64 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. The cities are administeredby mayors and councilmen drawn from his movement. The govern-ments of the states and the state parliaments are in the hands ofparty members
    2. Setapart from the familiar social contexts of family, work, and school,the closed camp was designed to break down identifications withsocial milieus and to promote Entbürgerlichung (purging bourgeoiselements) and Verkameradshaftung (comradeship) as part of theprocess of Volkwerdung, “the making of the people,” as the pecu-liar idiom of National Socialism put it.

      entbürgerlichung - purging bourgeois elements

      verkameradshaftung - comradeship

      volkwerdung - the making of the people

    3. The startling events of the spring of 1933, when more andmore Germans realized that they were not supposed to shop inJewish stores and when German companies felt compelled to fireJewish employees and remove Jewish businessmen from corporateboards, moved Germany quite some distance toward the ultimategoal of “Aryanizing” the German economy.
    4. Public humiliations such as these depended on bystanders willing totake part in the spectacle. They accelerated the division of neigh-borhoods into “us” and “them.
    5. As thousands of new converts joined the para-military units of the SA, whose numbers shot up ninefold from500,000 in January 1933 to 4.5 million one year later, the scale ofantisemitic actions expanded dramatically. Becoming a Nazi meanttrying to become an antisemite as well.
    6. The idea of normality had become racialized, so that entitlement tolife and prosperity was limited to healthy Aryans, while newly iden-tified ethnic aliens such as Jews and Gypsies, who before 1933had been ordinary German citizens, and newly identified biologicalaliens such as genetically unfit individuals and so-called “asocials”were pushed outside the people’s community and threatened withisolation, incarceration, and death.
    7. one of the key purposes of popu-lar entertainment in the Third Reich: the creation of a commonlyshared culture to define Germans to one another and mark themoff from others.
    8. s aresult, Victor Klemperer could repeatedly “run into” one of Hitler’sReichstag speeches. “I could not get away from it for an hour. Firstfrom an open shop, then in the bank, then from a shop again.”66Radio as well as film turned Nazism into spectacle.
    9. Tacked onto the doorways of apartments, posters, labels, and badgesattested to the fact that nearly all residents belonged to the People’sWelfare or contributed to Winter Relief.

      signaling you belonged, if you didnt participate you were probably suspected of being a subversive

    10. Millions of people acquired new vocabularies, joined Nazi organi-zations, and struggled to become better National Socialists. Whatthe diaries and letters report on is not simply the large numberof conversions among friends and relatives but the individual en-deavor to become a Nazi.
    11. Young people don’t walk anymore; they march.” “Ev-erywhere friends are professing themselves for Hitler.” To livein Nazi Germany, Ebermayer wrote, was to “become ever morelonely.”
    12. “Hei hatte sagt, wer non ganz un gar nichwolle, vor dän in Deutschland keine Raum”—“he said there is noroom in Germany for people who simply refuse to take part.”
    13. Hermann Aue “(very Left),” thoughtthe Nazis would be gone within a year, so he was inclined to stickwith the Social Democrats. But several Communists who had re-portedly joined a local SA group suspected that the Nazis would bearound for some time.
    14. As early as July 1933,the Ministry of the Interior drew up legislation that authorized thesterilization of allegedly genetically unfit citizens.
    15. The rou-tine intervention of the police in the corners of daily life of Germancitizens explains why the Gestapo assumed the “almost mythicalstatus as an all-seeing, all-knowing” creature that had placed itsagents throughout the land to overhear conversations in order toenforce political conformity
    16. Did shesympathize a little bit with people who were not considered wor-thy? Perhaps so, because Gisela recalled the incident in postwar in-terviews; but other Germans continued to improve themselves bygrooming themselves as Aryans, sitting up straighter, filling out thetable of ancestors, and fitting in at the camps, which gave legiti-macy to the selection process that had created Gisela’s anxiety inthe first place
    17. With the massive expansion of the Hitler Youthto include girls as well as boys, more than 765,000 young peoplehad the opportunity to serve in leadership roles. Many advancedin the ranks and received formal training and ideological instruc-tion in national academies such as the Reich Leadership School inPotsdam.
    18. The Ministry of Education authorized the National So-cialist Teachers’ League to organize retraining camps in order to“equip,” as Rust put it, teachers with lesson plans in “heredity andrace”; an estimated 215,000 of Germany’s 300,000 teachers at-tended two-week retreats at fifty-six regional sites and two nationalcenters that mixed athletics, military exercises, and instruction.
    19. Arbeitsdienstmänner worked together as a unit, marched toget-her, and relaxed together, an unending group existence designed topull together the people’s community.
    20. We have to go with the times, even if thereare many, many things that we do not agree with. To swim againstthe current just makes matters worse.”
    21. More thana third of the 1938 graduating class of the Athenaeum Gymnasiumin the north German city of Stade hoped to pursue a career as an of-ficer in the Wehrmacht or a youth leader in the Hitler Youth
    22. Enrollment for four years in theHitler Youth and then six months in the Reich Labor Service wasmade mandatory for boys in 1936 and for girls three years later
    23. What was necessary, he insisted, was to“recognize yourself” (“Erkenne dich selbst”), which meant identi-fying with the idealized portraits of new Germans and following thetenets of hereditary biology to find a suitable partner for marriage,to marry only for love, and to provide the Volk with healthy chil-dren.
    24. But it also made demands on ordinary Germans, who neededto visualize the Volk as a vital racial subject, to choose appropriatemarriage partners, and to accept “limits to empathy.”
    25. A wide rangeof public health-care professionals from doctors to nurses to social-welfare officers were enlisted in the effort to locate undesirables.
    26. The journalistSebastian Haffner noted that people in his circle in Berlin suddenlyfelt authorized to express an opinion on the “Jewish question,”speaking fluently about quotas on Jews, percentages of Jews, anddegrees of Jewish influence
    27. In place of the quarrels of party, the contests of inter-est, and the divisions of class, which they believed compromised theability of the nation to act, the Nazis proposed to build a unified ra-cial community guided by modern science. Such an endeavor wouldprovide Germany with the “unity of action” necessary to surviveand prosper in the dangerous conditions of the twentieth century
    28. Race defined the new realities of the ThirdReich for both beneficiaries and victims—it influenced how youconsulted a doctor, whom you talked to, and where you shopped.
    29. As parents, educators, volunteers, and soldiers, millions of Ger-mans played new parts in cultivating Aryan identities and segregat-ing out unworthy lives. They did not always do so willingly, andthey certainly did not anticipate the final outcomes of total war andmass murder.
    30. until the very end of the Reich in 1945, they handedout hundreds of thousands of copies of the eight-mark “people’sedition” along with pamphlets providing advice on how to main-tain good racial stock and prepare Ahnenpässe, “Germans, HeedYour Health and Your Children’s Health,” “A Handbook for Ger-man Families,” and “Advice for Mothers.”
    31. Significantly, thestate did not issue racial passports; Germans had to prepare thempersonally. They thus attained for themselves their racial status asAryans.

