this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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I know a lot of people used to ask the question, "If I was alive during the Holocaust how would I have responded?"
Well... now we know.
Most people just blithely act like it isn't happening. Cool cool cool.
Not sure what the average person is supposed to do from where they live. I go to protests and try to contribute to my local community, while giving money to orgs that are better positioned to do stuff, but I hate this narrative of "nobody is doing anything". I'm not going to pick up a gun and start deciding on targets, and fuck anyone who does generic calls to violence.
At the end of the day, people are just trying to live their lives, and they don't have a lot of individual levers to pull to make an impact. It requires organization and belief that good things can still happen, which are sorely lacking in left leaning spaces.
I'm not really talking about those people at all. I agree with you entirely.
I'm talking about the third of people who seem like they're happy to watch the conservative third of people murder the "left" third of people because they just "don't care about politics."
Everyone who gives a damn is doing what they can.
Wrong ending.
Other guy gets beat to death too.
And then the other, off-screen murderer gets beat to death by the on-screen one even though they're partners.
I can deal with people not believing. It's the ones cheering for with that i just can't...I can't understand.
It's not hard - they're hateful, selfish assholes who should be the ones being deported. But only hateful assholes would do such a thing. Decent, empathetic people try to understand and help even those assholes, but they never truly appreciate it - even if they act like they do because they know it gets them what they want.
There's a significant difference in all the extra ways we have to distract ourselves from reality now. Back then they had little choice but to see what was going on, but nowadays so many people are burying their heads into gaming, social media, streaming video, etc. that they (often deliberately) aren't even aware of the horrors happening next door. I can't say as I entirely blame them because it's depressing and overwhelming AF - especially when it's your own fellow countrymen behind it all.
I think you're underselling the impact of early newspaper and radio, or the ideological influences of the Catholic Church.
Back then they were unusually blind. It wasn't easy to know what was happening in Zurich or Frankfurt from Berlin, nevermind what was happening in Poland or France.
Lying was much easier.
They lacked access to the information.
The regular citizens, and even low level soldiers, didn’t know about the extermination camps. Allied forces forced German soldiers to watch footage of the camps and even forced the local civilians to walk through the camps.
Most people were complacent because it looked like people were ‘just’ being arrested, detained and deported. It wasn’t until after the war that they learned about the extermination camps.
We’re not running extermination camps yet, though it’s hard to imagine a good outcome for a person who is deported into an African country in the middle of a civil war. So people are largely complacent because it looks like people are only being arrested and detained.
As the poem says:
“First they came for the immigrants and I didn’t speak up because I was not an immigrant.”
gonna be honest, when i was in high school learning about the Holocaust i didn't imagine i would be a target in another one. i always figured we'd find some new stupid bigotry instead of falling into the old uncreative ones, but i guess i gave xenophobes too much credit.
A decent portion of lemmy users just sat on their hands and did jack shit.
Couldn't even be bothered to vote.
Worse, they campaigned against the Democratic party. They admitted their campaign motivated the party to change candidates, but did not admit their campaign changed people's voting positions. They thought they could send propaganda only to politicians without it affecting ordinary people.
George Clooney?