To wonder if Nazi Germany felt like the UK does now, when they were creeping into power?

[oneggshellsforever]

Transformations in the justice system are happening, stacking the odds against disabled people having a fair hearing when they appeal sanctions or having disability benefits turned down.

They're getting rid of in person tribunals, and getting rid of expert panel members.

Disabled people are often successful when it goes to appeal, so the government seem to be systematically stripping the legal system of a fair trial?

Will start happening in October. What the government is doing to disabled people, and people with very little money in general, is chilling me to the bone. I honestly wonder if the feeling in the atmosphere was like this in 1930's Germany.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/12/online-benefits-appeals-tribunals-disabled

ginghambox has hit the nail on the head.

Agree absolutely that women's rights are being attacked also.

These remoaners are getting more and more nutty with each passing day.

What the fuck has how the OP voted on Brexit got anything to do with this? Unless you're just hard of thinking enough to equate any compassion or empathy with your tabloid childishness?

Oh fuck off

Bullyingadvice expressed my sentiment more eloquently

I was a PIP assessor for a few months last year, until I couldn't stand doing their dirty work for them. Whereas Nazi Germany's eugenics programme was related to racial purity and social Darwinism, this government just doesn't care very much about disabled people. It's two very different approaches.

I'm at the dismissive and insulting responses on this thread.

Does no one recall the phrase 'the banality of evil'? or the quote 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'?

Old chestnuts maybe, but not to be sneered at or forgotten. The National Socialists didn't come in looking like panto villains and smiting people in the streets.

State control/division/erosion of rights is a gradual, insidious thing.

I agree with you, OP.

Only people with no knowledge of history beyond the most superficial 'tories are fascists' nonsense would ever think to ask that question

It is an interesting question, especially as Bemused has put it above.

I think the comparisons would have been more worrying if the conservatives and UKIP had together won the 100 plus seat majority in the recent election (NOT BECAUSE I THINK THEY ARE NAZIS OR LIKE THEM) because it would have confirmed a very definite rightwards step and given a lot of authority to those wanting to make further small rightwards steps. As it is, I think there is too much political disarray for that - pretty much one clumsy conservative move at the moment and we have a hard left PM... This makes the government and MPs more accountable and having to be more responsive than they have been for a very long time.

I also think people are more alive to some of the possible gradual steps than they were. I remember reading that the communists and socialists hated each other so much they directed all their fire at each other, allowing Hitler to take power.

And the problem with equating the Tories with Nazism, is that when the real thing turns up (I'm looking at you, 'alt-right') you've got nowhere to go. Accusations of creeping fascism should be reserved for use against proper fascists, and not used against uncaring Conservatism.

I would say the opposite is the case. It seems in UK society if you are not part of an "oppressed" group your opinion doesnt count and you should be silenced and or ridiculed. Of course the left has courted this method of creating victims...

I think it's terrifying as well.

We've all now got our Irish passports in this family (unfortunately their half brothers have to remain British). And I don't say that lightly. My son will be getting a British passport as well because he is on DLA.

My son is on DLA and got a letter addressed to me because I'm taking care of his money, after a home assessment from the DWP, with him present (it was agreed that he wouldn't have a clue what was going on). It's regarding whether he would want to continue or not. You means him in this letter. And then there is this:

'You can't choose to stay on DLA and you won't be automatically moved from DLA to PIP. You now need to decide if you want to claim PIP. Please read the information about PIP later in this letter, then call us by 31 August 2017 if you want to make a claim.'

So just to recap. Even though I've been passed to take care of his needs and money, the letter implies that he has to do it. It's bizarre.

Of course I will ring up and ask for an assessment.

Oh this shit again

Get a grip .!

I am the daughter of a refugee from Nazi Germany.

I do think that certain groups within society are being seen as less valued, less fully human.

And perhaps there are a parallels in that a once-powerful nation now feels defeated and wants to blame/demonise already marginalised groups for difficulties that have not been created by those groups.

(But by the emergence of other economic powers in the world, globalisation, poor political decision-making by recent UK governments.)

Cockacidal, I'm aware it's a different approach, but I still see similarities in the systematic stripping of rights and protection from the poor and the disabled.

To add my son thinks he's been cured of autism because he watched a video on youtube. He's 16. He actually believes this.

It's a very big difference between spitefully enforcing PIP/DLA policies, and loading the disabled into vans filled with carbon monoxide.
If you want to see truly scary, watch those who tried to crawl up Marine Le Pen's arsehole when they though she might win. Like Farage and Katie Hopkins.

I think that when a society starts to way up individuals' worth in £££, particularly the vulnerable and oppressed is when we should start taking a good long hard look at the direction our country is going in, and I do think it's happening now.

Don't forget, referenda are banned in Germany, as they believe, as their own history has taught them, that putting complex questions to a simplistic yes/no vote is the route to fascism.

There won't be many alive now, but I would be surprised if people who fled nazi Germany as adults couldn't see some of the parallels.

To wonder if Nazi Germany felt like the UK does now, when they were creeping into power?

A mindset of knowing cruelty has been normalised. It is being perpetrated by many institutions and individuals who can choose whether to be cruel or not.

Thank you for posting OP.

I'm a social democrat. As much as I loathe the Tories, you know who else scare me? The assorted anti-semitic low-life who attach themselves to Corbyn. The likes of Galloway too. All the antidemocratic bogeymen aren't all on the far right, I'm sad to say.

I think that when a society starts to way up individuals' worth in £££, particularly the vulnerable and oppressed is when we should start taking a good long hard look at the direction our country is going in, and I do think it's happening now.

That ain't fascism. That's an extreme form of capitalism.

I live in Germany and got the full German school system education on the nazis, so don't you dare tell me shit about that.

Unlike those of you who only read about the worst crimes committed by the nazis, I also know how the whole thing started.

And it started with propaganda and seemingly small changes.

I have no patience for people who scream "Oh, but you can't compare this!" when someone talks of exactly the kind of small changes that the nazi regime started with.

As said, I don't have much insight into what is being done to disabled people, but if you try to shut people up who point out parallels, you enable bad, bad things to start ,and take root, without anyone doing anything about it.

Cockacidal, the DWP is currently in court to try to hide statistics on how many people have died within weeks of being assessed as fit to work.

If they actively starve the disabled to death, or harrass the mentally ill to the point of suicide, knowing that is what is happening - I don't see that as all that different from loading them up in vans. It's just easier to get away with.

People have died because of the Tory government, more people will die, As someone said upthread this is not the future I envisioned for my kids.