Forgiving the Nazis:
Das leben ist kein Ponyhof
(Life is not a pony farm)
Joe Moncarz June 2022
The use of the term “Nazi” to insult someone is so common, that it got me thinking. Why “Nazi”? Can't you just call the person a “Heisseluftgeblӓse”? What is this fascination with Nazis all about? Were they the most evil things to ever walk the Earth? Or are we just jealous that the German language sounds so ridiculously funny and has words like “schnickschnack” and “quietscheentchen” and “backpfeifengesicht”?* Or is there something deeper – and more uncomfortable – lurking behind our constant use of the term “Nazi”? And then, taking it even further, could we forgive the Nazis?
First of all, the Nazis were not an aberration. It's not like we were all getting along splendidly and then suddenly the Big, Bad Nazi Bullies appeared to ruin our fun. Their behavior was typical of colonial empires and all civilizations. The British killed millions wherever they went. The Belgians did it in the Congo. The Europeans/Americans did it to the New World indigenous people. Colombus and the “conquistadors” were absolutely brutal, vicious, and diabolical. (Churchill 2001; Dunbar-Ortiz 2015; Forbes 2008) Heck, even the bad guys in “Star Wars” blew up entire planets like Alderaan, Dantooine, Ithor and several other ridiculously-named planets. Entire planets – just for our entertainment! So we have to stop using “Nazi” as a term meaning “aberrant genocidal psychopath”. The fact is, killing millions of people was not an invention of the Nazis. In fact, the unending desire to kill and kill and kill is as old as civilization. It defines civilization. (Zerzan 1999, 2005, 2018)
Now, before the Anti-Defamation League and a horde of other Zionist and “Holocaust Industry” organizations launch into an uproar and attempt to discredit me and have me disbarred (although I'm not a lawyer) and excommunicated (although I'm not Christian) and debarked (although I'm not a tree, nor a dog), let me just say that this is in no way an attempt to minimize the horrific actions of the Nazis. (Finklestein 2015) Rather, what I'm saying is that if we keep pretending that the Nazis were aberrations, then we'll remain ignorant to the unending horrific behaviors undertaken each and every day in the name of civilization. Furthermore, the same cultural and societal factors which led to the rise of the Nazi Party, as well as the factors which led to millions of ordinary German citizens (and British, French, Ukrainian, American, etc.) to become complicit in genocide, still exist in the world, and are global. And if we're ignorant, how can we do anything to stop it? How would we be able to take action to make the world a better place?
To begin, let's establish that the Nazis were not an aberration. An entire encyclopedic set of books can be filled lists of how brutal and genocidal civilizations have been during the last six thousand years. Whether in ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus River, the Chinese, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greek, the Egyptians – pick the civilization of your choice – their primary activities were killing and enslaving. Why? Because the whole point of a civilization is to the enrich the wealth and power of the elite. To make the rich richer. It's the same old story! The reason they're always obsessed with pyramids is because civilization is based on the pyramid structure – the elite at the top, with everyone else below them, subservient, inferior, insignificant, expendable, slaving away for them. Civilizations are also pyramid schemes. Just like a pyramid scheme, civilizations require endless expansion in the form of acquiring new slaves, a growing population, gobbling up resources (deforestation and mining), while all the wealth is funneled up to the top, to that handful of psychopathic ultra-rich clowns (like the Egyptian Pharaohs, who for some reason, now have countless museums dedicated to them and are celebrated by millions of tourists, despite the fact that they were fundamentally psychopathic mass-murderers.) And just like all pyramid schemes, civilizations expand until a certain point, and then they collapse.
People use the term “Nazi” as the ultimate insult, yet the Europeans/Americans killed 130 million Indigenous people in the New World – in only the first two hundred years (and most of the rest in the following centuries). The Belgians killed ten million Africans in the Congo. In fact, the European slave trade killed up to sixty million Africans. The British killed 1.8 billion Indians during their colonial free-for all in India. They were just as brutal in South Africa. The British also killed more than one million Irish during the 1845-1849 potato famine, while continuing to force Ireland to export potatoes (yes, there was food). The U.S. obliterated the entire cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 225,000 people. The U.S. and Britain joined together to fire bomb the city of Dresden and kill 250,000 people. The French and U.S. invasions of Vietnam killed up to four million people. The U.S. invasion of the Philippines (1899-1902) resulted in up to one million dead. The U.S. killed one million people in Korea. The U.S.-led 1990 sanctions and 2003 invasion of Iraq killed roughly 2.4 million Iraqis. The economic sanctions killed 500,000 children by 1995 alone. I'll stop here, because this list can go on and on. (I didn't include China or the Soviet Union, since most Europeans/Americans already hate them and like to demonize them, while ignoring their own monstrous past.)
In other words, killing as many people as possible was not just a Nazi thing. In a rational world, the greatest insult would actually be to call someone “American” or “British”. (Actually, in a rational world, “civilized” would be the ultimate insult.)
And what about the fact that each and every government continues to reinforce poverty and inequality? Poverty and inequality condemns billions of people to misery, sickness, and early death. It is mass murder. What are slums but a subtle form of concentration camp? And make no mistake, governments have plenty of money. Just look at how much money they always have to buy or build new weapons, or to launch rockets into space, or for Presidential toe rubs, but never enough for poverty. Generation after generation are condemned to poverty, misery, and the unending struggle just to have a place to live and to get enough food to eat. The rich nations use organizations like the IMF and WTO and various treaties like NAFTA and TPPA to reinforce poverty, to impose austerity (“you're not poor enough”), and to suck the blood out of billions of people. Endless tax breaks for the rich. That's your government that does that, no matter who's in power. Not Hitler. Remember, the whole point of civilization is to funnel all wealth up to the elite. For six thousand years the overwhelming majority of all humans in every civilization have been enslaved, their villages destroyed, forced to give up their traditional lives, and forced to live the miserable existence of civilization, always on the edge of starvation – in order to make the rich richer. Long, long before Hitler.
