I thought I explained my question, which was a question, not a defence of anyone. I explained that this is not a subject I know much about. I asked for someone to explain this to me as to me, on the face of it saying "a country" is not responsible for something but rather the individuals concerned doesn't seem massively controversial. Clearly trying to have a conversation to, genuinely, try to understand where people are coming from, on a subject I understand little about, to broaden my understanding is just going to lead to me being called a fascist sympathiser, which seems a shame.
Every individual has a social responsibility. Even in authoritarian regimes.
To use the Nazi example. One of the things that was highlighted in the BBC's 'A Warning From History' series was how the Nazis took such control so quickly.
They looked about how the SS controlled towns and what they found from the records really surprised them as it was a very different dynamic to the one that they expected.
It was the sheer lack of officers. There were a handful for a population of hundreds of thousands. The Nazis didn't need to spy on all those people. People would do the work for them, and would report their neighbours for anything or everything that made them stand out and not conform, without being prompted or threatened.
One of the examples they used was that of a woman who was German and wasn't in anyway political. She was just 'different'. She was reported to the SS by several different people out of their sheer dislike. No one would have done anything to those people for not reporting this woman. Equally, no one stood up to defend the woman, for the same reasons.
You can not JUST blame the officials at the top for that type of reason. The rules are there, but can only be implemented with society conformity and adherence to those rules. In many cases, its not just a question of people being unwilling to turn a blind eye but people who actively went beyond the basic letter of these rules and contributed to expanding how they were enforced within society, and even made their own suggestions on how they could be expanded.
That's the essence of it all. Society is not solely dictated by the government. They can try and create certain conditions to control behaviour but ultimately its a herd mentality that allows things like this to occur.
The reverse can also be true, as was demonstrated by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Society is everyone.
I think the whole debate over Holocaust Denial and Revisionism, is not just about legitimising and sanitising the horror of appalling acts during WWII, but also one which is about abdicating the responsibility for our own individual contributions and expectations of society. This is what creates the danger of such awful acts happening again.
An unwillingness to acknowledge both sides of this is part of the problem. There is a real problem with getting people to look at their own grotesque image in the mirror as it requires a certain about of humility and soul searching. Its easy to spot it in people in the public eye and pin all the responsibility on them, but at the same time these people can only do and say these things because no one challenges them. Apathy is as big a part of this as active involvement.
Brexit has come about in no small part because of certain conditions within society. It comes from a lack of awareness and sympathy for the problems that some people face and how that affects their opportunities in life which provoked a backlash. It also comes from a deliberation exploitation of this nastier side of human nature that is suspicious of those who are different and 'not like us'.
Again in the context of Brexit and the idea of attitudes to shared responsibility, I do think that the UK is suffering from a very real abdication of that. The idea that, 'X, Y or Z is someone else's problem not mine', is a mentally I think is deeply ingrained in British society - and business and probably one that is contributing a great deal to our lack of productivity.
Farage casting himself as some kind of victim despite standing in front of provocative posters is a good obvious example. The Daily Mail having a go about the horrific attack on a refugee asking where the hate came from, whilst having printed anti-immigrant stories on its front page for decades is another.
These perhaps are the extreme example, but there are much less obvious examples too, including from liberal circles. Its all about the disconnect between (and lack of responsibility for) the consequences of individual actions. Its about that creates a butterfly effect which is hugely amplified from the sheer number of those individual actions: which is the fabric and very definition of society itself.