That question led to me just read the 1955 book They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. The conversations with ordinary citizens who had been Nazi Party members (Part I of the book) were very informative — and quite disturbing. It made me very pessimistic about the average person’s ability to ever see that they were wrong to support…
That question led to me just read the 1955 book They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. The conversations with ordinary citizens who had been Nazi Party members (Part I of the book) were very informative — and quite disturbing. It made me very pessimistic about the average person’s ability to ever see that they were wrong to support a political movement that does evil or to regret their part in it. The only thing that seems to get through to such people is if their own financial or physical circumstances suffer, and even then, they usually just blame someone else for it, never themselves or their leader or the party they supported.
That question led to me just read the 1955 book They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. The conversations with ordinary citizens who had been Nazi Party members (Part I of the book) were very informative — and quite disturbing. It made me very pessimistic about the average person’s ability to ever see that they were wrong to support a political movement that does evil or to regret their part in it. The only thing that seems to get through to such people is if their own financial or physical circumstances suffer, and even then, they usually just blame someone else for it, never themselves or their leader or the party they supported.
That’s incredibly disturbing! But we have mounting evidence that it is happening again.