Sunday, August 10, 2025

Is it possible to de-Nazi-fy Gaza?

Nazi Germany worshipped the tribe and state, with Hitler as its prophet. The Japanese worshipped the tribe and the Emperor. Outsiders weren't entirely human.

The way the Nazis treated the Russians seems calculated to make any kind of compromise or forgiveness impossible; likewise the way the Japanese treated prisoners and most everybody else. Oct 7 seems intended the same way, to announce to the world (possibly especially Iran?) that there would never be any reconciliation.

After the war we and the Soviets both tried to de-Nazi-fy Germany. The Soviets were somewhat better at it, but in both cases we ran into a problem. Who is a devout Nazi? On one scale (are they willing to throw stones at Jews?), lots and lots—perhaps a majority of the population. They were raised to it, after all. Were they Party members? Since you pretty much had to be for lots of jobs, that also is quite a fraction. Do you want to dispose of all of them? "Stare into the abyss"--you start to sound like a Nazi too.

Instead, if you had control of the ground and the schools, and control of the religion that inspired them, you could simply make examples of the leaders, put temporary restrictions on the "Inner Party" members, and rely on control of education and the media to grow a new generation without the Nazi religion.

We weren't thorough in Germany, and even less so in Japan. But so long as the direction changed, and the worship of the state either went away or trended benign, we decided that was good enough, under the circumstances. Stalin and Mao were almost as vile, and as dangerous, as Hitler and Hirohito. And since the Nazi Werwolf project was never widely implemented (and I don't recall hearing of anything significant during the occupation of Japan), we could focus on trying to make the institutional changes we wanted.

After all, the German tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hitler was dead, and the Japanese tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hirohito told them to cooperate with the Americans. The locus of their religions was within the occupied states. There were no outside powers that still supported the Axis states.

Gaza differs. They do have something like Werwolf going, the ground is not occupied, the schools are not controlled, and the locus of the Hamas brand of the religion lies elsewhere. And Hamas has plenty of support around the world.

The cost of occupying the ground will be high, and it won't be over quickly. Control of the media is probably nearly impossible, and I suspect that controlling the schools will be undermined in every direction. And as for the religion—Islam doesn't have to be Jew-hating, but it frequently is, especially if the Jews are "uppity."

De-Nazi-fication of Gaza may not be possible at a price Israel is willing to pay.

3 comments:

  1. Were the Soviets better at it? AfD, usually said to be the closest parallel to the Nazi party in Germany today, is visibly stronger in the former Soviet areas.

    https://news.sky.com/story/why-was-the-afd-so-successful-in-east-germany-13316403

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  2. As far as keeping Nazi's out of later government, that's what I read; though I've no primary sources. The AfD is pretty new, and I know they get called Nazi-like but I'm not sure how accurate that label is.

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  3. I think the framing of the question obscures things by conflating three situations that were not similar in the way you've described them.

    The Nazis were not inspired by a religion, nor did they constitute a religion, nor was Hitler seen as a demigod. Both the Japanese of the 1930s and '40s and Hamas had / have genuine religious reasons for their actions, but very different ones. The Japanese emperor actually was very literally seen as a demigod, while there is no equivalent demigod in the case of Hamas and the Gazans. These are three different problems that require three different solutions.

    I also doubt Hirohito bore much responsibility for the Pacific War. There are Marxist historians who desperately want him to be seen as responsible because they want to discredit the institution and get rid of any official recognition of the imperial family, but they ignore a lot to get there.

    Also, although it is a petty detail, I can't imagine how Stalin and Mao were any less evil than Hitler.

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