Of course non-book smart and uneducated people can be intelligent and "non-evil". This has nothing to do with education. It has to do with the willingness to question one's own prejudices or narrow-minded views.

Even the Nazis thought they did the right thing. They didn't wake up in the morning to do evil. They woke up thinking they were doing good. They were obviously wrong, despite being educated. That makes them ignorant, because they were unwilling to understand what the right thing to do actually was.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This assumes Nazis all were rational people who all were arguing in good faith at every step of the process.

Except we know and have mountains of evidence for the amount of bad faith argumentation made by Nazis to justify evil.

Like, did you forget all the propaganda made to compare the Jews with rats and the suggestion that both should be exterminated? That's just people "thinking they're doing the right thing?"

We're literally witnessing a resurgence of it in the USA from the Republican party.

If you really believe they don't know what they're doing, I have a bridge to sell you.

It's like this conservative guy I used to know who bragged about how him and his brother used to get away with shit, and how the cops couldn't nail them because they would never rat on each other, and that was the only evidence the cops had. "They can't get us to talk so they can't prove nothin!"

Conservatives literally run on "As long as I never say my evil thoughts out loud, people can't prove I'm actually evil. I just have to keep arguing in bad faith and never admit the reality, and no one can prove what's actually on my mind."

They basically live on "It's only wrong if you get caught" and the only real way to "get caught" is admit things out loud.

I've met plenty who operate like that, and we have mountains of history from German Nazi's who operated similarly, and so this argument that the Nazis somehow were all decent people who just thought they were doing the right thing is the most screamingly dumb bullshit I've heard in months.

Arguing in bad faith to win control over other people is the definition of thoughtful evil.

What the fuck even is this argument? You're so full of shit.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 6 points 10 months ago

You're putting words into my mouth there to sell your point.

I never claimed that Nazis were oblivious to the evilness of their actions or that they were decent citizens. I'm saying that they were ignorant. They literally called it a "solution" because they thought it was the solution to make things right.

The problem in USA and elsewhere with neo-nazi shit is that they're doing the exact same thing once again. They're fueled by prejudice and unwillingness to change or even understand anything that is different to themselves. They want to ignore all other points of view or other ways of life or anything that is different from their usual way of life.

They don't want to think about it. They don't want to learn. They are deliberately pursuing ignorance and attempting to make ignorance a virtue.