Russian Anti-gay laws and violence, and the Olympic (Winter) Games.

[rvg]

Poor allegory. The castle doesn't directly influence the building material and the building material itself doesn't change with time and/or outside influence.

We accept a lot of crazy stuff in the name of tradition, progression and the social game.

The point is that the society at large is representative of its most common basic components.

[Ironside]

The point is that the society at large is representative of its most common basic components.

You're Assyrian if I remember correctly? To make it more general in any case, an immigrant is a slightly different person depending on where he or she grew up, agreed?

And growing up is influenced a lot by the history of the family and region. So the society itself changes how the basic components looks like, making both top-down laws possible in changing attitude (far from always of course) and gives also room for a toleration window, as in "I don't like this way, but it's the way it's been (or should be) done and therefore I won't protest against it enough to create the change".

See the police abuse thread and the support of the congress for US' examples. The American society is coloured by it, it's hated by their own citizens, yet it's still there, accepted enough to remain.

[rvg]

You're Assyrian if I remember correctly? To make it more general in any case, an immigrant is a slightly different person depending on where he or she grew up, agreed?

To an extent, yes.

See the police abuse thread and the support of the congress for US' examples. The American society is coloured by it, it's hated by their own citizens, yet it's still there, accepted enough to remain.

Of course they're accepted because overall they do a lot more good than harm. They're kept not because of some tradition, but because they perform a very necessary function and serve a very necessary purpose.

[Ironside]

Of course they're accepted because overall they do a lot more good than harm. They're kept not because of some tradition, but because they perform a very necessary function and serve a very necessary purpose.

But the amount of harm they're allowed to do is decided by tradition. In the US the police has been traditionally corrupt (some places more than other) and so has the congress. So it's seen as more acceptable, even when it's disliked. To put in other terms, the team that says "..., but he's our crook" will have more crooks than the team that tolerates none of it, even if both equally hates the crooks guts.

But with your building block theory, you're arguing that the average American is more corrupt than the average Scandinavian simply by default (every building block is sand after all) and you also discount that the society can force it's will upon the citizen. If everything is run on bribes, no matter you personal opinion about it, you can't avoid them and still live a functional life there.

[rvg]

But the amount of harm they're allowed to do is decided by tradition.

I disagree, it's decided on a case by case basis.

In the US the police has been traditionally corrupt (some places more than other) and so has the congress.

More corrupt than who? Besides, the biggest problem with cops here is excessive enthusiasm for using lethal force coupled with some good old profiling. That's the problem, not the corruption.

So it's seen as more acceptable, even when it's disliked. To put in other terms, the team that says "..., but he's our crook" will have more crooks than the team that tolerates none of it, even if both equally hates the crooks guts.

Do you have an example in mind?

But with your building block theory, you're arguing that the average American is more corrupt than the average Scandinavian simply by default (every building block is sand after all) and you also discount that the society can force it's will upon the citizen. If everything is run on bribes, no matter you personal opinion about it, you can't avoid them and still live a functional life there.

By my building block theory average American is more tolerant of cops shooting people compared to an average Scandinavian, and I happen to agree with that.

[Ironside]

I disagree, it's decided on a case by case basis.

And this case by case basis is based on very defined rules or some vague idea that simply form up in the combined conciousness?Because the second one is exactly what I'm talking about with tradition in this case. Maybe culture is a better word, although I wanted extra focus on the historical weight. It's those unwritten rules that forms up that you as a group agrees on.

More corrupt than who? Besides, the biggest problem with cops here is excessive enthusiasm for using lethal force coupled with some good old profiling. That's the problem, not the corruption.

Corruption was used more generally here. Power abuse as an alternative term? If you want more traditional corruption you got the impound laws that allows the police to sell of property of suspects.

Do you have an example in mind?

From the top of my head, you got the good old supporting your own senator, while thinking all the rest are crooks. Or that dubious party member that's only supported because he's got the right party.