It's not the Nazis who've killed off ninety-five percent of all wildlife. It's not the Nazis who cut down all the forests, who cut down the Amazon, who cut down the old growth redwood forests, who cut down the taiga, who destroyed all the wetlands. It's not the Nazis who invented factory farms – it was the Americans, cramming every last pig into confined space, then chickens, then cows. The Nazis only learned from the Americans and applied it to people. Now the U.S. alone has more than 250,000 factory farms, jam-packed full of miserable, suffering animals, treated like inferior, unthinking, unfeeling objects, tortured each and every day. Globally, most of the seventy billion animals farmed for food each year live in these animal concentration camps (in the U.S., it's ninety-nine percent of all farmed animals). (Bekoff 2007; Hawthorne 2013; Imhoff 2010; Scully 2003)
It's not the Nazis who created 84,000 synthetic chemicals, most untested, that now saturate every last corner of the planet. It's not the Nazis that have poisoned every last lake, every last stream, every last river, and created immense dead zones in the oceans. It's not the Nazis that filled up the oceans with chemicals, radioactive waste, plastic, and rubbish. It's not the Nazis that detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, underground, and on South Pacific islands. It's not the Nazis that keep talking about Climate Change, promising to reduce emissions, while every year fossil fuel use only increases. It's not the Nazis that are wiping life off the planet.
Our vilification of the Nazis and use of the word “Nazi” as an insult is a reflection of our own denial. We deny that we are, collectively, just as bad (if not worse) as the Nazis. At least the Nazis were somewhat open about their plans. We deny our complicity in the ongoing murder and destruction of the entire planet.
When Professor Ward Churchill wrote in 2003 that the Americans killed in the 9/11 attacks were not so innocent, that they were like “little Eichmanns”, he was correct. We all are. (Churchill 2003; see also Zerzan 1995)
This understanding is essential in giving us the proper context and perspective – and humility - to now ask whether a person can forgive the Nazis.
And just how innocent were the British, Americans, and other European nations? The British and Americans appeased Hitler, essentially giving him the green light. President Roosevelt was antisemitic and racist, and consistently refused to criticize Hitler or the Nazi Party, all through the 1930s. American and European leaders had no interest in responding to Hitler's stated “Jewish problem”. Should we be surprised? The U.S. had always been – and still is – a deeply racist country, and Americans were deeply prejudiced against Jews. Signs that read, “No Blacks, No Jews” were common across the U.S. In 1939, the U.S. refused to allow the St. Louis, a boat full of 930 Jewish refugees, to enter the country, instead sending them back to Europe and to their deaths. The U.S. refused to increase quotas to allow more Jewish refugees to enter. (Feingold 1970; Medoff 2019; Morse 1968) The Allies knew early in the war of the Nazi's desire to wipe out European Jewry and their use of concentration camps to commit genocide – as early as 1941. It was no mystery. In early 1942 Hitler declared at a public rally in Berlin that “the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.” (Hitler 1942) The Allies knew, and never once bombed the train tracks or even the camps. In fact, in 1944 U.S. warplanes flew directly over Auschwitz and did nothing. (Wyman 1984) The “neutral” Swiss enabled Hitler through their banks. (Bower 1998; Vincent 1997) American corporations continued to do business with the Nazis, including IBM, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Standard Oil. (Black 2012, 2017; Pauwels 2017; Sutton 2010) Zionist leaders, eager to take over Palestine, saw the advantage in collaborating with the Nazi Party, and in leaving European Jews to be wiped out – knowing that the ensuing global guilt would help them gain support to create what would become the racist, apartheid nation of Israel. (Black 2009; Brenner 2014)
So you see, straight away it is clear that the Holocaust could not happen without American and European support and complicity.
The next part of putting it in proper context is that what made them murderers was not an “evil gene” or simply because they were German (many were not German), but that society, their culture, and the rest of the world all colluded to turn ordinary people into Nazis. There were multiple factors, besides being enabled by Europeans as mentioned above. After Germany's defeat in World War One, the rest of Europe imposed immensely harsh punishments on Germany, including the ridiculous idea that Germany had to accept full blame for the war, and to pay for all damages – a sum they did not finish paying off until 2010. Inflation was so out of control that German citizens carried money in wheelbarrows. Life was extremely difficult in Germany. There alone, the Europeans imposed the ideal conditions for extremism and racism to flourish. That was the perfect way to turn people into violent, raving nut-jobs. Again, European complicity. (Furthermore, the traditional narrative that World War One was caused by Germany should also be thoroughly questioned. (Docherty and MacGregor 2014, 2018)) It is an unpleasant fact that had the European nations not imposed such harsh economic measures on the defeated Germany, there would have been no second World War and no Holocaust.
In tandem with the dreadful economic conditions were equally dreadful child-rearing behaviors which were passed on from earlier generations. Prussia created the first system of compulsory education in the late 1700s in order to break the will of children, and to prepare them for the Prussian military training, which was even more brutal. (Gatto 2000) In 1919, Professor Thomas Alexander wrote that “the whole scheme of Prussian elementary education is shaped with the express purpose of making ninety-five out of every hundred citizens subservient to the ruling house and to the state.” (Alexander 1919) That was and always has been the purpose of schools – to create a population that will always claim, “I was just following orders,” as Adolf Eichmann essentially claimed in 1962. (Fraser 2016; Gatto 2002)
As abusive as schooling was, German parenting was even worse. In his 2005 speech, “Childhood Origins of the Holocaust”, Lloyd deMause described the absolutely brutal parenting traditions prevalent in German culture. In short, parents were encouraged to be harsh, cold, violent, and unresponsive to children's needs. Girls were hated, and many were purposely killed by their parents at birth. Breastfeeding was extremely rare and discouraged, leading to very high mortality rates. Men routinely beat their wives, and everyone drank a lot of alcohol – even while pregnant. There was widespread resentment and hatred towards babies, and parents were told to ignore their cries. They were disgusted by babies, and would often have them killed if they did not toilet train fast enough. And finally, parents routinely beat their children to impose obedience. Hatred of children was deeply, deeply cultural. (deMause 2005)
So what else would you expect from children raised without love and without any of their emotional needs being met?
Generation after generation of German society were not loved as children. They had no assurance, no support, no sense of acceptance, of belonging, or of safety. They were bullied and beaten by teachers. They were beaten and neglected at home. They grew up with stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Then those abused children grew up and became the adult segment of German society. And they continued to treat their kids the same way.
