Growing up I saw a lot of negative depictions of fascism and fascist characters, which at the time I didn't understand were only caricatures. We've all seen the Indiana Jones and other movies or video games with Nazis or Nazi equivalents. They are fallback stock villains that are iconic to Western culture, for good reason. They were after all the most relatable enemy we faced during some of the most formative years of our nation. For their part, the ground-level Nazis were regarded as stalwart combatants and respected as well as feared. It was a matter of fighting a capable enemy. Hated by many surely, but begrudgingly respected as well. This reality rarely made its way to the big screen where Nazis were much more two-dimensional.
The lack of honest information around the Nazis as a young person led me to question myself early on. There were things about their depictions that resonated with me fairly strongly. From the striking uniforms and beautiful blondes to the lack of hesitancy, the confidence, and the efficiency they seemed heroic in their own way. Reconciling the "evil" people with their attractive qualities was at that time impossible for me. As I grew older I started to be exposed to more realistic and mature depictions and expressions of fascism. I started to recognize the truth behind what I had been told. Not only in mainstream movies, but by common people and slanted history.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I got to the top of the pyramid so to speak, in terms of Nazi hierarchy. Inevitably when someone criticizes Nazi ideology they arrive at the leader and inventor himself, Adolf Hitler. Just like everyone else I grew up thinking of the man as synonymous with the devil, or the pinnacle of evilness. A mass murdering psychopath that used fantastic oratory skills to weave some mind controlling magic over the German people and drive them to world war. This is of course an immature view of a person, one that persists almost a century later among adults and mainstream media. Lacking evidence to the contrary and the technology to actually review the life of the person, it's entirely reasonable to think that Hitler could have endured centuries of infamy. How much myth surrounds the man? How much love and hatred? How much fear of ghosts does our society have?
Avatar of Evil
As Hitler was a proponent of propaganda, he would have been proud to see the depth and strength of his legacy. Men and women who have never met him are scared of him. Just as he was seen as a savior to his own people, he has transcended mortality in mainstream society and become regarded as a force of nature. Hitler was never a child, never cried or sucked on a breast! Didn't have parents or siblings, love, lust, pain, fear, or much anything besides a maniacal drive to expunge Jews from the earth. He just came out of the woods one day slinging magic and turned out his Nazism against the world!
I'll make no apologies for the industrial scale of murder that Hitler endorsed. I'm not him, nor do I have any personal crusade against Jews or any other race. I think that his methods and fascination with certain demographics were ineffectual and misplaced. The crimes of the Nazi regime rest with those that committed them and do not reflect upon me or my beliefs. There's a reason that I identify myself as a neo-fascist and not a neo-nazi. As a matter of principle I am not opposed to the industrialization of execution or genocide. The scope of the act does not matter, ranging from a single execution of a guilty party to the extermination of an entire guilty group. The crucial matter is culpability. I do not feel as though looking at the evidence a strong enough claim was made against various demographics.
It's largely a moot point anyway when you stop to think about it. You can't really prove the guilt of that number of people realistically, and executing indiscriminately is profoundly immoral. If in some sci-fi universe we met an alien race that explicitly meant to kill us all I wouldn't be opposed to their total destruction. If every single Jew had been yelling in the streets their desire to kill all Germans, I wouldn't be opposed to them being executed or forcibly expelled from the country. To put it in a modern context, I'm not opposed to the complete destruction of ISIS because they explicitly state their desire to kill us. Killing every single member of ISIS would mean killing thousands of people, but I wouldn't bat an eye at it because I can unflinchingly support the death of those who mean to kill us. The Jews aren't ISIS though, and didn't make those proclamations, which is what makes the Holocaust immoral.
To me, it's important to divorce the actions of individuals from their motivations. If we don't, then we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. For example, if we catch a killer and say that he is evil and killing is evil, we risk losing our capacity to kill. Killing in and of itself isn't "evil". We kill many things, from plants to animals, including people. What's important is the context. The criminal killers we convict are dealt with because their motivations are evil. A murderer who kills someone just for fun is completely different from a police officer killing that same murderer. Both the police officer and the criminal are murderers when you really get down to the nitty gritty of it.
To bring this around to the main point, Hitler wasn't evil because he endorsed killing people. Hitler was evil because he endorsed killing innocent people. Hitler was a racist in times where race was much more important then it is now. He existed in a time when religious and scientific authorities alike could validate many of his claims. Even the USA who fought him used segregated units of black soldiers, showing just how far and wide the thoughts of the day were spread. This isn't a defense of Hitler, because as we know today race is minimally important. This means that he was wrong about his racism and his actions taken to support it or enforce it were wrong. What it does to make this observation is help put the entire situation into context. By recognizing that his views on race were wrong - that he had the wrong motivations - we can see how our own actions can be made ethically.
We aren't evil unless we choose to be.
You aren't an evil person if you support national security at the expense of a few personal freedoms. You aren't evil if you support the death penalty instead of penalizing society as a whole through prison funding. You aren't evil if you support the censorship of crass material. You aren't evil if you support militarization and the appropriate use of force. It is only by choosing to use these things immorally for personal gain at the expense of the people that you become evil. It is only be allowing your personal grudges to guide your use of programs and laws that you give up your organization to evil.
Antisemitism is wrong. It's irrational, weak, and counter-productive. Racism is much the same in the sense that any of the issues underlying race are trivial. We have the inborn capacity to overcome basic biological cues regarding race. Many people with earnest desires to do good for their nation have been misled by the personal misgivings of a few. There are holdovers among neo-Nazis and other authoritarians that have no place in modern society. The concepts have been proven wrong or unnecessary. You're allowed to be uncomfortable with foreign arrangements or people, but you need to draw on your inner strength to overcome this feeling. The concept of an authoritarian society that wants to unite its people under a single banner cannot rely on petty, base discrimination.
For those we wish subjugate, kill, or banish we must make a compelling case. Those we seek to punish must first be convicted with evidence. We must provide an empirical motivation that cannot be regarded as immoral, but instead is both lawful and virtuous. People across the nation and the world over must look upon our motivations and actions and find no discernible fault. Not everyone in the world is going to agree with our way of doing things, but they won't have good reasons to call us evil.
I'm not evil, you're not evil. Let's stand together in the open, in the light, under the scrutiny of moral law and reason. We can do great things for our people and the world if we have the will to do so. We must absolve the nature of our being and overcome our weaknesses. Our cause is not one of suffering and death, it is one of joy and life. Though we may be driven at times to take harsh action against those who would threaten us, we are separate from those attackers because of the purity of our motivation. We are justified in our actions only so long as we stay true to virtue. It is virtue that truly unites us above all other considerations.
One People. One Nation. One Leader.
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