By my building block theory average American is more tolerant of cops shooting people compared to an average Scandinavian, and I happen to agree with that.

Then you would not have any problems with that sane people can be more tolerant of a barbaric society.

And if you're going with that Americans being more tolerant of shooting people period, then please continue with that Americans are more willing to screw people over so that they can get a bigger paycheck in the future (aka what the congress is accused of) to be consistant.

[Montmorency]

As an example, think of the Germans in WW2. Yes, many disliked Jews (and Gypsies, and...), many even hated them outright. But what is it that made them casually and remorselessly (on the whole) commit or contribute to crimes that normally they wouldn't have conceived of, wouldn't have condoned in theory? It wasn't ideology - it was society, its roles and statuses, and its division of labor.

German society normalized work in general as simply a duty that had to be carried out, no matter how distasteful.

First, consider the civilian roles in the Holocaust.

For the mechanic maintaining the trains that carry the Jews to the camps, it's just a matter of keeping the machinery running, who cares what they're doing with the Jews, none of my business.

For the file clerk, it's just a matter of putting the paperwork in its proper place, who cares if the contents of the paperwork are bizarre, it's just something that must be done.

For the finance specialist in the Department of Economic Adminstration, overseeing civilian production might as well be the same as compiling Jewish death-lists and calculating the logistics and expenses of mass extermination.

Now, considering the SS killers, and even all the complicit Wehrmacht rank and file:

The military narrows the focus, creates a wholly new society for an individual to operate in. Individual initiative in the German military was encouraged, but this existed within a tightly-bound framework based on obedience to the spirit of the higher-ups. The pluralistic society of civilian life was almost totally marginalized by a new society based on strict hierarchy, but above even that, cameraderie. So if there's a heavy institutional influence weighing down on soldiers, not only is their behavior strongly affected by it, but this very behavior massively increases the effect by setting the behaviors in a social framework defined by this cameraderie, so that soldiers do because their training, conditioning, and situation pushes them to, and then in turn soldiers do because their fellow soldiers do the same.

Moreover, the interpretive paradigms enforced by the German military at the time normalized brutality, so that not only was it just part of a job, it became something enjoyable, it became something commendable, something to boast about and discuss with comrades. You see how it all fits?

I'm sure such influences were much stronger even, on, say, the Japanese footsoldiers.

All this is heavily magnified during war, and even more so during battle situations.

To sum up, what that means is that men (and these are mostly working-class or rural young men in question) with violent or sadistic tendencies were given full outlet in the context of the military, and even more sensitive or empathetic men were acting within the same institution, under the same norms, and with these 'more barbaric' individuals as peers or superiors. Violence with impunity, something that would not have been tolerated to such an extent in the peacetime society of Germany,

Plus (as an aside, almost), there's the fact that Hitler's Germany had for years prior to the war (and in many cases, during the formative adolescent years of the soldiers in question) deliberately undermined the pluralism in German society and encouraged violence against any and all declared enemies as virtuous and necessary. (See below)

So, for a Heer sergeant that is invited to come along to a mass shooting of Jews by an SS officer, that is simply an obligation to a higher-up, perhaps even a somewhat distasteful one, but one that is easily carried out in its moment, and then left behind.

For the same man, killing a POW in the heat of battle would be comparatively nothing, spurred on by training, racist ideology, but most of all the fact that his new (i.e. current) paradigm for confronting and interpreting the world shows the combatant before him as an insult and a threat to his solidarity with fellow troops, in his unit and beyond. Probably he would not have shot a Russian man over a patriotic bar fight, perhaps he would have recoiled at the thought, but in this institutional and situational context/environment, it is not only seen as conducive toward or part of carrying out his professional duty, but morally respectable, or at worst (in retrospect) unremarkable and understandable.

