wheels Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14706309 Jewish US army translator who got close to the Nazis "If you took away the names of these Nazis, and just sat down to talk to them, they were like your friends and neighbours." Howard Triest, 88, spent many hours with some of the most notorious leaders of the Third Reich, acting as a translator for American psychiatrists at Nuremberg. Interestingly He describes Hoess as "very normal. He didn't look like someone who had killed two or three million people." The banality of evil? Would this apply To Saddam, Bin Laden and Gaddafi? Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
When Skies Are Grey Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Thoughts? Rog? I kinda miss him! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil. Eichmann she observed ... was described by the attending court psychiatrist as a “completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him.” It is a sad fact of our moral fragility, that if you put normal people in the wrong culture they will treat great evil as boring normality. For Eichmann organizing the Final Solution was no different than organizing train timetables. Hundreds of thousands of people quietly cooperated with him for the same reason. Google Stanley Milgram’s electroshock experiment and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment to see just how easy this is. Or look at pictures from the cultural revolution. Millions of people died directly or indirectly from such dehumanization - and millions of others not only participated, but revelled in it. Sobering. Link1 Link2 Link3 HORRORS OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION Children stood by as Red Guards beat up their mothers for being "rightists." Neighbors informed on neighbors. violinists had their instruments and even fingers smashed by Red Guards. The accused sometimes had their jaws dislocated so they couldn’t speak in their defense and were forced to bow in front mobs that spit and screamed at them. There were also stories of people killing themselves by hammering nails into their skulls and corpses being mutilated in order to fit into coffins. Children of unpopular party members were gagged and executed; "rich peasants" and "bad elements" were publicly denounced and beheaded; Pictures of factory workers being executed for being Soviet sympathizers were published in a counterrevolutionary booklet. In Zhejiang Province, more than nine thousand people were officially "hounded to death"; children denounced their parents, and political targets were paraded in stadiums packed with screaming crowds; students at a Beijing girls' school beat their vice-principal to death with nail-studded planks; in 1968, in at least two provinces, political zealots ate their victims. In some areas local officials established quotas of victims that were targeted for violence. So many atrocities and horrors were committed during the Cultural Revolution that accounts and stories from this period have been catalogued according to their own category of literature—"wound literature." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wheels Posted September 20, 2011 Author Share Posted September 20, 2011 Or look at pictures from the cultural revolution. Millions of people died directly or indirectly from such dehumanization - and millions of others not only participated, but revelled in it. Sobering. Perhaps given certain conditions, it will propogate amongst people who normally would be constrained by either the norm or their individual moral balance and as you say regarding dehumanization, which the Nazi attitude to the Jews exemplifies; dehumanizing the victimes encourages normally well balanced people to participate. In a way the ultimate peer pressure, conform or else.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebees Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Rog? I kinda miss him! Yeah, I sometimes think about him. I'm strangely sentimental about the most ridiculous things, faceless racist fascists with terminal illnesses being just one of those things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Addie Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Rog? I kinda miss him! Yeah, I sometimes think about him. I'm strangely sentimental about the most ridiculous things, faceless racist fascists with terminal illnesses being just one of those things. This thread must suit you down to the ground then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTF Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 'normal' ?? depends on what that means to whom. canibalism is normal for canibals. normal this year could be illegal next year ( duelling for example ) and on the flip side, illegal last year could be normal this year ( same sex marriages ) normal is constantly evolving ( or devolving depending on your view point ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merkin Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 'normal' ?? depends on what that means to whom. canibalism is normal for canibals. normal this year could be illegal next year ( dueling for example ) and on the flip side, illegal last year could be normal this year ( same sex marriages ) normal is constantly evolving ( or devolving depending on your view point ) Yeah! Bring back dueling! I've always fancied a go at that. Especially if you got to slap the person that you're challenging round the chops with a leather glove and throw it on the grit. With a sneer. Paintball dueling could be a good introduction without the worry of loss of life of limb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 I don't see how the article has anything to do with a normalising of evil and such crimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebees Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 This thread must suit you down to the ground then. Nah, not my cup of tea, at all. It is strange that you would think that Addie, really really strange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gladys Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Rog? I kinda miss him! Yeah, I sometimes think about him. I'm strangely sentimental about the most ridiculous things, faceless racist fascists with terminal illnesses being just one of those things. Was Rog terminally ill? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I believe so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.