Whenever I read about Q anon, or hard core people on the far right like @mtgreenee, I'm often reminded of the Holocaust. Of nazis. Of how so many Germans were brainwashed into viewing their neighbors, coworkers, friends, as not just an enemy, but subhuman.

A thread--

I follow @AuschwitzMuseum, which posts countless pictures daily of men, women, children, and infants who were sent to the camp, and most of whom perished/were murdered there. And if you ever look at the pictures, these people were everyday, normal, happy people.

There are pictures of families on vacation, couples getting married, baby photos, photos of young siblings, pictures of women at a lake, or a cafe. Smiling. Enjoying life. Wearing trendy clothes and hairstyles for the time. And then I think about how they died.

Treated worse than livestock. Dehumanized. gassed, shot, burned, starved, riddled with disease. These happy normal Jewish people living normal lives alongside their non-Jewish counterparts, were snuffed out because somehow, those German counterparts stopped seeing Jews as human.

Somewhere it went from someone being your neighbor, to being an outsider, to being an enemy, to being a threat to German way of life, to being vermin. That took propaganda, it took brainwashing, it took the Nazis hammering it home day after day for years. It took fear mongering--

and lies, it took people looking the other way. It took a group creating an "other" to formulate a unifying, obvious enemy Germans could all hate. It didn't matter that Jews, too, were German citizens. The Nazis convinced non-Jewish Germans that Jews just weren't the same.

That they didn't love Germany enough. Weren't German enough. Weren't even German at all, really. That they were a threat to "traditional german life and livelihoods" A problem that, if left unhandled, would result in the end of German life as they knew it.

Q Anon adherents, and far right wing followers have done the same when it comes to how they view liberals. They're marxists" and "communists". "Threatening traditional Americans' way of life". "Eroding America". "Weakening America". Hell, they aren't even REAL Americans.

They often talk online about watching them die. Making their kids watch them die so they know "communism isn't tolerated here". They talk about murdering "treasonous" Democrats by putting bullets in their heads, or hanging them. Liberals are a monolith, an enemy, not-human.

They are simply an ideology that stands against all the good ideologies. We hate America, and America will collapse if we have power. We're a cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles who drink the blood of children. We're evil incarnate. The stuff of Stephen King novels.

This verbiage, this language, is what makes hate and violence so easily justified in these groups. They don't see us as Americans, their neighbors, their coworkers. They see us as an enemy of their way of life. Nefarious "others" intent on one thing -- destroying them.

They don't see us in pictures with our parents, or on vacation. Out to dinner, or after the birth of our kids. Our children's tenth birthdays, or weddings. It's like that episode of Black Mirror -- they only see an enemy that they have to destroy. This "othering" of--

the people they disagree with politically is incredibly dangerous. It creates a vacuum where logic and reality is totally suspended and replaced with fear, fantasy, and made up justifications for violence and murder. Where groups of people shut themselves off from the--

reality of having friendly neighbors who don't vote like them. Or coworkers who don't pray like them. And in doing so, create a threat in their mind that doesn't exist, a threat that feels real because it's propped up by assholes like @mtgreenee and @laurenboebert for political--

brownie points. And then those assholes say "we're the only ones who can save you from these enemies of America!" It's what happened with the nazis, it's what happens with the KKK/White Supremacists, anti-semites, all of those groups. It's an imaginary fear of an imaginary enemy.

And if pushed far enough, that fear and that hate causes those people to start viewing others as subhuman, as not the same as them. They don't see them as a father of three kids who runs a law firm. Or a newly married teacher trying to buy her first house. Or a waitress paying--

off student loans. Or a college kid who can't wait to go on their first spring break trip. Or a mother who lost their child to gun violence. They see them as enemies of America, and that vision is bolstered by politicians like @mtgreenee. And it should be condemned in every way.

The playbook is the same -- gain power by stoking fear, division, and hatred, creating a common "other" and finding a way to get your group to view that "other" as a subhuman enemy. BLM. Antifa. "Radical liberals". "Marxists". "Communists". Anything to stoke fear from--

their base and drum up a sense of being threatened, and those assholes will embrace it, propagate it, repeat it, victims be damned. And in a fit of brainwashed rage, these people in Q anon or on the right, in their mind take the life of not a human, but an idea. A "threat".

A shadowy representation of a cabal of pedophiles. They don't see the life beyond the propaganda they've been fed that's festered in their minds. They just see "an enemy". And therefore, can easily justify violence, or murder, or threatening behavior because that enemy isn't--

Bob from HR who organizes the company Christmas party every year, it's a communist anti-American who supports militant BLM and wants to turn our God fearing red blooded American Christian children into homosexual atheists who want to steal your guns! Of COURSE it's--

okay to shoot that thing! It's a dangerous rabbit hole that so so many people are currently falling down. And if the @GOP doesn't start calling out that extremism for exactly what it is, they are walking a very deadly line in order to appease a vocal base. It's scary shit, man.

Don't believe me? Look at @AuschwitzMuseum's photos of victims. These people living ordinary lives. Doing ordinary things. Smiling, laughing, living. And ask yourself what it took for majority of German society to not just hate them, but be totally okay with murdering them.

Torturing them. Dehumanizing them. Ask yourself why when you look at those photos, YOU see a perfectly normal human exactly like you, but so many Germans didn't. Ask yourself if this playbook of creating the terrifying "others" as a common enemy sounds familiar.

I don't want anyone to be murdered, or die, or be dehumanized, even if I HATE their politics. And the tragic thing to me is, there are so many people on the right -- including prominent @GOP leaders -- who absolutely can not say the same. And THAT is what's scary.