You are really underestimating the power of their propaganda machine.
Goebbels was a key actor to their total control of the German people. Hitler’s rise to power was inseparable to the use of propaganda and hate speech against the Jews and the Slavs (Mein Kampf, lebensraum, Aryan race etc.). Where do you think the SS men’s motivations come from? They hated Jews since they were little? I don’t think so.
Goebbels was definitely one of the leading figures in Nazi Germany, he was at least equal to the likes of Himmler or Heydrich. Streicher was the only Nuremberg 24 who did not hold any office during the war, yet he was hanged. Why? Because he was the founder of the magazine Der Stürmer, a hatred-spreading journal.
How many SS officers were there actually killing Jews? I think you’re overestimating the anti semitic propaganda impact ordinary Germans and even nazi soldiers. Even most of Mein Kampf was about the betrayal of Germany from the people who surrendered in WW1, hate for the parliament, the Versailles treaty, Marxist party, the living conditions. Things that the average German was living through. They went through the psychological process of a lot of the soldiers who killed the Jews. Most of them didn’t really have much anti semitic feelings. They killed for reasons like human nature of following order and authorities, not losing face in front of your peers, anger from their living conditions post war and more.
Most of the killings of the Jews weren’t Jew hating monsters foaming from their mouths. They were people like you and me. We fool ourselves thinking we wouldn’t have done many of the same thing. That’s the scary thing, most of us would have done exactly the same giving into our human nature.
When you make hate speech laws against Nazi flags, you know what that sounds like? The story of how Mein Kampf begins with hitler being a political prisoner. Why give them that legitimacy? That’s basically the plot of the book…
Jews were perceived as favoring Marxist / Communist parties, as opposed to WW1 veterans like Hitler, who gravitated towards nationalist ones (though still “socialist” in a statist sense) and regarded Communism as an existential threat. (Remember “Judeo-Bolshevism”?) There was also a perception that Jews were disloyal to Germany and not truly “German.” As an Austrian, Hitler came from a background of interethnic political struggle for the spoils of a collapsing empire, which aroused tensions not unlike those associated with the former Yugoslavia or the post-Soviet Caucasus.
As has been discussed many times, a major component of hate speech is the distinct intention to disseminate the ideas to as many people as possible and convince them of its veracity.
Pretty sure @Gain couldn’t give a monkey’s if anyone agrees with him.
Again, you are underestimating the power of hate speech and incitement. Yes, WWI, the Versailles Treaty and the shit economy were all factors, but the Nazis were scapegoating the Jews for all that.
No I’m not. It was very powerful and helped tremendously to bring them to power. Obviously if the Nazis don’t get into power the Holocaust doesn’t happen, at all. You haven’t shown why it’s “the primary reason the Holocaust got as bad as it did”, which is what you said. You may as well say “it’s the primary reason WW2 got as bad as it did” etc. etc. Maybe you just mean it’s the primary reason the Nazis came to power? I’m not sure I’d totally agree but I wouldn’t argue with you.
I was going to say don’t you have a little bit more faith in humanity to think we don’t actually need laws to prevent nazis. But Germany seems to have no problem building holocaust museums telling everyone about the warning signs while not bringing up China’s camps in xinjiang and Uighur ethnic cleansing. All the while they sit in UN human rights council meetings singing kumbyya together.