aeillien:transgentleman-luke:zennistrad: Sometimes I wonder if WWII was also this dumb WWII did exac
aeillien:transgentleman-luke:zennistrad: Sometimes I wonder if WWII was also this dumb WWII did exactly this but a lot darker. When the Nazis destroyed the trans and gay research Sexualwissenschaft run by Magnus Hirschfeld, they brought porn magazines to lay over the trans research and staged photos to make it look like trans research was just porn. This is the thing about the Nazis that we sometimes forget.They were not smart. They were in fact, often mindbogglingly stupid.Their economy was always, and I mean, always, severely dysfunctional due to various megalomaniac schemes and ideas cooked up by various Nazi leaders. Most of their propaganda was, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, dumb as hell.There is this cult around Nazis like they were badasses, and super smart and that they ran everything efficiently but no, they were dumb as hell. I mean, their army was generally smart (or at least, most of the professional army was) because, well, the German army had a long reputation for good training and good operations at the tactical and operational art of war. But on the strategic level? Where the actual Nazis who were Nazis first and army people second? Dumb. Even dumber than WW1 Germany strategy, which is saying something. (Just as a starting point: WW1 Germany realized that keeping US out of the war was a good thing and only started thinking about the Zimmerman Telegram once they concluded US entry was inevitable. Hitler declared war on the US once Japan attacked, making US entry to the European theater substantially easier). Now, and this is the crucial part. Don’t misunderstand dumb for ineffective or powerless.Very dumb political movements, if they convince enough people to give them the levers of power, can very effectively do some of the dumb things they want to do and create unintended dumb results, usually with tragic consequences. More unintended dumb and often tragic results will occur as they try to repeal the laws of physics, economics, biology, or human social dynamics.In short, the state is a very powerful institution, and even as it tries and fails as some of its intended goals because they are dumb they will kill thousands or millions in the process, depending on circumstances.That’s the Nazis: a political fantasy based on the idea that Germany could basically rule the world and win a war against the two biggest economies in the entire world at the same time on two different fronts while mismanaging its own economy and also using some of its precious manpower and resources on killing millions of people for no better reason that they were Jewish, Roma, and so on. The premises are dumb, many of the steps taken to achieve the dumb premises will therefore be dumb. Horrific. Nightmarish. But dumb.So, keep in mind:1) Fascism and similar movements are almost always kind of stupid.2) This does not make them less dangerous, it just means the consequences of them acquiring power are worse.3) Nothing in the world will stop a nation from experiencing the consequences of trying to do something very stupid if they are determined enough to try. -- source link