When we consider the terrible parenting, the miserable childhoods, and the devastating effects of war and the economic conditions, we should not be too surprised with the extremism which resulted.
I feel sorry for them. I was lucky enough to have a happy childhood. So I pity them for having lived their one precious life in such a way and having experienced such terrible childhoods, and then spending the rest of their lives acting out their inner pain – an inner pain which went unrecognized – and no matter what they did, no matter how much harm they caused to others, that inner pain remained, and could only get worse. One writer, in describing the futile efforts of narcissists, put it this way:
Because they don't realize that their ancient narcissistic injuries can never be healed through the objects of this world, there's a tremendous futility in their seeking. And because to deny their vulnerability they defensively objectify everything—themselves included— their lives may teem with gratifications that provide only solace for their heart's actual desire. Given their detached, cynical approach to life, their gravest doubts about their lovability are unresolvable. And their prodigious compensatory efforts remain forever off target. (Seltzer 2011)
This isn't to excuse the Nazis. It is to humanize them. They were not monsters. It is to understand that any one of us, raised in similar conditions, would very likely become a Nazi also. (Snyder 2015) This is the essence of ecological thinking, commonly referred to as systems thinking. It means considering the interplay between all the possible aspects, factors, and interactions, in relation to certain outcomes. It entails a holistic look at the complex relationships that exist all around us. It means that you can only understand the part by looking at the whole. It is the only way to gain clarity.
Again, this isn't to minimize what the Nazis did. And certainly, at the time, the proper response was to fight back against the Nazis, and to do whatever it took to stop them, including killing them. That's self-defense. Empathy and understanding does not override the imperative for self-defense. When we are under attack, self-defense always comes first. Heck, if I'm being mauled by a panda, I'll still fight back, even if I have to kill the panda, no matter how damn cute it is.
And again, given how much suffering continues to exist all around us, and how the Earth and all its creatures continue to be poisoned, tortured, and killed, can we really say that we are any better than the Nazis? Have schools and our modern society merely turned us into “nicer” Nazis? Just take a close look at the current state of the world.
Humans are not rational and we have much less free will than we think. To a large degree, we are what our cultures and our parents make us. That's what ecological thinking teaches us. That's what the famous African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” is all about. If we want peace, then we need to have cultures which promote peace, and we need parents who unconditionally love their children, and we need social structures which are pro-social, rather than hierarchical, oppressive, and which only exist to serve the needs of the elite. We need to be raised under healthy conditions if we want people to be healthy. But you see, that is just not possible in any civilization. For the two million years before civilizations existed, human cultures reinforced humility, patience, wisdom, and pro-social behaviors. Children spent their childhood years playing and laughing and feeling supported and safe. (Friedman 2010; Gray 2011, 2019; Ingold 1999; Sahlins 2009; Woodburn 1982) What's changed is civilization. Civilization emphasizes superiority, domination, exploitation, extreme individualism, competition, and violence. Civilization prevents healthy childhoods. We need to do something about civilization. Civilization should be as bad a word for us as “Nazi”, because they are essentially synonymous. Da liegt der Hund begraben.
The Nazis did not do anything to me directly (though to my ancestors, yes.) Only their victims can really forgive them. Some, in fact, have. (Borschel-Dan 2016) Just as many victims of the Rwandan genocide have been able to forgive their neighbors, who overnight, became murderers. (Martin and Gourevitch 2019; Tutmann 2018; Wiltenburg 2004) But it's a useful exercise to ask ourselves this because we often equate Nazis with “monsters”. Yet on closer inspection, we see that they were very human.
I'd like to think that I'd have the capacity to forgive them. Of course, I can only speculate. Forgiveness is a true demonstration of empathy and understanding. And it is a sign of self-assuredness. Of inner strength. Of optimism. It's a beautiful thing. For example, the ability of so many Rwandans to forgive their neighbors who killed their friends and family, is truly uplifting. Forgiveness is part of being human. It also contradicts the victim mentality which is so prevalent now - and which the legal profession relies on, reinforces, and perpetuates. (“Did someone call you a 'poop-head'? Your rights have been violated! Call the law firm of Fartnose & Fartface to see how much money you can get!”) The victim mentality prevents us from taking control of our lives, of seeing things in the proper perspective, of focusing on the present, and of being able to live healthy, positive lives. One could also say that the inability to forgive is a reflection of a person's own insecurities, guilt, denial, and lack of empathy.
Forgiveness is not to excuse terrible behavior, nor to forget it, but to release the hatred we have for someone else, and our desires for revenge. Nothing we do, and no amount of revenge, can change the past, but we still can control the present and the future. Revenge always backfires – it costs us our soul. As Confucius taught 2500 years ago, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." If we want to live well, to have healthy relationships, to experience gratitude and joy, then forgiveness is essential. (Dupree 2011; Enright 2001, 2015; Kraybill 2007; Tutu 2015) In fact, forgiveness may be an essential part to getting off our asses and doing what needs to be done to make the world a better place.
When I was young, I had a teacher who had survived the Holocaust. She was always angry, her eyes always intense, and she hated all things German. I also had a relative who had escaped the Nazis and fought in the resistance, hiding in the forests. She was a lovely woman, but she always appeared to me to have deep pain etched into her face. Who knows how I would have responded?
The Holocaust is an extreme example. But everyone experiences being hurt by someone else in various ways during life and has the opportunity to forgive. There are always people who are mean to us at some point, who don't invite us to a party, or who kick our dog. But when someone is mean, it's never about us – it's always a reflection of the mean person, and the pain they carry deep inside. I had a girlfriend and business partner who was extremely abusive and violent towards me. I knew she had a terrible childhood, with abusive parents, and I always remembered that when she was abusive. I didn't take her abuse personally. I saw her abusive behavior as an expression of all her inner pain stemming from her childhood. Of course, I never excused her behavior, and I moved out and broke up with her because of it. I'm not excusing or minimizing her abuse. I'm simply recognizing its origins. And because of that I can forgive her. She had the rotten luck to be born to those parents, in an oppressive society. After all, if I had had the same childhood, who's to say I would not have turned out the same way?
