Eugenics wasn’t considered crazy during its first wave of popularity.
And given that it was associated with the single biggest evil that modern society acknowledges—indeed, the only thing you can straight-facedly call “evil” without seeming really old-fashioned and unsophisticated, wouldn’t it make sense that modern culture, having extirpated the offending government root and branch, would then proceed to salt the surrounding memetic ground within a 200 mile radius?
Heck, we now even have “creepy” associations with large well-coordinated military style ceremonies, something that every other country in the world did at the time.
And given that it was associated with the single biggest evil that modern society acknowledges—indeed, the only thing you can straight-facedly call “evil” without seeming really old-fashioned and unsophisticated, wouldn’t it make sense that modern culture, having extirpated the offending government root and branch, would then proceed to salt the surrounding memetic ground within a 200 mile radius?
Basically anti-Nazism as a religion with some weird deontology attached. So like I may not believe in God but my moral tastes seem to match Christian tastes suspiciously often due to cultural baggage, I may think eugenics is ok in theory but actual applications hit my inherited anti-Nazi tastes.
Lack of knowledge among the opinion makers of today vs. not a central theme of Nazi thought
Hard to tell which is more important to explaining your observation—I lean towards the latter, but couldn’t explain why in any formal way. Vegetarianism seems to have performed a similar memetic escape.
Well, vegetarianism was a ‘quirk’ (I’d like a synonym without negative connotations but I can’t think of one right now) of Hitler himself which AFAIK he didn’t try to enforce on anyone else, so I don’t think it counts.
Eugenics wasn’t considered crazy during its first wave of popularity.
And given that it was associated with the single biggest evil that modern society acknowledges—indeed, the only thing you can straight-facedly call “evil” without seeming really old-fashioned and unsophisticated, wouldn’t it make sense that modern culture, having extirpated the offending government root and branch, would then proceed to salt the surrounding memetic ground within a 200 mile radius?
Heck, we now even have “creepy” associations with large well-coordinated military style ceremonies, something that every other country in the world did at the time.
Basically anti-Nazism as a religion with some weird deontology attached. So like I may not believe in God but my moral tastes seem to match Christian tastes suspiciously often due to cultural baggage, I may think eugenics is ok in theory but actual applications hit my inherited anti-Nazi tastes.
For some reason that didn’t touch smoking bans.
Lack of knowledge among the opinion makers of today vs. not a central theme of Nazi thought
Hard to tell which is more important to explaining your observation—I lean towards the latter, but couldn’t explain why in any formal way. Vegetarianism seems to have performed a similar memetic escape.
Well, vegetarianism was a ‘quirk’ (I’d like a synonym without negative connotations but I can’t think of one right now) of Hitler himself which AFAIK he didn’t try to enforce on anyone else, so I don’t think it counts.
Idiosyncrasy? Affectation? Notion?