Revision Postscripts: Malignant Normality

It shouldn’t have taken the Holocaust...

The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting.

Back before Twitter deteriorated into the cesspool of Musk ownership, a user named William K. Wolfrum (who I assume is not otherwise famous) posted the above gem —- one that I unfortunately find more ominously prescient every day.

One can imagine how often concerned Germans of the early 1930s were scoffed at or scolded for what, in fact, were quite reasonable reactions to the vitriolic rhetoric and policy proposals coming from their country’s festering Right.

And to be sure, historians have documented the cavalier attitude flowing from much of the American press —- even after Hitler had actually come to power and the regime was making it pretty clear where their systemic politics of intolerance and hate were heading.

Thus, the point of this: In the 2nd Edition of Truth and Power, I made a point of including expanded discussions of the existential dangers of modern authoritarianism, and how easily it can creep into the mainstream.

In a new “Tipping Points” section, I point to a seminal psychological study of how dismissive attitudes —- ranging from ho-hum to abject denial —- can lead to accepting, or even participating in monstrous behaviors.

Coined by Robert Lifton, the term “malignant normality” came from analyzing how non-Nazi Germans —- even medical professionals who had sworn an oath to do no harm —- ignores or sometimes willingly participated in the horrors of the Holocaust. As summed up in the 2nd Edition:

In other words, normal people can do utterly horrific things under the permission and expectations parameters of a toxic political environment.

Here’s the thing: The acceptance of things like genocide doesn’t just happen —- it is the ultimate fallout of the toxic environment that spawned it. And for democracies to survive, that spawn must be nipped in the bud with constant vigilance long before it comes to the worst-case scenarios.

History should show us that there are no —- read: zero —- redeeming qualities of fascism, and all the shameless Tucker Carlsons in the world cannot whitewash that basic truth. It is, in and of itself, the ultimate illiberal quashing of what our Founders quite correctly held to be inalienable human freedoms.

Nonetheless, when a faction of an American political party and its titular leader exhibit the pathologies, and a troubling portion of our media admires or excuses its contemporary practitioners abroad, that is the toxic ooze that enables the devil’s spawn to emerge.

In other words, as I find myself having to say out loud in a troubling number of conversations these days…

…it shouldn’t have taken the Holocaust to mainstream the evils of fascism.