My concern is with changing the world, changing our traditions, our culture, and our way of life, so that we are not raised to be uncaring and violent. That is why we must see civilization for what it is: a psychopath factory. The ultimate misery maker. Civilization is slavery. Civilization means endless violence. (Harris 1991; Jensen 2006; Ponting 2007; Scott 2017) Civilization means miserable childhoods, and miserable childhoods means violence as adults. (deMause 1998) All the self-help books, therapy sessions, New Age crystals, yoga retreats, and shots of wheat grass juice won't make a damn difference if the ultimate cause remains: civilization.
Look, the fact is, by definition we're all victims. We're victims of civilization and all its institutions. We're victims of compulsory education. We're victims of capitalism, of corporations, of institutionalized poverty, inequality and racism. All these ridiculously pathological institutions have shaped us, often in very negative ways. But thinking of ourselves as helpless victims doesn't help. Having a victim mentality does not help. Calling the law firm of Fartnose & Fartface does not help.
It's never too late to fight back! Better to fight to make the world better better, so that societal and cultural conditions do not turn us into little Eichmanns, potential Eichmanns, and Nicer Nazis. By fighting against the ultimate cause – civilization – we will not only make ourselves better, we will make life better for everyone. Does revenge make things better? Does hatred make things better? How can we make things better?
That's what the question of forgiveness is all about.
*Translation of German:
Heisseluftgeblӓse – a hot air blower (an insult)
Schnickschnack – frills; bells and whistles
quietscheentchen – rubber duck
backpfeifengesicht – a face that makes you want to slap it (another good insult)
Da liegt der Hund begraben - “that's where the dog was buried”; i.e., that's the crux of the matter
First of all, the Nazis were not an aberration. It's not like we were all getting along splendidly and then suddenly the Big, Bad Nazi Bullies appeared to ruin our fun. Their behavior was typical of colonial empires and all civilizations. The British killed millions wherever they went. The Belgians did it in the Congo. The Europeans/Americans did it to the New World indigenous people. Colombus and the “conquistadors” were absolutely brutal, vicious, and diabolical. (Churchill 2001; Dunbar-Ortiz 2015; Forbes 2008) Heck, even the bad guys in “Star Wars” blew up entire planets like Alderaan, Dantooine, Ithor and several other ridiculously-named planets. Entire planets – just for our entertainment! So we have to stop using “Nazi” as a term meaning “aberrant genocidal psychopath”. The fact is, killing millions of people was not an invention of the Nazis. In fact, the unending desire to kill and kill and kill is as old as civilization. It defines civilization. (Zerzan 1999, 2005, 2018)
Now, before the Anti-Defamation League and a horde of other Zionist and “Holocaust Industry” organizations launch into an uproar and attempt to discredit me and have me disbarred (although I'm not a lawyer) and excommunicated (although I'm not Christian) and debarked (although I'm not a tree, nor a dog), let me just say that this is in no way an attempt to minimize the horrific actions of the Nazis. (Finklestein 2015) Rather, what I'm saying is that if we keep pretending that the Nazis were aberrations, then we'll remain ignorant to the unending horrific behaviors undertaken each and every day in the name of civilization. Furthermore, the same cultural and societal factors which led to the rise of the Nazi Party, as well as the factors which led to millions of ordinary German citizens (and British, French, Ukrainian, American, etc.) to become complicit in genocide, still exist in the world, and are global. And if we're ignorant, how can we do anything to stop it? How would we be able to take action to make the world a better place?
To begin, let's establish that the Nazis were not an aberration. An entire encyclopedic set of books can be filled lists of how brutal and genocidal civilizations have been during the last six thousand years. Whether in ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus River, the Chinese, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greek, the Egyptians – pick the civilization of your choice – their primary activities were killing and enslaving. Why? Because the whole point of a civilization is to the enrich the wealth and power of the elite. To make the rich richer. It's the same old story! The reason they're always obsessed with pyramids is because civilization is based on the pyramid structure – the elite at the top, with everyone else below them, subservient, inferior, insignificant, expendable, slaving away for them. Civilizations are also pyramid schemes. Just like a pyramid scheme, civilizations require endless expansion in the form of acquiring new slaves, a growing population, gobbling up resources (deforestation and mining), while all the wealth is funneled up to the top, to that handful of psychopathic ultra-rich clowns (like the Egyptian Pharaohs, who for some reason, now have countless museums dedicated to them and are celebrated by millions of tourists, despite the fact that they were fundamentally psychopathic mass-murderers.) And just like all pyramid schemes, civilizations expand until a certain point, and then they collapse.
People use the term “Nazi” as the ultimate insult, yet the Europeans/Americans killed 130 million Indigenous people in the New World – in only the first two hundred years (and most of the rest in the following centuries). The Belgians killed ten million Africans in the Congo. In fact, the European slave trade killed up to sixty million Africans. The British killed 1.8 billion Indians during their colonial free-for all in India. They were just as brutal in South Africa. The British also killed more than one million Irish during the 1845-1849 potato famine, while continuing to force Ireland to export potatoes (yes, there was food). The U.S. obliterated the entire cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 225,000 people. The U.S. and Britain joined together to fire bomb the city of Dresden and kill 250,000 people. The French and U.S. invasions of Vietnam killed up to four million people. The U.S. invasion of the Philippines (1899-1902) resulted in up to one million dead. The U.S. killed one million people in Korea. The U.S.-led 1990 sanctions and 2003 invasion of Iraq killed roughly 2.4 million Iraqis. The economic sanctions killed 500,000 children by 1995 alone. I'll stop here, because this list can go on and on. (I didn't include China or the Soviet Union, since most Europeans/Americans already hate them and like to demonize them, while ignoring their own monstrous past.)
In other words, killing as many people as possible was not just a Nazi thing. In a rational world, the greatest insult would actually be to call someone “American” or “British”. (Actually, in a rational world, “civilized” would be the ultimate insult.)