      by motivating germans to trace ancestry for mandatory passports and inclusion in the community, they "legitimize" the feeling of racial connection and exclusivity

    32. By 1936 almost all Germans—all who were not Jewish—had begun to prepare for themselves an Ahnenpass, or racial pass-port, which laid the foundation for the racial archives establishedin all German households
    33. the sheerforce of the imagery and the busy schedules of national acclamationmade dissent politically risky; but even more: dissent also appearedto be futile.
    34. On these occasions, friends and neighbors knew they wouldfind one another in front of the radio and could later share im-pressions—in this sense, Gemeinschaftsempfang, collective recep-tion, had been achieved.

      gemeinschaftsempfang - communal listening, the understanding that everything you hear is what everyone else is also hearing and the sense of solidarity you gain from it

    35. With banners, flags, marches, and “Heil Hitler!” the Nazis pro-duced a distinctive public choreography and accompanying soundtrack that seemed to affirm the unanimity of the people’s commu-nity.
    36. Radio helped to create the collective voice of thenation.
    37. Thus, for leading opponents of the Nazis, and for the Jews andother minorities that the regime tormented, there seemed to be littlealternative but to abandon Germany altogether. Since most exilesnever returned, Germany’s political and intellectual life continuedto be structured by the Nazis long after their defeat

      lack of dissenting voices means nazis shape everything

    38. Ger-mans wore special badges to show they had donated their marks;the badges functioned so as to make citizens accountable to them-selves. “On Sundays,” Hauser remarked, “when collecting for theWinter-Relief Fund is going on in the streets no one would darewalk abroad without a badge pinned conspicuously to his coat.”
    39. Moreover, the impression thatGermans were assembling behind the Nazis reinforced itself. Moreand more people adjusted to the “new direction” when they sawthat others had done so.
    40. One-potmeals on the first Sunday of every month provided opportunitiesfor party representatives to go from door to door in the evening asthey collected the pfennigs that had been “saved,” and to snoop.

      volunteer activity as a PR cover for nazis, an opportunity to see who might be a subversive, and to create atmosphere of fear among people who didn't contribute to the cause. very red-scare "snitch on your neighbor"-esque