For an SS officer himself, one who is daily operating under a responsibility to collocate and eliminate specified enemies of the state, one who on average would have ideology as an even stronger psychological factor, it would be like cleaning rats out of a sewer to maintain the infrastructure of civilization - dirty and unpleasant work, but something that must be done, and moreover something which is right. Common humanity is a meaningless refrain in the context of all we have discussed, the potential (ethereally-so) senselessness of the particular orders or genocidal program itself even more so. The possible moral interpretations of such large-scale murder would not strike him at all, or would be trumped by all we've discussed. The important thing is that even this character, so much the likelier to sadistically enjoy his bloody work, would probably at the end of the day feel nothing more than the satisfaction of a job well-done. This is all so even if, 5 years before, this man had been nothing but a 'dinner-party Anti-Semite', one who would have reacted with shock if offered to 'break some kike skulls' in the neighborhood. The commited Nazis, or just plain bloodthirsty men, have already been mentioned, and we need no elaboration to explain why they might have acted the way they did at this point.

An example from a POW, just cuz:

HAGEN: I took part in all that business with the Jews in 1936—these poor Jews! (Laughter.) We smashed the window panes and hauled the people out. They quickly put on some clothes and (we drove them) away. We made short work of them. I hit them on the head with an iron truncheon. It was great fun. I was in the SA at that time. We used to go along the streets at night and haul them out. No time was lost, we packed them off to the station and away they went. They were out of the village and gone in a flash. They had to work in quarries but they would rather be shot than work. There was plenty of shooting, I assure you. As early as 1932, we used to stand outside the windows and shout: “Germany awake!

I recommend this book, BTW.

In case you've forgotten by now, the point of this post was to demonstrate how "society", "reference frameworks", and all that can contribute to individual behavior far more than individual factors such as personality, experience, personal philosophy, and so on. How otherwise 'moral', 'normal', or ambivalent Germans could be shaped by society to (for the most part) unquestioningly and casually - which is to say without incurring any particular emotional impact, neither righteous hateful satisfaction nor painful remorse - directly or indirectly kill off millions of humans, many of them fellow countrymen, simply because they were declared enemies by the political order.

Here are a few transcripts of spontaneous conversations by German POWs, just to complement the TLDR (underlines my emphasis):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

THÖNE: I expect you have heard about the treatment of the Jews in RUSSIA. In POLAND the Jews got off comparatively lightly. There are still Jews in POLAND living there. But in the occupied parts of RUSSIA there aren’t any left.
V. BASSUS: Were the ones in RUSSIA considered more dangerous?
THÖNE: More hatred—they were not dangerous. I am not letting any cat out of the bag by telling you this. I think I can safely say that all Jews in RUSSIA, including women and children, were shot without exception.
V. BASSUS: Wasn’t there some compelling motive for it?
THÖNE: Hatred was the compelling motive.
V. BASSUS: Hatred by the Jews—or?
THÖNE: By us. It isn’t a reason, but it is actual fact.