And what about the fact that each and every government continues to reinforce poverty and inequality? Poverty and inequality condemns billions of people to misery, sickness, and early death. It is mass murder. What are slums but a subtle form of concentration camp? And make no mistake, governments have plenty of money. Just look at how much money they always have to buy or build new weapons, or to launch rockets into space, or for Presidential toe rubs, but never enough for poverty. Generation after generation are condemned to poverty, misery, and the unending struggle just to have a place to live and to get enough food to eat. The rich nations use organizations like the IMF and WTO and various treaties like NAFTA and TPPA to reinforce poverty, to impose austerity (“you're not poor enough”), and to suck the blood out of billions of people. Endless tax breaks for the rich. That's your government that does that, no matter who's in power. Not Hitler. Remember, the whole point of civilization is to funnel all wealth up to the elite. For six thousand years the overwhelming majority of all humans in every civilization have been enslaved, their villages destroyed, forced to give up their traditional lives, and forced to live the miserable existence of civilization, always on the edge of starvation – in order to make the rich richer. Long, long before Hitler.
It's not the Nazis who've killed off ninety-five percent of all wildlife. It's not the Nazis who cut down all the forests, who cut down the Amazon, who cut down the old growth redwood forests, who cut down the taiga, who destroyed all the wetlands. It's not the Nazis who invented factory farms – it was the Americans, cramming every last pig into confined space, then chickens, then cows. The Nazis only learned from the Americans and applied it to people. Now the U.S. alone has more than 250,000 factory farms, jam-packed full of miserable, suffering animals, treated like inferior, unthinking, unfeeling objects, tortured each and every day. Globally, most of the seventy billion animals farmed for food each year live in these animal concentration camps (in the U.S., it's ninety-nine percent of all farmed animals). (Bekoff 2007; Hawthorne 2013; Imhoff 2010; Scully 2003)
It's not the Nazis who created 84,000 synthetic chemicals, most untested, that now saturate every last corner of the planet. It's not the Nazis that have poisoned every last lake, every last stream, every last river, and created immense dead zones in the oceans. It's not the Nazis that filled up the oceans with chemicals, radioactive waste, plastic, and rubbish. It's not the Nazis that detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, underground, and on South Pacific islands. It's not the Nazis that keep talking about Climate Change, promising to reduce emissions, while every year fossil fuel use only increases. It's not the Nazis that are wiping life off the planet.
Our vilification of the Nazis and use of the word “Nazi” as an insult is a reflection of our own denial. We deny that we are, collectively, just as bad (if not worse) as the Nazis. At least the Nazis were somewhat open about their plans. We deny our complicity in the ongoing murder and destruction of the entire planet.
When Professor Ward Churchill wrote in 2003 that the Americans killed in the 9/11 attacks were not so innocent, that they were like “little Eichmanns”, he was correct. We all are. (Churchill 2003; see also Zerzan 1995)
This understanding is essential in giving us the proper context and perspective – and humility - to now ask whether a person can forgive the Nazis.
And just how innocent were the British, Americans, and other European nations? The British and Americans appeased Hitler, essentially giving him the green light. President Roosevelt was antisemitic and racist, and consistently refused to criticize Hitler or the Nazi Party, all through the 1930s. American and European leaders had no interest in responding to Hitler's stated “Jewish problem”. Should we be surprised? The U.S. had always been – and still is – a deeply racist country, and Americans were deeply prejudiced against Jews. Signs that read, “No Blacks, No Jews” were common across the U.S. In 1939, the U.S. refused to allow the St. Louis, a boat full of 930 Jewish refugees, to enter the country, instead sending them back to Europe and to their deaths. The U.S. refused to increase quotas to allow more Jewish refugees to enter. (Feingold 1970; Medoff 2019; Morse 1968) The Allies knew early in the war of the Nazi's desire to wipe out European Jewry and their use of concentration camps to commit genocide – as early as 1941. It was no mystery. In early 1942 Hitler declared at a public rally in Berlin that “the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews.” (Hitler 1942) The Allies knew, and never once bombed the train tracks or even the camps. In fact, in 1944 U.S. warplanes flew directly over Auschwitz and did nothing. (Wyman 1984) The “neutral” Swiss enabled Hitler through their banks. (Bower 1998; Vincent 1997) American corporations continued to do business with the Nazis, including IBM, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Standard Oil. (Black 2012, 2017; Pauwels 2017; Sutton 2010) Zionist leaders, eager to take over Palestine, saw the advantage in collaborating with the Nazi Party, and in leaving European Jews to be wiped out – knowing that the ensuing global guilt would help them gain support to create what would become the racist, apartheid nation of Israel. (Black 2009; Brenner 2014)
So you see, straight away it is clear that the Holocaust could not happen without American and European support and complicity.
The next part of putting it in proper context is that what made them murderers was not an “evil gene” or simply because they were German (many were not German), but that society, their culture, and the rest of the world all colluded to turn ordinary people into Nazis. There were multiple factors, besides being enabled by Europeans as mentioned above. After Germany's defeat in World War One, the rest of Europe imposed immensely harsh punishments on Germany, including the ridiculous idea that Germany had to accept full blame for the war, and to pay for all damages – a sum they did not finish paying off until 2010. Inflation was so out of control that German citizens carried money in wheelbarrows. Life was extremely difficult in Germany. There alone, the Europeans imposed the ideal conditions for extremism and racism to flourish. That was the perfect way to turn people into violent, raving nut-jobs. Again, European complicity. (Furthermore, the traditional narrative that World War One was caused by Germany should also be thoroughly questioned. (Docherty and MacGregor 2014, 2018)) It is an unpleasant fact that had the European nations not imposed such harsh economic measures on the defeated Germany, there would have been no second World War and no Holocaust.
In tandem with the dreadful economic conditions were equally dreadful child-rearing behaviors which were passed on from earlier generations. Prussia created the first system of compulsory education in the late 1700s in order to break the will of children, and to prepare them for the Prussian military training, which was even more brutal. (Gatto 2000) In 1919, Professor Thomas Alexander wrote that “the whole scheme of Prussian elementary education is shaped with the express purpose of making ninety-five out of every hundred citizens subservient to the ruling house and to the state.” (Alexander 1919) That was and always has been the purpose of schools – to create a population that will always claim, “I was just following orders,” as Adolf Eichmann essentially claimed in 1962. (Fraser 2016; Gatto 2002)
As abusive as schooling was, German parenting was even worse. In his 2005 speech, “Childhood Origins of the Holocaust”, Lloyd deMause described the absolutely brutal parenting traditions prevalent in German culture. In short, parents were encouraged to be harsh, cold, violent, and unresponsive to children's needs. Girls were hated, and many were purposely killed by their parents at birth. Breastfeeding was extremely rare and discouraged, leading to very high mortality rates. Men routinely beat their wives, and everyone drank a lot of alcohol – even while pregnant. There was widespread resentment and hatred towards babies, and parents were told to ignore their cries. They were disgusted by babies, and would often have them killed if they did not toilet train fast enough. And finally, parents routinely beat their children to impose obedience. Hatred of children was deeply, deeply cultural. (deMause 2005)
So what else would you expect from children raised without love and without any of their emotional needs being met?
