“How did Germany just *allow Hitler to take over and ruin the country?*”

This is how. The predominant human social instinct is to normalize and carry on as if nothing much has happened.

The main reasons offered by scholars tend to be aggrieved nationalism, backlash against the ineffective Weimar government, and both enthusiasm for and tolerance of antisemitism, but I think we shouldn’t discount the overwhelming human bias toward normalization.

A bias toward normalization on the part of the general public, and sunk cost fallacy on the part of the non-ideological members of institutions who enable or do nothing.

But mostly we just don’t want to accept that everything is completely fucked up.

A lot of Germans weren’t super enthusiastic about the Nazis, but even as things got worse and worse and the country plunged into what was initially an unpopular war, they told themselves it wasn’t anything to get hotted up over and just sort of acclimated to it.

There were pockets of intense resistance, no population is homogenous and I’m not saying they all rolled over.

But I’m saying if you want to know how it happened, this is how. We usually won’t look reality in the face.

It could not possibly be more clear what we’re facing, and yet.

And I’ll be honest: I genuinely don’t know what the appropriate level of freak-out would be here and I don’t think I’m capable of it.

I know full well that this isn’t normal, intellectually I fully understand what’s happening and what’s happened, but I’m still just sitting here tweeting.

I want to say something really fucking scary.

And I want to preface it by saying that I am in no respect advocating violence of any kind whatsoever.

But the terrorists yesterday? Were acting appropriately to reality as they perceived it.

It’s like the abortion clinic terrorist bombers. What they’re doing is reprehensible and fascistic but IF reality is as they define it, if there’s a mass murder of the unborn going on, they are the only members of the anti-reproductive rights movement who are walking the walk.

And I’m just. Not sure what to do with that.

I don’t know how to react appropriately to what’s going on.

By the way, this is not a request for you to tell me how to react so please refrain. If you want to commiserate, fantastic. But keep the advice to yourself, please.

Hi, I write thoughts about my weird brand of Paganism and also appropriately enough am in the middle of a let’s read of THE TURNER DIARIES and sometimes post fiction all on my Patreon

Please donate to your local bail fund https://www.patreon.com/dynamicsymmetry