MINNIEUR (re: execution of Jews in LITHUANIA, near VILNA while he was a member of the “Arbeitsdienst”): They had to strip to their shirts and the women to their vests and knickers and then they were shot by the “Gestapo.” All the Jews there were executed.
HARTELT: In their shirts?
MINNIEUR: Yes.
HARTELT: What was the reason for that?
MINNIEUR: Well, so that they don’t take anything into the grave with them. The things were collected up, cleaned and mended.
HARTELT: They used them, did they?
MINNIEUR: Yes, of course.
HARTELT: (Laughs.)
MINNIEUR: Believe me, if you had seen it it would have made you shudder! We watched one of these executions once.
HARTELT: Did they shoot them with machine guns?
MINNIEUR: With tommy guns … We were actually there when a pretty girl was shot.
HARTELT: What a pity.
MINNIEUR: They were all shot ruthlessly! She knew that she was going to be shot. We were going past on motor cycles and saw a procession; suddenly she called to us and we stopped and asked where they were going. She said they were going to be shot. At first we thought she was making some sort of a joke. She more or less told us the way to where they were going. We rode there and—it was quite true—they were shot.
HARTELT: Did she walk there in her clothes?
MINNIEUR: Yes, she was smartly dressed. She certainly was a marvelous girl.
HARTELT: Surely the one who shot her, shot wide.
MINNIEUR: No one can do anything about it. With … like that no one shoots wide. They arrived and the first ones had to line up and were shot. The fellows were standing there with their tommy guns and just sprayed quickly up and down the line, once to the right and once to the left with their tommy guns; there were six men there and a row of—
HARTELT: Then no one knew who had shot the girl?
MINNIEUR: No, they didn’t know. They clipped on a magazine, fired to the right and left and that was that! It didn’t matter whether they were still alive or not; when they were hit they fell over backwards into a pit. Then the next group came up with ashes and chloride of lime and scattered it over those who were lying down there; then they lined up and so it went on.
HARTELT: Did they have to cover them? Why was that?
MINNIEUR: Because the bodies would rot; they tipped chloride of lime over them so that there should be no smell and all that.
HARTELT: What about the people who were in there who were not properly dead yet?
MINNIEUR: That was bad luck for them; they died down there!
HARTELT: (Laughs.)
MINNIEUR: I can tell you, you heard a terrific screaming and shrieking!
HARTELT: Were the women shot at the same time?
MINNIEUR: Yes.
HARTELT: Were you watching when the pretty Jewess was there?
MINNIEUR: No, we weren’t there then. All we know was that she was shot.
HARTELT: Did she say anything beforehand? Had you met her before?
MINNIEUR: Yes, we met her the day before; the next day we wondered why she didn’t come. Then we set off on the motor-cycle.
HARTELT: Was she working there too?
MINNIEUR: Yes.
HARTELT: Making roads?
MINNIEUR: No, she cleaned our barracks. The week we were there we went into the barracks to sleep so that we didn’t … outside—
HARTELT: I bet she let you sleep with her too?
MINNIEUR: Yes, but you had to take care not to be found out. It’s nothing now; it was really a scandal, the way they slept with Jewish women.
HARTELT: What did she say, that she—?
MINNIEUR: Nothing at all. Well, we chatted together and she said she came from down there, from LANDSBERG on the WARTHE, and was at GÖTTINGEN university.
HARTELT: And a girl like that let anyone sleep with her!
MINNIEUR: Yes. You couldn’t tell that she was a Jewess; she was quite a nice type, too. It was just her bad luck that she had to die with the others. 75,000 Jews were shot there.

GRAF: The infantry say they shot 15,000 Jews on the aerodrome at POROPODITZ. They drove them all together, fired machine guns at them and shot them all. They left about a hundred of them alive. First they all had to dig a hole—a sort of ditch—then they shot them all, except a hundred, whom they left alive. Then these hundred had to put them all in a hole and cover them up, leaving a small opening. Then they shot the hundred and put them in too and closed it. I wouldn’t believe it but someone showed me the hole, where they were, all trodden down. Fifteen thousand of them! It’s in a clearing in the wood, like this camp here. He says they worked for a fortnight at the hole.
KRATZ: I once saw a big lorry convoy came into NIKOLAJEV, with at least thirty trucks. And what was in them? Nothing but naked bodies—men, women and children all together in one truck. We went over to see where they were going—soldiers: “Come here.” I watched; there was a big hole. Formerly they simply made the people stand on the edge, so that they just toppled in. But that meant too much work in throwing the bodies out, because not enough go in when they just fall in anyhow. So men had to get down into the hole—one had to stand up on the edge and the other got down inside. The bodies were laid out on the bottom with others on top—it was nothing but a spongy mass afterwards; they piled one on top of another, like sardines. That sort of thing is not forgotten. I shouldn’t like to be an S.S. man. It’s not only the Russian commissars who’ve shot people in the back—others have too. Such things are avenged.

