Oh I know as a young person I had "issues" with many products. I mainly learned through gross humor, "brought to you by xxxx, those that provided the gas for the holocaust" . Whether true or not, the stories surely helped me realize the large span of evil in the world and the hatred of people by some people. I also learned that millions of NON Jewish people were also murdered, many being Christians (Ministers, Catholics included) who sought to protect the Jewish people. And yes, many were disabled, mentally ill, and homosexual.
One of the key elements that allowed this to occur is the art of propaganda. It was later revealed that the Nazi's learned how to slant the message, winning over people to their cause, by having learned from the Woodrow Wilson politics. We currently have such an administration that has touted Wilson and FDR both, and are lock step in their efforts to control the people.
We can discuss this forever, but until we break out of our laziness and DO SOMETHING it will happen again. Finding out what and how we can prevent such atrocities again would be a good will effort, imo. But we can each be sure that we don't follow without understanding. We need to know what our government officials are doing - or not doing (such as condemning or passing bills they haven't even bothered to READ!
Sorry, I think that is just unbelieveable, and yet, what can we do about it?)
Keep the discussion going, keep talking, don't let evil actions win.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
While the term "
Holocaust victims" generally refers to Jews, the
German Nazis also persecuted and often killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior (
Untermenschen). In addition to Jews, the targeted groups included
Poles (of whom 2 million gentile Poles were killed) and some other
Slavic peoples,
Soviets (particularly
prisoners of war),
Romanies (also known as Gypsies), some
Africans,
Asians and others who did not belong to the "
Aryan race", the
mentally ill, physically
disabled and the
mentally retarded,
homosexuals and
transsexual people, and political opponents and religious
dissidents such as
communists,
trade unionists, and
Jehovah's Witnesses.
[1][2] Taking into account all of the victims of Nazi persecution, the Nazis systematically killed an estimated 6 million Jews and were responsible for an estimated 11 million additional deaths during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a death toll of 17 million people killed.
[3]
From
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/ga120.html (this site has good information on this subject, pertinent to today)
Goebbels, the mastermind of the Nazi propaganda machine was said to have read the publications of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis and carefully studied the techniques used by Madison Avenue.
Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, took the techniques he learned in the CPI directly to Madison Avenue and became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic government. 'It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind,' wrote Bernays in his 1928 bombshell Propaganda.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, founded in 1937 to educate the public about the nature of propaganda, identified "seven basic propaganda devices: Name-Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon." (8)
Sounds a lot like bullying to me. 