The Unreasonable Man

Richard J. Evans finishes his epic biography of the Third Reich thus, and these words reflect what I say time and time again, and explain why this is such a powerful metaphor for the evil that is possible again today and tomorrow:

“The Third Reich raises in the most acute form the possibilities and consequences of the human hatred and destructiveness that exist, even if only in a small way, within all of us. It demonstrates with terrible clarity the ultimate potential consequences of racism, militarism, and authoritarianism. … It poses in the most extreme form the moral dilemmas we all face at one time or another in our lives, of conformity or resistance, action or inaction in the particular situation with which we are confronted. This is why the Third Reich will not go away, but continues to command the attention of thinking people throughout the world long after it has passed into history.”

Exactly. Every time I see unthinking people follow the crowd in embracing idiotic measures just because these appeal to their unthinking sentiments, I think “careful - or there we go again”.

People who say we may not bring up the Nazi comparison when seeing injustice and danger of extremism are sadly mistaken. Not only may we do this: we must.

And that is also why this blog is called The Unreasonable Man.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Politics and social.