Not really “powertripping”. Just pathetic. Consider this a notice to avoid feddit.org… I’ve unsubbed and blocked the instance.
We can’t dehumanize fascists for their choice to dehumanize everyone for things outside their control though, because that would be mean, and hurt their sociopath feefees!
Europe stool idly by throughout the 1930’s “tolerating” fascism, and the Nazi’s killed over 100 million people. Don’t make the same mistake as the radical centrists of history. Fascists will not afford you the same tolerance or courtesy.
“The West” is a massive mob of people with a lot of variation within them, both in motivation and action.
Some parts of it did full-throated support for fascism of all varieties, before, during and after the war. Some parts of it were against the Nazis (because, more or less, they were competition), but fully in favor of other fascism like Pinochet. Some parts of it were breaking their backs to try to save as many innocent people from the Nazis as they could, simply because of concern for human rights. Some parts of it continued that same opposition to fascism, even the flavor of it that the State Department likes, in the decades that followed, even including hearings to try to stop the fascism our people were doing in Central America, and trying very hard to send some high-ranking people in the US to prison for their embrace of fascism in Nicaragua. It didn’t work (except in the case of Thomas Clines, which I don’t consider much of a success), but it wasn’t for lack trying. By some people.
We don’t need to have a big argument over which of those is the “real” face of the US. They’re all real. The second grouping is probably the dominant grouping as far as representation inside the State Department and actual control of the US’s foreign policy, yes, which is a god damned shame. We can agree on that. The vast majority of Nazi war criminals were never punished, just kind of went on about their business.
For the most part, the people who set up Nuremberg were best buds with the people who helped Pinochet later on, but the sins of the second doesn’t completely cancel out the virtues of the first.
When I say “the west” I was talking about western governments, of course I applaud everyone in the west who opposed all of this (shoutout to communists like Michael Parenti).
My point with the comment wasn’t a blanket condemnation of the people in the west, but rather a rebuttal to the fake historical view that Nazis actually generally paid for their crimes through the legal system and Nazism was removed from power.
My point is, the people who put Thomas Clines in prison were also in the government.
You’re not wrong, really, about the sum output of the system in aggregate, viewed from the outside, though.