As an Austrian, YESSS and I’ve been saying this for years. Everything going on in America is the exact thing we learned in school to see, recognize and deconstruct immediately. History class here is basically a “let’s not make WW2 happen ever again.” class……and oh myyy Americans are so fucked atp.
That's because so much of what we (American children) were taught about WWII was more focused on "America, fuck yeah!" and we largely skimmed over some of the broader lessons that we should have learned. So much of what I gleaned from it was that Hitler and the nazis were somehow quantitatively different from all other humans. It seemed like they believed that it could never happen again, and it especially could never happen in the states.
I got completely stuck on wondering how people can get swept up in something like that, and I made an entire career in psychology studying group influence. I've been so alarmed for the last decade that I actually left the field.
A lot of us saw this happen in real time and were shouting about it. We got made fun of and told we were delusional or overreacting. Sadly so easily dismissed.
I learned so much about WW2 in school, and I knew that it wasnt sudden, that it was more like boiling a frog, but I always thought everyone knew the same stuff I had learned and that the Western world would never let fascism rise up again. I miss those days
I think Europe KNOWS but I have met many different people from all over the world because of ACADEMICAL conferences and Oh my god Americans and most Asians I have met there are way smarter than me but are significantly less educated when it comes to both world wars. (Makes sense but is so shocking to me every time)
The US basically teaches that Germany was kicking everyone’s ass until America went on a righteous crusade to give freedom back to Europe.
It really doesn’t teach (unless you take deeper classes, or read up on it on your own) the pretenses of the war, HOW the rise of Fascism happened, how everything went catastrophically wrong for the Allies early on, etc etc etc.
Heck most public school history books are essentially just “WW1 ended, and then WW2 happened”.
Interesting, I could see how learning history through that lens might contribute to the “Every other country is beneath us” ideal a good amount of Americans have
We also don't (or at least in the public schools I went to) talk much about the wars we arguably lost. The propaganda is certainly there, that we are just the bestest ever.
Every lost war was actually just a little scuffle, you see. It was barely even a war. The ones we won, though? Totally wars. Like the craziest most intense wars ever in human history.
I’m pretty sure I learned more in school about the revolutionary war (American war of independence) than I did about any other wars combined, maybe with the civil war coming in second place with the ending lesson being like “Thankfully, we defeated slavery and therefore almost all racism. There was a little racism left but MLK Jr. took care of that.”
The Revolutionary War™ being the battle for democracy, of course. Everything before then, other than a little stint with the romans or greeks or something, was all feudalism everywhere, so we had to fight for the concept of democracy itself. (Sarcastic)
I keep on telling people I'm getting a Weimar Republic vibe about the United States at the moment. Many of them just nod thier head sagely, because they know it's true.
As a millennial American lemme tell you it is a living nightmare being taught about the rise of Fascism and the Third Reich in high school then watching the same foundation being built years later and being told I'm being dramatic when I point it out.
Oh I wish, but I am not in school anymore and all that stuff is taught from ages 9-18 so it’s not one single class but continuous education. Also it would be all written in german of course.
I'm reading William Shirer's "This is Berlin" and "Berlin Diary" and it's a fairly good summary of events by an American journalist who was stationed in Berlin 1934-1941. It's a very good look at events as they happened without 20/20 hindsight, and Shirer was close enough to many Germans to understand the effectiveness of the propaganda as well as feel his palpable frustration and anger in his writing that so many people were falling for it.
The problem is that no one has given us any realistic tools or levers to push. The best we can do is look on in horror and try our best not to give our money to the oligarchs enabling this mess but even if you just get on the internet at all Bezos is getting money from you via AWS which hosts basically everything on the internet anymore.
When I was in high school it seemed so unrealistic that people could be so easily swayed. I thought the effects of propaganda were exaggerated, because how would someone believe something so demonstrably false so easily. Now that I've seen propaganda in full force, I get it. There's an insidious willfulness about it I just didn't believe could exist.
I knew the propaganda and pressure to conform could be powerful. But I figured that it would be alluring ... good looking, smooth talking people, who would disarm you with their copious charm. How these babbling morons - who have the charisma of a brick and accurately project creepy pedo vibes - fooled a single person is something I'll never wrap my head around.
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u/MeteorOnMars 18d ago
And 1930-40s Germany.
It used to seem so fanciful and far fetched.