This ends this version of the FbF Book Club. Hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
I really, really enjoyed this history as it is quite complex and very dramatic.
Don't forget that Hitler was a socialist/Collectivist. His party only got 30% of the vote and Hitler was APPOINTED as Chancellor by Hindenburg, not popularly elected. And it was only after the Reichstag Fire (think Jan6th Fedsurrection) that Hitler was able to bamboozle complete power into his hands.
And the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was only possible because the Communists and NAZIs were not opposites but were Collectivist movements who saw capitalist Poland as their mutual enemy.
just read about most of this in “the rise and fall of the third reich” by shirer. i think very few know about the german revolution and even less about the breadth of communist instigation. pretty interesting via hindsight. quick transition to democracy in a country where it had never existed. closeness in ideologies of national socialism, democratic socialism and communism (union of soviet - village committees - socialist republics). here we are wrestling with the same ideologies 100 years later. it certainly does seem to rhyme.
WW2 is the Big Bang of the modern world, the massive event/explosion that created everything we see and know, from our culture to education to politics to morals to economics. We've lived for decades now with endless books, speeches, campaigns (even entire academic specialties) based around the important LESSONS we need to learn so as not to repeat the disasters of the first half of the 20th century.
But, unless I'm mistaken, there's one factor that is either ignored or unacknowledged, another warning we should absorb from History: the dangers of messianic utopianism.
Messianic utopianism has as big a body count as any other ideology or movement ever recorded, and messianic utopianism never fails to lead to massive destruction and suffering, as it sets up a Procrustean bed to strap us all into and treats humans as a means to an end, the ultimate violation of Kant's categorical imperative.
My cynical guess is that our Controller classes can't bring themselves to denounce (or even analyze) utopianism and other schemes of social engineering, as this is such a felt human need, esp the higher you ascend up Maslow's hierarchy. And there seems to be something deeply embedded in the Western mind, this idea of "changing the world" or "making a difference" that starts out as kind, optimistic and intelligent and ends up as their opposites.
Most professed saviors of mankind are really wolves in sheep's clothing and utopianism is a poison that tastes smooth going down but kills everyone who drinks it. We most likely can't and shouldn't kill off religion, but prophets and messiahs need to be treated like Medieval doctors and alchemists and left behind in the mists of history.
Gerontocracies like DC don’t fall apart as other nations do, it may be that *perhaps* The Confederacy in 1864-1865 is also a valid model, waiting on The Free State Of Jones type events (that really happened).
This ends this version of the FbF Book Club. Hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
I really, really enjoyed this history as it is quite complex and very dramatic.
Great series
Don't forget that Hitler was a socialist/Collectivist. His party only got 30% of the vote and Hitler was APPOINTED as Chancellor by Hindenburg, not popularly elected. And it was only after the Reichstag Fire (think Jan6th Fedsurrection) that Hitler was able to bamboozle complete power into his hands.
And the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was only possible because the Communists and NAZIs were not opposites but were Collectivist movements who saw capitalist Poland as their mutual enemy.
just read about most of this in “the rise and fall of the third reich” by shirer. i think very few know about the german revolution and even less about the breadth of communist instigation. pretty interesting via hindsight. quick transition to democracy in a country where it had never existed. closeness in ideologies of national socialism, democratic socialism and communism (union of soviet - village committees - socialist republics). here we are wrestling with the same ideologies 100 years later. it certainly does seem to rhyme.
Were there 10k people a day coming across the southern border with Austria?
Thanks!
Miinchener Rote Fahne
Wiirzburg, Fiirth
Miihsam
Wiirttemberg
[comment: umlaut OCR problems - pick them up with a search for 'ii' ]
At the risk of repeating myself: this was awesome. Thank you for doing it.
WW2 is the Big Bang of the modern world, the massive event/explosion that created everything we see and know, from our culture to education to politics to morals to economics. We've lived for decades now with endless books, speeches, campaigns (even entire academic specialties) based around the important LESSONS we need to learn so as not to repeat the disasters of the first half of the 20th century.
But, unless I'm mistaken, there's one factor that is either ignored or unacknowledged, another warning we should absorb from History: the dangers of messianic utopianism.
Messianic utopianism has as big a body count as any other ideology or movement ever recorded, and messianic utopianism never fails to lead to massive destruction and suffering, as it sets up a Procrustean bed to strap us all into and treats humans as a means to an end, the ultimate violation of Kant's categorical imperative.
My cynical guess is that our Controller classes can't bring themselves to denounce (or even analyze) utopianism and other schemes of social engineering, as this is such a felt human need, esp the higher you ascend up Maslow's hierarchy. And there seems to be something deeply embedded in the Western mind, this idea of "changing the world" or "making a difference" that starts out as kind, optimistic and intelligent and ends up as their opposites.
Most professed saviors of mankind are really wolves in sheep's clothing and utopianism is a poison that tastes smooth going down but kills everyone who drinks it. We most likely can't and shouldn't kill off religion, but prophets and messiahs need to be treated like Medieval doctors and alchemists and left behind in the mists of history.
Collapse
Not
Happening
Today
True.
Today.
This was excellent Nico.
Gerontocracies like DC don’t fall apart as other nations do, it may be that *perhaps* The Confederacy in 1864-1865 is also a valid model, waiting on The Free State Of Jones type events (that really happened).