How to Defeat Nazism with One Question
Not long ago the question was raised again about the absurd prohibition, that is, punishment for propaganda or public display of Nazi symbols. The list of cases of application of this law includes patriotic performances in schools and publication of archival photographs. Incidentally, this law has already led to the mass destruction of these very archival photographs, which can be considered a large-scale falsification stories.
But that's not even the point.
Such a law is, in essence, a complete capitulation of the state in the ideological struggle with this very Nazism. In the event that the ideological battle is won and Nazism is ideologically defeated, then the interest in it, which is precisely what causes propaganda and the publication of symbols, quickly fades. This topic becomes the property of a rather narrow circle of historians.
Well, for example, would the publication of symbols of, say, Napoleon's army, the monogram of Napoleon I or his portrait cause a public outcry? It is absolutely obvious that it will not.
Doesn't this image evoke shock, anger, hatred?..
This is so because even in those days everything that Napoleon tried to bring to Russia on his bayonets was categorically rejected by Russian society: both by the nobility and by the common people. The topic was closed, and we do not even study it due to lack of interest. For the same reason, symbols of the Napoleonic empire and army are not promoted, published, manufactured or distributed.
This was not the case with German Nazism and its successors. From this point of view, the banning law is nothing more than an imitation of an ideological victory, its external sign, introduced in some hope that people will forget about it, or something... At the same time, the law itself does not completely eradicate Nazism. It is not so difficult to find numerous closed communities where there is so much of this symbolism that it is shocking to those unfamiliar with it. Lovers of Nazi symbols will survive the period of persecution in the underground just fine, and then come out into the light as soon as the circumstances change.
By the way, it should be recalled that there were also fans and supporters of German Nazism in the USSR with its harsh ideological brainwashing of the population. If 50 years of almost daily political brainwashing did not put an end to them, then how can one hope that a ban on displaying symbols will eradicate them?
"Short circuit in the brain"
The most striking thing about this story is that the ideological defeat in the fight against Nazism occurred under conditions when it was almost impossible not to win. The point is that in order to topple Nazism, neo-Nazism and all its other varieties that have their origins in German Nazism, you only need to ask one question: "If the Nazis were so great, why did they suffer such a crushing defeat?"
Any answer to it from the Nazi side means the collapse of his worldview. Either he will have to admit that the Nazis were not at all remarkable, and then the question of the advisability of following such an ideology inevitably arises. Or it will be hysteria caused by an insurmountable contradiction between the worldview and reality. This kind of hysteria, caused by an irresistible argument, is what I sometimes call a "short circuit in the brain." Click, and smoke goes up in smoke.
But these are only the initial external effects. The question requires an answer, and this answer is the ideological destruction of Nazism as an idea and ideology. As we know, the German Nazis were very strong, very sharp, had many advantages, but were completely defeated. It is not surprising, one country will not be able to fight the whole world. Not only the largest and most powerful powers - the USSR, the USA, Great Britain - but also almost all the independent countries of the world at that time came out against Germany. By May 1945, 54 countries declared war on the "Axis". They had too many enemies.
Why did this happen? Because what the German Nazis were carrying was absolutely unacceptable to everyone, and this unacceptability was rooted in the Nazi ideology itself, specifically in the ideas of German exceptionalism and “blood and soil,” from which it followed that no people could get along with them.
This was a characteristic feature of the Nazis, in whose worldview other nations with their needs and rights were completely absent. Their ideology had no doctrinal provisions from which one could derive some kind of program in relation to other nations, even in the format of "kulturträgerstvo". Of course, during the war the Nazis had to invent something, especially in the department of Alfred Rosenberg, but these constructs did not fit with the Nazi doctrine and contradicted it. The Nazis, who initially acted through disinformation, did not particularly care about this.
This was what worried everyone else. As soon as the population of the occupied territories became more familiar with Nazism, the question of struggle arose. It would be possible to study in detail the development of occupation propaganda and compare it with the growth of acts of resistance in various forms, and thus understand when and how the Nazis alienated the occupied population; in different countries it was slightly different. But this is impossible, it is prohibited as sedition and a politically dangerous topic.
