I Don't Want to be Right

[kandrathe]

I think it requires intelligence and a good view on people to be able to compare someone to Hitler before this person actually becomes a homicidal dictator...

An important idea would be whether, without the Hitler, if another Hitler would have arose. And, in many ways he was just the figurehead whose weaknesses resulted in failure. To create the horrors of the Third Reich, you really needed all the main actors doing their parts; namely HIMMLER, HESS, SPEER, GOERING, GOEBBELS, and others. I believe if THE actual Hitler had not been as broken and incompetent, things may have gone in Germany's favor.

Post WWI, Germany was a virtual political tidal pool that attracted a type of extremism which became Nazism. The roots of which as I understand it were; economic chaos, shortages, deprivation, national humiliation, burgeoning communism, racial discord (looking for someone to blame). It seemed easy for the extremists to create a narrative that appealed to and expressed itself as nationalism, jingoism, and racism.

...you know, if we can't what stops a homicidal dictator from again grabbing power and commit genocide.

The way things are going, I'd say it is happening. It might very well be the USA who emerges as the next terrible dictatorship to terrorize the planet.

It's totalitarianism we need to fear -- not social organization or economic theories. Where does the authority. and power lay?

Bogeyman (Justification for State control mechanisms): Terrorism (replaced Communism)

Freedoms, rights and privacy: Subservient to the needs for State security -- becoming more of a police and surveillance state

Economy: Check. 99% etc. Punctuated by more frequent and deeper recessions, huge vulnerabilities due to peak oil, failure to modernize, limits on population and consumption.

Propaganda: Check, so much so that after Tienanmen Square, China totally revamped its failing propaganda machine to emulate the US and Britain. They've renamed it "The Office of Publicity" -- which is in an unmarked building in the center of Beijing without a street address.

Militarism: Check. The USA and allies barely exercise restraint and in many ways is involved in every world conflict. Need I expand?

When it comes to mass murder, the primary world powers, including the US are not usually the main actors. Rather, we allow/arrange for it being done by third party proxy (e.g. Iraq vs. Iran).

It is totalitarianism we need to avoid, and not some economic or social organizing theories. With whom does the power and authority lay?