These are all from rank-and-file Wehrmacht men so far. See the matter-of-factness, the 'eh-what-can-you-do, work-is-work, -war-is-war, orders-are-orders' attitude?

The next is between generals. As you can see, the high-minded aristocrats tended to be a bit less comfortable with the genocide business, but even so rarely did much of anything to stop the killings.

KITTEL: It was terrible. I once saw them being transported but I had no idea they were people who were being driven to their execution.
SCHAEFER: Have the people any idea what is in store for them?
KITTEL: They know perfectly well; they are apathetic. I’m not sensitive myself but such things just turn my stomach; I always said: “One ceases to be a human being; that’s got nothing more to do with warfare.” I once had the senior chemist for organic chemistry from IG FARBEN as my adjutant and because they had nothing better for him to do he had been called up and sent to the front. He’s back here again now, though he got there quite accidentally. The man was done for weeks. He sat in the corner the whole time and wept. He said: “When one considers that it may be like that everywhere!” He was an important scientist and a musician with a highly strung nervous system.
FELBERT: That shows why FINLAND deserted us, why RUMANIA deserted us, why everyone hates us everywhere—not because of that single incident but because of the great number of similar incidents.
KITTEL: If one were to destroy all the Jews of the world simultaneously there wouldn’t remain a single accuser.
FELBERT (very excited and shouting): It’s obvious; it’s such a scandal; it doesn’t need to be a Jew to accuse us—we ourselves must bring the charge; we must accuse the people who have done it.
KITTEL: Then one must admit that our State system was wrongly built.
FELBERT (shouting): It is, it’s obvious that it’s wrong, there’s no doubt about it. Such a thing is unbelievable.
KITTEL: We are the tools …
SCHAEFER: I think, if such conditions are permitted in a modern State, one can only say that the sooner this pack of swine disappear, the better.
KITTEL: We fools have just watched all these things going on.
BRUHN: If you come along to-day as a German general people think “He knows everything; he knows about that, too,” and if we then say: “We had nothing to do with it,” the people won’t believe us. All the hatred and all the aversion is a result purely and simply of those murders, and I must say that if one believes at all in divine justice, one deserves, if one has five children, as I have, to have one or two killed in this way, one does not deserve victory; one has deserved what has now come to pass.
FELBERT: I don’t know at whose instigation that was done—if it came from HIMMLER then he is the arch-criminal. Actually you are the first general who has told us that himself. I’ve always believed that these articles were all lies.
KITTEL: I keep silent about a great many things; they are too awful.

On the other hand:

[LT-GEN] SIRY: One mustn’t admit it openly, but we were far too soft. All these horrors have landed us in the soup now. But if we’d carried them through to the hilt, made the people disappear completely—no-one would say a thing. These half measures are always wrong.

Now just more quotes:

“They call us ‘German swine.’ Look at our great men, such as WAGNER, LISZT, GOETHE, SCHILLER, and they call us ‘German swine.’ I really can’t make it out.
“Do you know why that is? It is because the Germans are too humane and they take advantage of this humaneness and abuse us.

Even the Germans who expressed outright shock were, of course due to societal forces, weighed down by a lethargic apathy towards the atrocities:

PRIEBE: At CHELM (?)—my father told me about it too, he is in EAST GALICIA, on excavation work. They also employed Jews to begin with. I don’t believe anyone could hate or oppose Jews more than my father did, but he also said that the methods they used were horrible. Above all, the works at GALICIA employed Jewish labour only, Jewish engineers and everything imaginable. He says that the people of German blood (Volksdeutsche) in the UKRAINE are completely useless. The Jewish engineers were really damned clever. Then there were various types too. There was a Jewish council in the town which supervised the Jews. My father once spoke to one of his engineers, who said: “Yes, sir, when I look at the Jews en masse, then I can understand why there are anti-Jewish people.” Then came that period of mass arrests and the S.S. commandant simply sent my father a chit saying: “By midday to-day so-and-so many Jews must be named.” My father said that it was dreadful for him. They were simply shot. The order came: “So-and-so many shootings are to be reported by such-and-such a date.” The S.S. leader, a Sturmbannführer, rounded up the Jews, when there were no more, he sent the Jewish council a … “By 1430 hours to-day so-and-so many pounds of meat, fats, spices, etc. must be produced.” If it wasn’t there by then, one them was shot. But many of the Jews poisoned themselves.

