as for so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the “stab in the back” which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph. The legend was fraudulent. General Ludendorf, the actual leader of the High Command, had insisted on September 28, 1918, on an armistice “at once,” and his nominal superior, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, had supported him. At a meeting of the Crown Council in Berlin on October 2 presided over by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hindenburg had reiterated the High Command’s demand for an immediate truce. “The Army,” he said, “cannot wait forty-eight hours.” In a letter written on the same day Hindenburg flatly stated that the military situation made it imperative “to stop the fighting.” No mention was made of any “stab in the back.”

"The legend was fraudulent," but the people clung to it. It allowed them to wallow in self-pity and didn't require them to do any soul-searching at all.

Absorbing this, I immediately thought, "Who today are the least-Nazi thought leaders in the US?" I came up with three names right off the bat.

1. Kevin Williamson of National Review. His most infamous essay is a kick in the pants to anyone feeling sorry for themselves.  The payoff:
   

   The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen (rubbish). Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your (darned) gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

2. Ben Shapiro. Ben has all the feelings of a calculator. Most recently, he said that if you have to take two jobs to make ends meet, that's a you problem, not a social justice problem. I'd link to his video, but YouTube has blacklisted him and his own content doesn't show up on the first page of a search for him. Instead, you get a whole slew of leftists ripping on him*.


3. Jordan Peterson. "Don't be a victim!" is a common theme for Dr. Peterson. No self-pity there.

So there you have it. If you want to spot a Nazi, start by find someone who is blaming others for their problems. There's a lot more to it than that, but it's a necessary condition.

* - Don't sweat the tech monopolies controlling what you can and can't find, can and can't say and who you can and can't follow. There is nothing totalitarian and Nazi about that at all. Nothing.