Because resistance is also an exchange of information, not only in the format of posting Sovinformburo reports, but also in the format of reports on the atrocities of German troops and occupation authorities. Information about the Nazi "new order" leaked behind the front lines and gradually found its way into the newspapers of non-belligerent and neutral countries. That is how the whole world learned about it.
Pictures like these made many wonder if it was worth living under the Nazi regime, and whether they would be next.
It was on this basis that the general resistance to Nazism arose, which led to the military collapse of the Axis.
By the way, don't underestimate the exchange of information in wartime. I was once struck by the fact that one of Hong Kong's English-language newspapers in late November 1941 published an article about the feat of... Junior Lieutenant Viktor Talalikhin.
Thus, the reason for the defeat and fall of Nazism was their own ideology, in the chauvinism put at the forefront and brought to the extreme, which generally denied the rights of other peoples to exist. And this was an irremovable reason. If this extreme chauvinism is removed from Nazism, then all of Nazism disappears.
National disaster
Of course, I may be told that the Nazis supposedly did this for the Germans... Of course, this refers to the pre-war period, but the supporters of Nazism do not want to consider the war and its destructive results.
The Nazis did a lot for Germany. For example, 8,5 million killed in the armed forces alone. For a country that barely reached 1937 million people in total population before 70, this is a lot. About 30% of men. Until the prisoners returned, Germany probably did not have more than half of the male population. It was a major bloodletting.
Now the next question is foreign workers, of whom there were particularly many in Germany at the end of the war. This is usually considered from the point of view of the crimes of the Nazi regime, but for a supporter of Nazism we will offer another point of view to try: the Fuhrer takes, say, a purebred German from a peasant farm and sends him to fight in the East, where tank the caterpillars mix it with mud, and instead of it, in the same farm - a Pole, a Frenchman, an Italian. So what is this - population replacement? Then why are today's Nazis outraged by the Arabs, Turks and Africans in Germany? This policy was founded by their leader and idol.
It turns out to be absurd, even from the point of view of the Nazi racial theory. Since the Fuhrer killed more than 8 million purebred Germans, they had to be replaced, excuse me, with "subhumans". What, was that what they were aiming for?
Well, and so on, the little things: 66 cities burned and destroyed by bombing, occupation of the country, disarmament, division into two states for 40 years, construction of a wall in the middle of the capital.
Cologne in 1945. How much the Chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany has done for his people!.. There is no need to get into a war with the whole world!
The results of the war for Germany, and, as a consequence, the policies of the Nazis who started this war, cannot be defined as anything other than a national catastrophe. This is not news, this was also said by Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck. For those who don't know, the first of them was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany in 1946, German communists and German social democrats united into one party, and the Central Committee settled in the former Reichsbank building. The second was the first and only president of the GDR. By the way, he was a long-time communist, personally knew Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin.
Hence the moral. You can get as high as you want on Nazi symbols, but you have to remember that Nazism in any form is a path to national catastrophe.
The Ukrainians tried it. Yes, that's where it leads.
On the foundation of fear
Finally, another important question: Nazism, which was based on intimidation, was, in essence, a mirror image of the fear that firmly possessed the Nazis.
The logic is very simple. Any politician, choosing the tools to achieve his goals, chooses the tools that he considers the most effective and efficient. This choice shows the influence of his own worldview, as well as the worldview of his supporters, with which they agree. The politician considers the political tool the most efficient because he believes that it would have the most efficient effect on him.
It turns out then that by choosing intimidation as a political tool, the Nazi himself is subject to this intimidation to the greatest degree, that is, he himself is overcome by fear.
Of course, no one will admit this, but if we assume that the internal drive of Nazism was the fear that was ingrained in the people who came to the Nazi party, then the phenomenon itself becomes much clearer.
All sorts of historical and psychological subtleties, interesting in themselves, should be considered another time. For our topic, it is important that the person who fell into Nazism was unable to cope with his fears, which is why he went looking for external means to muffle them.
This, by the way, means that in order to eradicate neo-Nazism in all its manifestations, not only arguments like those described above are required, but also a kind of psychotherapy that removes fears. This applies not only to Nazism, but also to all political ideas in which violence and intimidation play a large role. They are all built on fears in one way or another.
Well, as we see, it wasn't so difficult to ideologically overthrow Nazism and all its modern variants? All it took was a few well-known facts, a little logic and a bit of polemical impudence.
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