They Thought They Were Free

Milton Mayer in They Thought They Were Free

• In 1952, Mayer moved his family to a small German town to live among ten ordinary men, hoping to understand not only how the Nazis came to power but how ordinary Germans-ordinary people-became unwitting participants in one of history's greatest genocides.
• The men Mayer lived among came from all walks of life: a tailor, a cabinetmaker, a bill-collector, a salesman, a student, a teacher, a bank clerk, a baker, a soldier, and a police officer.
• Mayer had dinner in these men's homes, befriended their families, and lived as one of them for nearly a year.

Overcoming Decency

• Ordinary people cannot tolerate activities which outrage the ordinary sense of ordinary decency unless the victims are successfully stigmatized as enemies of the people, of the nation, the race, the religion.
• The forced separation of Jews and non-Jews created a devastating rift in German society, tearing the social fabric and paving the way for tyranny.
• How has this separation been made possible? The immense power of propaganda, and particularly propaganda in the digital age.

Our Own Lives

• Most Germans were too focused on their own lives to consider the plight of their neighbors
• We quickly forget those who are distanced from us
• In a faceless world of "social distancing," it's that much easier to forget the myriad human beings who are suffering beyond what we could bear
• The elderly and infirm who've been cut off from the rest of the world, deprived of social interaction and human touch? It's for their health and safety.

Our Own Fears

• We add to our own lives our own fears (real or imagined), and we become even less motivated to consider the hardships of others
• To express fear or uneasiness about the growing totalitarianism of the Nazi regime? Such concerns were verboten.

Our Own Troubles

• Responsible men never shirk responsibility, and so, when they must reject it, they deny it. They draw the curtain. They detach themselves altogether from the consideration of the evil they ought to, but cannot, contend with." (75-76)
• We all have our own fears-fears of imaginary threats or actual risks. Add to our lives and fears the weight of our own responsibilities, and we can be rendered powerless to consider the troubles of those around us.

The Tactics of Tyrants

• Many have sounded the alarm over the past two years about the threat of endless emergencies, and we have all seen the goalposts be moved time and again.
• While most everyone recognizes that "two weeks to flatten the curve" was not just two weeks, too few understand the insidious threat of ongoing "rule by emergency."
• Mayer's friends experienced the catastrophic results.

The Common Good

• What has been the reason given for many of the measures implemented over the past two years? The common good
• We must wear our masks to protect others
• Get vaccinated to love our neighbors
• Stay home to save lives
• Close schools to preserve hospital resources
• Civic pride becomes the highest pride, for the end purpose is the preservation of the city
• Tyrants understand how to exploit our desire to care for others

Endless Distractions

• Combine the tyrannical use of the common good with a perpetual state of emergency and you have a totalitarian regime that cannot be questioned
• Add to these tactics endless distractions to occupy the citizenry, and no one even has time to question
• Over the past two years we have experienced a continual upending of our lives with lockdowns, zooming, online "learning," mask mandates, "social" distancing, and more
• And then we are told we must comply with vaccine mandates or lose our jobs

Science and Education

• The Nazis used science to convince students and others that the Jews were inferior, even diseased
• In addition to using "science" to support its goals, the Reich government also sought to control education
• This would likely involve bringing in bureaucrats to control what is taught in the classroom or to control whether there even is a classroom

Suppressing Speech and Encouraging Self-Censorship

• The Reich's method of controlling education (and speech more broadly) did not rely on overly specific regulations.
• Rare were the institutions that permitted a choice concerning masks; most schools required their students to wear them regardless of personal convictions. The result? Students who quickly learned that they must cover their faces to participate in society, and some who came to believe that they would seriously harm themselves or their classmates if they took them off.

Uncertainty

• "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”
• In addition to the low-level anxiety and fear that masks induce in everyone, we are uncertain why those around us are wearing masks. Is it simply because they are told to do so? Is it out of deference to others? Or because they genuinely desire to wear them?

Gradually, Then Suddenly

• The illusion that we have plenty of time to escape is arguably the most important.
• How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men?
• One must foresee the end in order to resist or even see the beginnings of the changes that are coming, but how can ordinary men do this?

The Power of Non-Violent Resistance

• We underestimate how much power people have when they choose to resist.
• Many employees refused to comply with vaccine mandates, and many employers relented (or at least granted broad exemptions).
• Strong and united opposition resulted in reversals of government covid policies.

The Cost of Dissent

• In Hitler's Germany, to stray from the acceptable concerns, to deviate from the accepted narrative, was to put oneself at risk - and so it is today. Dissent is dangerous, not because one is factually incorrect in his assessments, but because his assessments challenge accepted dogmas.

The Cost of Compliance

• Mayer's friends were in constant danger of losing their jobs and their freedoms-and possibly their lives.
• If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked-if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33
• But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next."
• And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. You are compromised beyond repair.""What then? You must then shoot yourself. Or 'adjust' your principles. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame."

The Choice Before Us

• Because of the risks to their lives and their families, many Germans refused to speak openly about what was happening, even when they knew.
• Many Uyghurs who have been released from "re-education facilities" in Xinjiang, China, have spoken up, and many others have not.
• Do I speak up, knowing that voicing dissent could upend my daughters' lives and render them virtually fatherless, or do I choose to remain silent, with the protests of my heart suppressed until they shrivel to nothing?

What Will We Choose?

• When Mayer wrote his book, Americans had not yet confronted the choices his friends had to make. But for the past two years, we have been staring these choices in the face.
• We must decide today to draw a line that must not be crossed. We must fight to end not only the current mask and vaccine mandates but we must not relent until the possibility of such mandates is viewed not only as politically untenable but morally and ethically indefensible. 

https://brownstone.org/articles/they-thought-they-were-free/