Lessons from history

[Norther]

I want to talk about a book I read years ago that really changed the way I live my life and cintinues to give me courage when I feel daunted by doing the right thing. Little thank you first to KaiserThiefs for inspiring this thread.

It is called something like 'women of the third reich'. An american student who was fluent in german and couldnt understand how so many ordinary people had been complicit in the holocaust and was certain she would have been different decided to do a research project interviewing women who had lived in germany throughout the whole of the third reich (is that 33 to 45, can't quite remember). She interviewed jewish survivors, nazi party members, resistance, those for and against etc. It was fascinating. It was not how you would expect. There was a nazi who had refused to comply with orders to I think round up jews because she disagreed with it. The interviewer said how could you dare. She said everyone was used to me. I was always very outspoken I never changed from before the war to during. Conversely, there were people who hated the nazis but collaborated out of fear. Her conclusion was, people who stand up fof the small things are the most likely to stand and be counted when the potential repercussions get more serious I.e. if you cant stand for what is right when you are facing a few abusive words online, dont think for a second youll do it when a gun is pointed at your head. To those who say save yourself for the big battles, concede the small points. No! Because that is where the battle is won and lost.

Another point from that, your allies come from surprising quarters. Accept their kinship on the values you share without compromising those you dont. On a tangent from this but still related, find commonality with those who should be our allies but who dont call themselves feminists - there will be single issues they can relate to. Sex and gender might bore them but certain teachers in the girls swimming changing rooms wont etc.

I am currently living in a country where they are putting children in concentration camps on the Southern border.

If you want to know what you would do in the bad old times you are doing it right now.

Stockpiling irn bru, writing to my representatives, eating a lot of chips, trying as hard as I can to talk to women and 'regenerate the energy of radical feminism'
www.crosscurrents.org/madsenf00.htm

This is an interesting and insightful thread, thank you.

I really don't think anyone can say "what they would do". I have been in various tricky situations, and I have never responded how I might have expected (sometimes I've acquitted myself better, sometimes I've let myself down)

I agree with the suggestion that giving in to the small stuff can make it harder to disagree with the big stuff, though.

If the thread started with the Havel piece I’d be fine.

I find the argument that 'we don't know what choice we'd make until we're in that situation' compelling (the electric shock experiment really surprised me, for instance) but I think it's not healthy to focus on the idea that humans are selfish, dark creatures that will almost always choose to be selfish/not help others.

While I concede that all people probably have selfish tendencies, I also believe that most people are good and want to live peaceably and be kind to others. I think that there are more good people in the world than bad people. I think that there are more brave people than cowardly people. I think there are plenty of people who stand up for what's right.

I think the most difficult choice to make is standing up for the truth and what's right when you are the first to do so. Plenty of people might quietly agree with you, but being that first lone voice is hard. Once someone starts speaking up, though, they may soon find they have others joining them.

So we need to talk. We need to take this debate to real life conversations. That's the next step.

"The interviewer said how could you dare. She said everyone was used to me."

Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett line from Equal Rites (read it if you haven't, it's a very feminist story about a young child who was destined to be a wizard but was born a girl):

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”

I think the Asch conformity experiments are the most interesting and telling psychological experiments (even more so than the electric shock ones). Read up if you haven't but the basic result is that the vast majority of people will give an answer they KNOW is completely untrue, if everyone else is doing it. 2+2=5 type thing.
They're not fooled into thinking it's actually true, its just far more comfortable to be wrong in a group than right on their own.

If you give them a companion, one other person in the group who goes against the flow and says the right thing, they are more likely to say what they know is right rather than what is popular. They have support and at least they are not alone.

There's a small percentage of people who will NEVER give the wrong answer, no matter how big the group is or how enthusiastically they all proclaim that 2+2=5 there's always someone who is willing to say "No, it's 4. You're all wrong. I don't know how you're so wrong and I know you're probably going to resent me for pointing it out but it's 4. It always has been 4, it always will be 4."

I was raised to be pretty obstinate and vocal and I've realized that it's my job in life (and probably yours too, if you're on here) to be that first person who says 'No, that's wrong. You're all wrong' and hopefully give other people the courage to say so too. If we ever lose hope, think we can't make a difference and decide to just keep our mouths shut, that's when all hope is lost.

Bloodmagic

I read that terry pratchett book too yonks ago. Its one of the better discworld ones. Love all the points you made.

And I am definitely that obstinate one too. I have to speak up even if I end up (sometimes literally) bloodied and bruised from the experience. From time to time I withdraw from the battle for my own sanity but I always come back for more eventually.

Be the one to stand up, because others will stand with you.

From Wiki, regarding Max Ophuls' documentary 'The Sorrow and the Pity' about Occupied France:

'The Sorrow and the Pity (French: Le Chagrin et la Pitié) is a two-part 1969 documentary film by Marcel Ophüls about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II. The film uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration. The reasons include antisemitism, anglophobia, fear of Bolsheviks and Soviet invasion, the desire for power, and simple caution'.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity

I seem to recall Ophuls saying that, in the early days, the resistance was made up of the oddballs who didn't really fit in to society (at least until later on when it became clear which way the wind was blowing and Mitterrand, amongst others, got involved).

I'd like to think that growing up in Liverpool under Militant in the 80s inoculated me against the Far Left, and the fact that the Last Night of the Proms leaves me cold suggests (if you'll forgive the odd equivalence) that I'm hardly a frothing-at-the-mouth Nationalist, meaning I could have been such an oddball. Then again, I'd still be an oddball with an aversion to getting tortured or shot or having the same thing happen to my family and friends.

I need to see 'The Sorrow and The Pity'. It was said to have shattered the myth of the French Resistance but what it has to say about the human condition isn't just limited to the French.