    41. Coordination was a process of disso-lution and affiliation.
    42. National Socialists assaulted the “alternative culture” of work-ing-class socialists in order to coordinate it, but they also attemptedto overcome the very idea of “alternative,” which structured the so-cial divisions typical of Germany’s neighborhoods.
    43. Working-classchoirs had a better chance of survival if they rewrote club statutesto exclude Social Democratic activists from leadership posts.
    44. But thepressure to comply was unmistakable. Dürkefälden’s father-in-lawwas out every night one week in August 1933 because he had toattend meetings or risk losing his garden plot.
    45. ample, “is now a Nazi because of his job, but only for show.”Peine’s barber was in the SA, but Karl thought for “professionalreasons” only.
    46. what he saw was an increas-ingly Nazified community in which neighbors now took notice ofKarl’s behavior and club members adjusted their own. What Karlwas resisting as he stood alongside his wife was the pressure to con-form, if only for the sake of appearances.
  2. Dec 2023
    1. the oppression of gender minority and non-white individuals very likely increases the costs of desisting from system-justifying beliefs as is the case when minority political candidates are judged as more extreme compared to white and male candidates (69)—increasing the social sanctions (costs) for holding “extreme” views. These pressures can give rise to politics of respectability—which are used to deflect social pressures targeting one's identity (70, 71).
      • for: system justification theory - conformity bias

      • key insight

        • conformity bias imposed on individuals belonging to minorities can bring about stronger system justification behavior
  3. Sep 2022
    1. The problem is that if one player finds a way to undermine orcircumvent the rules and gets away with it then the others have no choicebut to follow. If they don’t they’ll lose out.

      !- for : race to the bottom !- for : conformity bias - spiraling destructive entrainment

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  4. Jun 2022
    1. It is now impossible for the world’s leaders to say that they “didn’t know” that this was going on, and that we didn’t have the power to prevent it all along. We scientists have been working hard, collecting evidence, writing reports, and presenting it all to the world’s leaders and the broader public. No one can honestly say that we haven’t been warning the world for decades.

      And therein lies the great mystery. How is it that with this specific way of knowing, we can still ignore the overwhelming science? It's not just a small minority either, but the majority of the elites. As research from Yale and other leading research institutions on climate communications have discovered, it is not so much a knowledge deficit problem, as it is a sociological / pyschological ingroup/outgroup conformity bias problem.

      This would suggest that the scientific community must rapidly pivot and place more resources on studying this important area to find the leverage points for penetrating conformity bias.

    1. but suppressed through a series of abandonments made in a vain effort to conform with societal expectations.

      Our propensity for conformity bias is extremely powerful....the same thing is destroying political discourse. However, an antidote to conformity bias is awe:

      https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F17D5SrgBE6g%2F&group=world

    1. not all of us are going to have super 00:37:28 high need for self-expression you know most of us are probably like me i'm more of a people pleaser than i would even want to be

      conformity and self-expression are not mutually exclusive. We can have qualities of both. We are a self who was taught since before birth to be interpersonal. Hence we are human INTERbeings from before birth. Conformity and individuality coexist.

    2. if you accept that this is pretty widespread and we we can talk about all the evidence for that the question is then why like how why are we so susceptible to being spectacularly wrong about the 00:04:13 group and then end up like making something true that never was true and it's really like two underlying mechanisms right so the first is this conformity bias which that's not very novel like we know we've known for a 00:04:25 long time that is a species humans are a conforming species

      Two mechanisms behind collective illusions. The first is conformity bias.

    3. i talked to todd rose about this notion of collective 00:00:51 illusions you know humans are a tribal species prone to conformity and in a lot of instances we act according to what our in-group wants rather than what we want as individuals ironically todd's research shows that we make poor 00:01:04 inferences about the majority consensus and that failing to recognize collective illusions can have negative consequences on our identities relationships values and society to avoid falling into conformity traps todd encourages us to 00:01:17 live congruent private and public lives that adhere to our personal convictions

      This impacts the whole Stop Reset Go transformation matrix: Individual Inner Transformation Individual Outer Transformation Collective Inner Transformation Collective Outer Transformation

      According to researcher Todd Rose, author of the book Collective Illusions, conformity traps occurs when we succumb to collective illusions and create a gap between our private and public lives.

  5. Nov 2021
    1. The liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, writing at about the same time as Hawthorne, made a similar argument. Much of his most famous book, On Liberty, is dedicated not to governmental restraints on human liberty but to the threat posed by social conformism, by “the demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves.”
  6. Jun 2021
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  13. Sep 2018
    1. “A bloke threatened to punch me in Edinburgh last year. He said, ‘I bought my girlfriend and her best friend tickets to your show. She came back and dumped me and said, ‘Ask Sloss’, so what the f***?’”

      Breaking away from what is expected of us can be painful and almost dangerous. Rhetoric against the norm can cause others to get mad at you in addition to the ordinary problems it will cause.

  14. Nov 2017
    1. I sought to shut down a startup culture at the school that was resulting in sites built with decidedly unregulated palettes and proportions.