> but he was enthusiastically supported by a large portion of the German society.

I can't tell you what my relatives were like leading up to the war (I certainly wasn't born at that point), but they were illiterate peasants from the south, far removed from the cities and politics.

My suspicion is that, if anything, they were like most southern Italians, who seem to have a profound distrust of the government and politicians.

If I'm honest, they didn't have any moral objections to the war--they just felt used.

Same in Sweden, the majority popular opinion started shifting away from supporting Germany late in the war as they were obviously losing.

> Isn't that just a comforting fantasy, though? Germans also embraced the myth of Hitler as a guy who just somehow hoodwinked everyone and made good people do terrible things.

And there's no doubt about it - it was a myth. Most of Germany stood behind him, and were outraged by the failed July 20th coup... In 1944. Ivan and Uncle Sam were kicking down the door, extermination camps were working overtime, yet most people were still fully behind him.

The hardest thing for people to admit is that they've been duped.

And it is not the only case. The French people went to war in 1914 "la fleur au fusil"[0]. Jean Jaurès is assassinated for his pacifism and (his assassin would be found not guilty - despite being totally guilty - in 1919).

[0]: a more nuanced take that is illuminating can be read here: https://www.france24.com/fr/20140730-grande-guerre-poilus-vr...

I wouldn't necessarily call it comforting fantasy, people change their minds all the time. I think we're all to some extent able to justify some negative sides of any political movement as tensions rise.

I've felt this myself a few times now. Both when Trump was attempted assasinated and now with Charlie Kirk. I am sad that public discourse and our democracies are kind of unraveling these days and that this is just a sad reality of that fact. As far as Trump or Charlie Kirk go, I have no sympathy what so ever.

I'm not sure I really want to blame anyone for things becoming like this, it all seems like par for the course in the world we've created for ourselves. I just wish we were able to stop before this.

Fascism was quite fashionable at the time.

> Isn't that just a comforting fantasy, though? Germans also embraced the myth of Hitler as a guy who just somehow hoodwinked everyone and made good people do terrible things.

Another way this observation is manifested is how out of nowhere you have countries voting in extremist parties and politicians.

I think there is a general distance to a lot of things in today's society. Very few of us have to farm or hunt for our own food, or clean an animal carcass. I don't have a strong view on the moral aspects of eating animals (I'm not a vegetarian or vegan), but I think it'll probably do some good if anyone that eats meat at some point slaughters, cleans and butchers one of the animals they eat.

It’s John von Neumann’s idea, at least from the biography I read. Before too much praise is heaped upon him, he also strongly argued for a nuclear first strike on Soviet Union before they got their own nuclear weapons because it was best strategy from game theory POV.

I think it was Call of Duty 2 (when the franchise was still WW2-based) when they would show, in my recollection, an anti-war message including this one every time your character died. I think this was absent from later incarnations of the franchise.

I too was at Dachau on a day like that, over a decade ago. My partner recently asked me about it, and just thinking back to how I felt made my skin crawl. It's terrible to remember, and I hope I never forget.

The story wasn't actually about the trucker being hard working (or not), though I'm sure he was. He wasn't actually trying to make people believe he literally was the hardest working.

The joke is that everyone else he went to war with was claiming to be something else, so he must have delivered all the supplies himself.

The response is interesting to me, because having fought in a war, though I am not a US veteran -- I instantly got it. And the place I heard it from was more veteran dominated, and everyone instantly understood/appreciated the joke.

> someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'

We might be thinking of different types of gatherings/meetings. Specifically, I was thinking of someone with a particular set of extremist ideals that get together for a monthly meeting with others with those same extremist ideals. Someone in that group would likely not say "are you okay" rather they'd say "hellzya brother!" or whatever they'd actually phrase it. These types of meetings are also known to have someone speak intentionally seeking to get a member to act as a lone wolf to actually carry out the comment you're hoping someone would tamper. Now, one doesn't need to go to meetings for that encouragement. They just open up whatever app/forum.

I was at a political rally a long time ago. One of the speakers said "let's hang all the people in <rich suburb>". As I remember it no one spoke out against him but neither did people cheer. Anyway I realized the rally was a bit too much for me and left. The speech was entirely inconsequential - no violence resulted nor was anyone arrested.

I'm telling this story because I think it's how things usually go, and I think you are quite mistaken.