AMBERGER: I once spoke to a Feldwebel who said: “This mass-shooting of Jews absolutely sickens me. This murdering is no profession! Hooligans can do that.

And also, don't forget that many of these people would have been fine with the Jews being "liquidated" somehow - it's just that mass-shootings in particular discomfited them.

PRIEBE: The story went round that they were simply driven into a sort of reservoir. Then water was let in and ran out again at the other end. By then there was nothing left of them at all. The number of young SS fellows who had nervous breakdowns simply because they could carry on with it no longer! There were some real thugs amongst them too. One of them told my father he didn’t know what he’d do when all the Jews were dead. He had got so used to it he could no longer exist without it. I couldn’t do that either. I simply couldn’t. I could kill fellows who had committed crimes, but women and children—and tiny children! The children scream and everything. The only good thing is that they took the SS and not the Armed Forces for that.

See that? The division of labor stretches the impact thin.

AUE: Perhaps we didn’t always do right in killing Jews in masses in the East.
SCHNEIDER: It was undoubtedly a mistake. Well, not so much a mistake as un-diplomatic. We could have done that later.
AUE: After we had finally established ourselves.
SCHNEIDER: We should have put it off until later, because Jews are, and will always remain, influential people, especially in AMERICA

JöSTING: He had to pass the spot, however, and witnessed the scene. He told me himself that the barn was bunged full of women and children. Petrol was poured over them and they were burnt alive. He saw it himself. He said: “You can’t imagine what their screams sound like. Is such a thing right?” I said: “No, it isn’t right. You can do whatever you like with them, but not burn them alive or gas them or heaven knows what else! It’s not their fault. They should be imprisoned and after the war has been won you can say: ‘This people must disappear. Put them in a ship! Sail wherever you wish, we don’t care where you land but there is no room for you in GERMANY from now on!’ ” We have made enemies galore![...] I’d be first to agree to getting rid of the Jews; I’d show them the way—out of GERMANY! But why massacre them? That can be done after the war, when we can say “We have the power, we have the might; we have won the war; we can afford to do it!” But now! Look at the British government—who are they? The Jews. Who governs in AMERICA? The Jews. While Bolshevism is Judaism in excelsis.

And another one:

SWOBODA: The executions were like an assembly line. You got a 12 marks bonus, 120 kroner per day for the shooting commandos. We didn’t do anything else. Groups of twelve men led in six men and then shot them. I didn’t do anything else for maybe 14 days. We got double rations because it puts a lot of strain on your nerves … We shot women, too. Women were better than men. We saw a lot of men, Jews, too, who started crying in their final moment. If there were weaklings there, two Czech nationals came and held them up in the middle … The man earned his double rations and 12 mark bonus, killing 50 women in half a day. In ROISIN we also carried out executions.
KAHRAD: There was a large airfield there.
SWOBODA: At the barracks, it was a treadmill. They came from one side, and there was a column of maybe 500 or 600 men. They came in through the gate and went to the firing range. There they were killed, picked up and brought away, and then the next six would come. At first you said, great, better than doing normal duty, but after a couple days you would have preferred normal duty. It took a toll on your nerves. Then you just gritted your teeth and at some point you didn’t care. There were some of us who got weak in the knees when shooting women, and we had selected experienced frontline soldiers. But orders were orders.

Now, these are all from declassified docs in national archives (so despite their coming from a book, there can not be copyright infringement), but I'll leave off here, expecting that reading these must be somewhat - tiring...