Generation after generation of German society were not loved as children. They had no assurance, no support, no sense of acceptance, of belonging, or of safety. They were bullied and beaten by teachers. They were beaten and neglected at home. They grew up with stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Then those abused children grew up and became the adult segment of German society. And they continued to treat their kids the same way.
When we consider the terrible parenting, the miserable childhoods, and the devastating effects of war and the economic conditions, we should not be too surprised with the extremism which resulted.
I feel sorry for them. I was lucky enough to have a happy childhood. So I pity them for having lived their one precious life in such a way and having experienced such terrible childhoods, and then spending the rest of their lives acting out their inner pain – an inner pain which went unrecognized – and no matter what they did, no matter how much harm they caused to others, that inner pain remained, and could only get worse. One writer, in describing the futile efforts of narcissists, put it this way:
Because they don't realize that their ancient narcissistic injuries can never be healed through the objects of this world, there's a tremendous futility in their seeking. And because to deny their vulnerability they defensively objectify everything—themselves included— their lives may teem with gratifications that provide only solace for their heart's actual desire. Given their detached, cynical approach to life, their gravest doubts about their lovability are unresolvable. And their prodigious compensatory efforts remain forever off target. (Seltzer 2011)
This isn't to excuse the Nazis. It is to humanize them. They were not monsters. It is to understand that any one of us, raised in similar conditions, would very likely become a Nazi also. (Snyder 2015) This is the essence of ecological thinking, commonly referred to as systems thinking. It means considering the interplay between all the possible aspects, factors, and interactions, in relation to certain outcomes. It entails a holistic look at the complex relationships that exist all around us. It means that you can only understand the part by looking at the whole. It is the only way to gain clarity.
Again, this isn't to minimize what the Nazis did. And certainly, at the time, the proper response was to fight back against the Nazis, and to do whatever it took to stop them, including killing them. That's self-defense. Empathy and understanding does not override the imperative for self-defense. When we are under attack, self-defense always comes first. Heck, if I'm being mauled by a panda, I'll still fight back, even if I have to kill the panda, no matter how damn cute it is.
And again, given how much suffering continues to exist all around us, and how the Earth and all its creatures continue to be poisoned, tortured, and killed, can we really say that we are any better than the Nazis? Have schools and our modern society merely turned us into “nicer” Nazis? Just take a close look at the current state of the world.
Humans are not rational and we have much less free will than we think. To a large degree, we are what our cultures and our parents make us. That's what ecological thinking teaches us. That's what the famous African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” is all about. If we want peace, then we need to have cultures which promote peace, and we need parents who unconditionally love their children, and we need social structures which are pro-social, rather than hierarchical, oppressive, and which only exist to serve the needs of the elite. We need to be raised under healthy conditions if we want people to be healthy. But you see, that is just not possible in any civilization. For the two million years before civilizations existed, human cultures reinforced humility, patience, wisdom, and pro-social behaviors. Children spent their childhood years playing and laughing and feeling supported and safe. (Friedman 2010; Gray 2011, 2019; Ingold 1999; Sahlins 2009; Woodburn 1982) What's changed is civilization. Civilization emphasizes superiority, domination, exploitation, extreme individualism, competition, and violence. Civilization prevents healthy childhoods. We need to do something about civilization. Civilization should be as bad a word for us as “Nazi”, because they are essentially synonymous. Da liegt der Hund begraben.
The Nazis did not do anything to me directly (though to my ancestors, yes.) Only their victims can really forgive them. Some, in fact, have. (Borschel-Dan 2016) Just as many victims of the Rwandan genocide have been able to forgive their neighbors, who overnight, became murderers. (Martin and Gourevitch 2019; Tutmann 2018; Wiltenburg 2004) But it's a useful exercise to ask ourselves this because we often equate Nazis with “monsters”. Yet on closer inspection, we see that they were very human.
I'd like to think that I'd have the capacity to forgive them. Of course, I can only speculate. Forgiveness is a true demonstration of empathy and understanding. And it is a sign of self-assuredness. Of inner strength. Of optimism. It's a beautiful thing. For example, the ability of so many Rwandans to forgive their neighbors who killed their friends and family, is truly uplifting. Forgiveness is part of being human. It also contradicts the victim mentality which is so prevalent now - and which the legal profession relies on, reinforces, and perpetuates. (“Did someone call you a 'poop-head'? Your rights have been violated! Call the law firm of Fartnose & Fartface to see how much money you can get!”) The victim mentality prevents us from taking control of our lives, of seeing things in the proper perspective, of focusing on the present, and of being able to live healthy, positive lives. One could also say that the inability to forgive is a reflection of a person's own insecurities, guilt, denial, and lack of empathy.
Forgiveness is not to excuse terrible behavior, nor to forget it, but to release the hatred we have for someone else, and our desires for revenge. Nothing we do, and no amount of revenge, can change the past, but we still can control the present and the future. Revenge always backfires – it costs us our soul. As Confucius taught 2500 years ago, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." If we want to live well, to have healthy relationships, to experience gratitude and joy, then forgiveness is essential. (Dupree 2011; Enright 2001, 2015; Kraybill 2007; Tutu 2015) In fact, forgiveness may be an essential part to getting off our asses and doing what needs to be done to make the world a better place.
When I was young, I had a teacher who had survived the Holocaust. She was always angry, her eyes always intense, and she hated all things German. I also had a relative who had escaped the Nazis and fought in the resistance, hiding in the forests. She was a lovely woman, but she always appeared to me to have deep pain etched into her face. Who knows how I would have responded?