> When you're around other people, even ones who share your beliefs, and say 'I think we should murder that guy!' then in most crowds someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'

There are crowds where that guy is not there, is not heard, or doesn't speak up at all.

In those crowds, people reach out for their pitchforks and outright murder people.

If you take a frank look at history, you will notice those are all too frequent. Even in this century.

Anything I say on the internet, someone will always have a compelling but sometimes wrong argument as to why im wrong. If you listen to them for confirmation you'd never be able to do anything, and im not exaggerating. I could probably say the earth is round here on HN and some astrophysics PhD would tell me I failed to consider the 4th dimension or something and it's actually unknown if we can call it round.

Where are these people going that they just see encouragement without resistance?

There doesn’t even need to be anyone saying no. When you’re standing with a crowd shouting “murder! murder!” it’s much harder to say “I’m not one of the bad guys” than when you’re online and you can say “well OK, there are a few bad apples in our group, but I’m not one of them!”

There aren't many times when there's quite as much happening at the same time.

Over the last week or so we've had: serious riots in France, catastrophic riots in Nepal, a scandal in the UK featuring the ambassador to the US, hostile drone incursions into Poland, the murder of Charlie Kirk, the ICE raid on visiting South Korean workers, soldiers on the streets of DC and a threatened incursion into Chicago, a school shooting, revelations about the biggest paedophile scandal of the century and its links to the rich and famous, including the current president, and Israel attacking most of the countries around it.

In the background is the continuing war in Ukraine, China's increasing militarisation and threatened technological lead over the US, the situation in Gaza, the disassembly of the established US federal system of government, existential and economic dread over the impact of AI, and climate change.

If everyone's feeling a little edgy, there may be good reasons for that.

Yup - you’d just never hear about all the ones that weren’t right next to you. At least in gory detail while they happened.

Here, I get to read all about the latest insanity in the last 24 hrs from…. 4 major countries in Crisis?

Tchau, from central Brazil (today).

Yeah, Etsy is funny. On the basis of what I bought I got an ad for a spell to transform into a fox but if they had really looked at what I bought they would have realized I already had the material list.

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The US had one killed within the last two months, with an attempt on another, and the attacker had a list of other targets.

You could be forgiven for not knowing, since the collective coverage and attention to it since has probably been less, total, than what this received in the last couple hours.

A few years ago, a would-be assassin went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's house and — when he couldn't find her — beat her husband with a hammer. Here's what Charlie Kirk had to say about that [1]:

> By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-...

The US is in the process of turning into a stereotypical Latin American country, caudillo and everything else. Driven by the same economic and social forces, and in some cases the same people.

>I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived).

Excuse me? Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman were less than 3 months ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...

> I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived).

You are clearly not paying attention.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgv4y99n7rt

Los Angelinos would disagree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

Just off the top of my head

Ruby Ridge was 1992, Waco was 1993.

1993 was the bombing of the world trade center.

1975-1988 we lived in the Cold War and the potential of nuclear strikes. The African, gay and trans communities (in particular but not exclusively) dealt with the AIDS epidemic. Iran moved to theocracy. In the 90s, we had the Iraq war that was not bad for the US but massively destabilized the region. In the 2000s we had 9/11 and let's not understate the fear from the Muslim community here. Africa has lived through famine and the pains of decolonization after their wealth was stripped and stolen over centuries.

This is worse, but we have always lived in "interesting times" depending on where you were in the globe.

At least one year in that range where something happened.

IDK, man, the '70s sounded pretty wild: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

Like if nothing happened a day exactly 24 years ago...

> what to do with the time that is given us.

Doomscrolling, mostly.

Take a better look at it from Israels perspective. Any other response after Oct 7 would have been unthinkable. No israeli is particularly happy with what's happening in Gaza (a massive understatement) but there is still broad support there for the war, because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.

The rest of the world haven't been shy lately about expressing their opinion of the war, something that Israel recognises and care about, but they have provided no way out for israel to take any other course of action.

Our ideas and opinions should be as harmonious as possible with reality. If Israel was understood better and her concerns and fears engaged seriously it would go a long way to ending the war.

In the context of this assassination i feel the path forward is not empty platitudes of "deescalation" rather greater empathy and understanding of people you disagree with. This is mainly an internal process, but also one that should have outward expressions too.

Eh?

The article you linked says that BND thought the lab leak was likely in 2020. You're the one with out of date information.

It's quite well documented. Try this site:

https://liberalarts.vt.edu/news/articles/2020/08/virginia-te...

