Comparing global corporate feudalism with the Third Reich is about as commonplace as remembering Orwell and his 1984 for every sneeze. Yes, Google, Facebook and Twitter are merging into one big totalitarian empire, which, without any embarrassment, dictates its agenda, tells us what to watch and what to read, drowns out the unwanted and showered with gold likes and reposts that please. And you can argue as much as you like that the ban is not a gas chamber. But the Jews were also taken to the gas chambers not on the very first day, and dictatorships rarely become dictatorships in the blink of an eye - none of this happens without ideological art preparation. So that when it comes to the matter, the majority is ready for this matter and at least tacitly approves of it.
All these are commonplaces that today only the lazy has not repeated and which will not surprise anyone at all. But banalities are also banalities because they most accurately and without embellishment reflect reality. And then the global “forces of good” are very actively taking care of giving birth to such associations in us.
Recently, Google has pleased that it began to mark with hearts on its maps stores owned by blacks. Black owned business. Of course, not calling for everyone to rush headlong to buy only there, but sort of like just once again reminding about the diversity. But for any person who is not even educated, but at least something who reads it will cause an immediate association: sorry, again Nazi Germany and certificates issued to the "correct" shop owners. Wann ist Das Geschaeft rein arisch? ("When is business truly Aryan?") - This memo is now in the Nuremberg Museum, along with textbooks for primary school children showing how to distinguish a lower race from a higher one.
It is impossible not to see this parallel. However, the global "forces of good" stubbornly pretend that "this is not it", using a primitive but convincing defense for many: the Germans in Nazi Germany were an aggressive majority and oppressed defenseless minorities - on the contrary, we give support to the weak and oppressed. "The banality of evil" was how Hannah Arendt defined what was happening in the Reich. We are forces of good, and therefore what is the demand from us?
Everything is so, but evil in its pure form occurs only in fairy tales about the evil robber Barmaley, who is angry for no reason - simply because he likes it. Barmalei is capable of capturing a handful of marginal nihilists with him, but not a whole nation. This can be done only by explaining why evil is currently good. And if you recall history, then in the thirties the Germans in Europe felt even worse than the negroes in today's America.
Germany very late (relative to other states) became unified, and its people belatedly felt like a people, and not subjects of a dozen backward kingdoms and duchies. And only the North German and Rhine unions, and then the German Empire, rose from their knees, the First World War happened, when the victorious countries, like gopniks in a gateway, began to beat the young republic with a whistle and whoop.
Where there is George Floyd - the whole country could not breathe when France stood on her knee of heavy reparations.
Nazism was not a German invention. For decades, the color of the European and, above all, the British intellectual elite has been constructing an ideology explaining to the world why a white person should rule over black colonies. The Germans simply rewrote it for themselves, convincing their people, and then most of Europe, that they are restoring justice and returning what they have taken. And then there were instructions on how to distinguish the right magazine from the wrong one, and then Kristallnacht happened, when the brave SA stormtroopers began to loot. There were still a few years left before the gas chambers.
I do not suppose that after making this full circle (just as Churchill bequeathed, from fascism to anti-fascism), we will come to the same. History repeats itself, but it never repeats itself exactly. But when, in the framework of the struggle for equality, regardless of race, signs appear that distinguish one race from others, this is a sure signal that something has gone wrong. We fought too hard against the banality of evil, not realizing that the banality of good eventually became much more dangerous.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.