The Holocaust is an extreme example. But everyone experiences being hurt by someone else in various ways during life and has the opportunity to forgive. There are always people who are mean to us at some point, who don't invite us to a party, or who kick our dog. But when someone is mean, it's never about us – it's always a reflection of the mean person, and the pain they carry deep inside. I had a girlfriend and business partner who was extremely abusive and violent towards me. I knew she had a terrible childhood, with abusive parents, and I always remembered that when she was abusive. I didn't take her abuse personally. I saw her abusive behavior as an expression of all her inner pain stemming from her childhood. Of course, I never excused her behavior, and I moved out and broke up with her because of it. I'm not excusing or minimizing her abuse. I'm simply recognizing its origins. And because of that I can forgive her. She had the rotten luck to be born to those parents, in an oppressive society. After all, if I had had the same childhood, who's to say I would not have turned out the same way?
My concern is with changing the world, changing our traditions, our culture, and our way of life, so that we are not raised to be uncaring and violent. That is why we must see civilization for what it is: a psychopath factory. The ultimate misery maker. Civilization is slavery. Civilization means endless violence. (Harris 1991; Jensen 2006; Ponting 2007; Scott 2017) Civilization means miserable childhoods, and miserable childhoods means violence as adults. (deMause 1998) All the self-help books, therapy sessions, New Age crystals, yoga retreats, and shots of wheat grass juice won't make a damn difference if the ultimate cause remains: civilization.
Look, the fact is, by definition we're all victims. We're victims of civilization and all its institutions. We're victims of compulsory education. We're victims of capitalism, of corporations, of institutionalized poverty, inequality and racism. All these ridiculously pathological institutions have shaped us, often in very negative ways. But thinking of ourselves as helpless victims doesn't help. Having a victim mentality does not help. Calling the law firm of Fartnose & Fartface does not help.
It's never too late to fight back! Better to fight to make the world better better, so that societal and cultural conditions do not turn us into little Eichmanns, potential Eichmanns, and Nicer Nazis. By fighting against the ultimate cause – civilization – we will not only make ourselves better, we will make life better for everyone. Does revenge make things better? Does hatred make things better? How can we make things better?
That's what the question of forgiveness is all about.
*Translation of German:
Heisseluftgeblӓse – a hot air blower (an insult)
Schnickschnack – frills; bells and whistles
quietscheentchen – rubber duck
backpfeifengesicht – a face that makes you want to slap it (another good insult)
Da liegt der Hund begraben - “that's where the dog was buried”; i.e., that's the crux of the matter
References and Further Reading
Alexander, Thomas. (1919). The Prussian Elementary Schools. The Macmillan Company. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=knHYWhLlouQC&printsec=titlepage#v=onepage&q&f=false
Bekoff, Mark. (2007). Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect. Shambhala.
Benjamin, Medea, and Davies, Nicolas. (March 15, 2018). “The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the US Invasion.” Common Dreams. Retrieved from https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/15/iraq-death-toll-15-years-after-us-invasion
Black, Edwin. (2012). IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. Dialog Press.
Black, Edwin. (2017). Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust. Dialog Press.
Black, Edwin. (2009). The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Dialog Press.
Borschel-Dan, Amanda. (December 8, 2016). “Holocaust survivor preaches forgiveness of Nazis as ‘ultimate revenge’.” Times of Israel. Retrieved from https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-survivor-preaches-forgiveness-of-nazis-as-ultimate-revenge/
Bower, Tom. (1998). Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust Survivors. Harper Perennial.
Brenner, Lenni. (2014). Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. On Our Own Authority! Publishing.
Browning, Christopher. (2017). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Harper Perennial.
Churchill, Ward. (2001). A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present. City Lights Publishers.
Churchill, Ward. (2003). On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U. S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. AK Press.
Crossette, Barbara. (December 1, 1995). “Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html
deMause, Lloyd. (September 28, 2005). “The Childhood Origins of the Holocaust.” Psychohistory. Retrieved from https://psychohistory.com/articles/the-childhood-origins-of-the-holocaust/
deMause, Lloyd. (1998). “The History of Child Abuse.” Psychohistory. Retrieved from https://psychohistory.com/articles/the-history-of-child-abuse/
Docherty, Jim and MacGregor, Gerry. (2014). Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. Mainstream Publishing.
Docherty, Jim and MacGregor, Gerry. (2018). Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years. Trine Day.
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. (2015). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Beacon Press.
Dupree, Ulrich. (2011). Ho'oponopono: The Hawaiian Forgiveness Ritual as the Key to Your Life's Fulfillment. Earthdancer Books.
Enright, Robert. (2015). 8 Keys to Forgiveness. W. W. Norton & Company.
Enright, Robert. (2001). Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. APA LifeTools.
Feingold, Henry. (1970). The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945. Rutgers University Press.
Finkelstein, Norman. (2015). The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso.
Forbes, Jack D. (2008). Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism. Seven Stories Press.
Fraser, Giles. (2016). “Why Adolf Eichmann’s final message remains so profoundly unsettling.” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil
Friedman, Danielle. (2010 Oct 10). “Hunter-Gatherer Parents: Better Than Today's Moms and Dads?” The Daily Beast. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/hunter-gatherer-parents-better-than-todays-moms-and-dads
Gatto, John. (2002). Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers.
Gatto, John. (2000). The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling. Odysseus Group.
Gedgaudas, Nora. (2018). “Primal Restoration: A Discussion on Health and Civilization”. Interview by Kevin Tucker. Black and Green Review, No. 5. Black and Green Press. pp. 155-175
Gray, Peter. (2011). “The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents .” American Journal of Play, volume 3, number 4. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/1195/ajp-decline-play-published.pdf
Gray, Peter. (August 31, 2019). “The Play Theory of Hunter-Gatherer Egalitarianism.” Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201908/the-play-theory-hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism
Harris, Marvin. (1991). Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures. Vintage.
Hawthorne, Mark. (2013). Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering. Changemakers Books.
Hitler, Adolf. (1942). “Adolf Hitler's Speech at the Berlin Sportpalast.” Retrieved fromhttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_Speech_at_the_Berlin_Sportpalast_(30_January_1942 )
Imhoff, Daniel. (2010). The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Watershed Media.