I don’t think you two agree.

Which is why it feels so much more despicable and awful than all the other conflicts that are currently ongoing in the world.

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Martin Luther King Jr. was just a preacher, I don't understand the the big deal about him getting shot. /s

The main reason is that the side he's on his pretty unhinged and they think it's more important than all the other violence listed.

It's like when a conservative person is canceled they throw an absolute fit, then turn around and cancel someone on the left, without making any connection.

The distinction is:

1. The goal of the second amendment was never "everyone should be able to have as many guns as they have, and if people use a gun to kill a dozen children then so be it", it was "it should be illegal for the government to take away people's weapons because the first step a tyrant would take is to disarm the populace so they couldn't fight back." That goal doesn't hold water anymore in a world where a computer geek working for the US military in a basement in Virginia can drone strike a wedding on the other side of the world. Instead, the NRA has made "guns good" into something that too many people make their whole personality, and the people who are actually trying to destroy society use that as a weapon to prevent any positive change when someone murders a dozen kids by making people feel like the only choice is between "anyone can have guns and children are murdered every day" or "the government takes your weapons and forces any dissidents into siberian-esque gulags".

2. Firearms were far less common, far less accessible, and far less deadly than they are now. Compared to what was available at the time, modern-day weapons like the AR15 are effectively weapons of mass destruction. If you went into a school with a civil war-era rifle and tried to kill as many people as you could, you'd maybe get one shot off which might not even kill someone if you hit them, and then you'd get tackled while you were trying to reload.

I think it’s worth posting the actual wording of the 2nd amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

There’s endless legal debate how this should be interpreted, but it’s not obvious that there was an assumption that there would be mass individual gun ownership.

That constitution was written 250 years ago, after a war. Those people lived in different times, wilder times. How does their opinion matters today?

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We had the technology to push out a vaccine in less than a year. Modern medicine is of course smarter than it was a century ago.

What went poorly is our society's collective response. From the medical and governmental establishment, there was much hemming and hawing over what measures to take for way too long (masking, distancing, closing of public spaces, etc). Taking _any_ countermeasures against the spread of the virus also somehow became a culture war issue. I'm assuming GP meant "left or right" by "either side" so make of that what you will.

I wish it was as simple as this :(

Calling something a public health issue doesn’t take anything away from people who don’t agree (with what, exactly?)

Clearly, illnesses and diseases are public health issues as are systems to manage food safety. People who don't agree with trying to find the best way to manage public health are obviously sociopathic, though that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree on particular approaches e.g. masks may or may not be effective (though they seem to have now been shown effective in masking ICE agents which is ironic).

Certain methods of dealing with public health issues have historically been shown to be incredibly effective (e.g. vaccination, milk pasteurisation etc), so it's disconcerning when there's a political movement that pushes an agenda that is clearly based on fear and not rational evaluation of the issues. It seems to me that there's a push to make the poorest sections of society become less healthy and more vulnerable.

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Hmm, the number found online is that Covid killed 1.2 million in the US, so guessing the shutdown and vaccines probably saved millions. But your take is different. Guessing you disagree with the the 1.2m deaths figure? (not trying to be pushy, just curious on your take)

> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, you have to engineer the pathogen such that it [...]

Interesting phrase. "Engineer the pathogen".

> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, (...)

Why do you believe a pandemic has sides?

And look. The government doesn’t have to do anything!

Your sentence can also be applied to both ‘sides’

> He had the courage of his convictions and refused to change his beliefs or be deterred from acting on them.

That's only a good thing to the degree that those beliefs are good. Charlie's beliefs were evil.

71 day old, account, but these are your only comments on the site. I guess trolling is alive and well even on a community like HN.

If they are trans or not he still "died for his beliefs", as he had said:

"I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our God-given rights."

Supposed problem. He was being questioned about the data showing otherwise.

> If his shooter gets caught and is trans

True—but that's the thing about preaching hate, it turns out, there's lots of people who might want you dead.

I think he's just stating a fact. And pointing out bigotry is not in itself hateful. Unless you think the civil rights movement was motivated by hate?

And the fact that you were getting downvoted for this rational take concerns me even more. Scary times ahead indeed.

> He also preached the views that offend the stonks go up brainwashing of the youth happening in academia.

Speaking of unhinged takes... I literally can't parse that sentence. Touch grass sometime soon?