Ingold, Tim. (1999). “On the Social Relations of the Hunter-Gatherer Band”. In R. B. Lee & R. H. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers, pp. 399-410. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://ia800303.us.archive.org/6/items/OnTheSocialRelationsOfTheHunter-gathererBand/TimIngold-OnTheSocialRelationsOfTheHunter-gathererBand.pdf
Jarral, Farrah. (June 20 2022). “The big idea: are we responsible for the things we do wrong?” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/20/the-big-idea-are-we-responsible-for-the-things-we-do-wrong
Jensen, Derrick. (2006). Endgame, Volume One: The Problem of Civilization. Seven Stories Press.
Kenney, Caitlin. (September 14, 2011). “The Economic Catastrophe That Germany Can't Forget.” NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/09/14/140419140/the-economic-catastrophe-that-germany-cant-forget
Kratzer, Anne. (January 4, 2019). “Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today.” Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/harsh-nazi-parenting-guidelines-may-still-affect-german-children-of-today1/
Kraybill, Donald, Nolt, Steven, and Weaver-Zercher, David. (2007). Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy. Jossey-Bass.
Martin, Rachel, and Gourevich, Philip. (April 9, 2019). “After The Genocide, Author Witnessed How Rwandans Defined Forgiveness.” NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/711314421/after-the-genocide-author-witnessed-how-rwandans-defined-forgiveness
Medoff, Rafael. (2019). The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust. Jewish Publication Society.
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Alexander, Thomas. (1919). The Prussian Elementary Schools. The Macmillan Company. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=knHYWhLlouQC&printsec=titlepage#v=onepage&q&f=false
Bekoff, Mark. (2007). Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect. Shambhala.
Benjamin, Medea, and Davies, Nicolas. (March 15, 2018). “The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the US Invasion.” Common Dreams. Retrieved from https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/15/iraq-death-toll-15-years-after-us-invasion
Black, Edwin. (2012). IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. Dialog Press.
Black, Edwin. (2017). Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust. Dialog Press.
Black, Edwin. (2009). The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Dialog Press.
Borschel-Dan, Amanda. (December 8, 2016). “Holocaust survivor preaches forgiveness of Nazis as ‘ultimate revenge’.” Times of Israel. Retrieved from https://www.timesofisrael.com/holocaust-survivor-preaches-forgiveness-of-nazis-as-ultimate-revenge/
Bower, Tom. (1998). Nazi Gold: The Full Story of the Fifty-Year Swiss-Nazi Conspiracy to Steal Billions from Europe's Jews and Holocaust Survivors. Harper Perennial.
Brenner, Lenni. (2014). Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. On Our Own Authority! Publishing.
Browning, Christopher. (2017). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Harper Perennial.
Churchill, Ward. (2001). A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present. City Lights Publishers.
Churchill, Ward. (2003). On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U. S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. AK Press.
Crossette, Barbara. (December 1, 1995). “Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html
deMause, Lloyd. (September 28, 2005). “The Childhood Origins of the Holocaust.” Psychohistory. Retrieved from https://psychohistory.com/articles/the-childhood-origins-of-the-holocaust/
deMause, Lloyd. (1998). “The History of Child Abuse.” Psychohistory. Retrieved from https://psychohistory.com/articles/the-history-of-child-abuse/
Docherty, Jim and MacGregor, Gerry. (2014). Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. Mainstream Publishing.
Docherty, Jim and MacGregor, Gerry. (2018). Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years. Trine Day.
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. (2015). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Beacon Press.
Dupree, Ulrich. (2011). Ho'oponopono: The Hawaiian Forgiveness Ritual as the Key to Your Life's Fulfillment. Earthdancer Books.
Enright, Robert. (2015). 8 Keys to Forgiveness. W. W. Norton & Company.
Enright, Robert. (2001). Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. APA LifeTools.
Feingold, Henry. (1970). The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945. Rutgers University Press.
Finkelstein, Norman. (2015). The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Verso.
Forbes, Jack D. (2008). Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism. Seven Stories Press.
Fraser, Giles. (2016). “Why Adolf Eichmann’s final message remains so profoundly unsettling.” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil
Friedman, Danielle. (2010 Oct 10). “Hunter-Gatherer Parents: Better Than Today's Moms and Dads?” The Daily Beast. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/hunter-gatherer-parents-better-than-todays-moms-and-dads
Gatto, John. (2002). Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers.
Gatto, John. (2000). The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling. Odysseus Group.
Gedgaudas, Nora. (2018). “Primal Restoration: A Discussion on Health and Civilization”. Interview by Kevin Tucker. Black and Green Review, No. 5. Black and Green Press. pp. 155-175
Gray, Peter. (2011). “The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents .” American Journal of Play, volume 3, number 4. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/1195/ajp-decline-play-published.pdf
Gray, Peter. (August 31, 2019). “The Play Theory of Hunter-Gatherer Egalitarianism.” Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201908/the-play-theory-hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism
Harris, Marvin. (1991). Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures. Vintage.
Hawthorne, Mark. (2013). Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering. Changemakers Books.
Hitler, Adolf. (1942). “Adolf Hitler's Speech at the Berlin Sportpalast.” Retrieved from
Imhoff, Daniel. (2010). The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Watershed Media.
Ingold, Tim. (1999). “On the Social Relations of the Hunter-Gatherer Band”. In R. B. Lee & R. H. Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers, pp. 399-410. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://ia800303.us.archive.org/6/items/OnTheSocialRelationsOfTheHunter-gathererBand/TimIngold-OnTheSocialRelationsOfTheHunter-gathererBand.pdf
Jarral, Farrah. (June 20 2022). “The big idea: are we responsible for the things we do wrong?” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/20/the-big-idea-are-we-responsible-for-the-things-we-do-wrong
Jensen, Derrick. (2006). Endgame, Volume One: The Problem of Civilization. Seven Stories Press.
Kenney, Caitlin. (September 14, 2011). “The Economic Catastrophe That Germany Can't Forget.” NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/09/14/140419140/the-economic-catastrophe-that-germany-cant-forget
Kratzer, Anne. (January 4, 2019). “Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today.” Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/harsh-nazi-parenting-guidelines-may-still-affect-german-children-of-today1/
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