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Top-level
 I wish there was a concise enough way to communicate this. As Berlin was falling, the Nazis were calling up their blonde, blue-eyed Aryan 12-year olds to be cannon fodder against the advancing Russians. To fascists, everyone is a tool to employ in pursuit of their power. Everyone is instrumentalized. My greatest worry is the reality that a fair number of people enjoy being instrumentalised. 7 comments
To be fair, a lot of the blonde, blue-eyed Aryan 12-year olds were volunteering to die for the fatherland, because by that time, they had been indoctrinated for years. You can teach people to "enjoy being instrumentalized" for the cause. The world was lucky in the end that the Nazis sacrificed their young so young, instead of having the next generation gain the power to sacrifice the world in their own turn. I'm not sure you can describe that as volunteering. Legally speaking, 12 year olds are not capable of giving consent. > Legally speaking, 12 year olds are not capable of giving consent. True. I guess the grown-ups were busy with all the indoctrinating and recruiting and total-war-waging, so the part where they ask the lawyers somehow got overlooked... and anyone arguing with a fanatical Sturmbannführer about "rule of law" and "separation of powers" and "free press" at _that_ point would get shot. Better start _before_ 12-year olds are volunteering to run at tanks with hand grenades.  @Remittancegirl @Yendolosch "Legally speaking" and "in the Third Reich" are two phrases that don't belong on the same continent. (They had conscription, no age limit. Their solution to conscientious objectors was a firing squad. The law was whatever the führer decreed. IIRC the youngest "soldiers" in May 1945 were just eight years old ...) Indeed. I was just unwilling to go along with the implication that somehow 12 year olds get held morally responsible for being child soldiers or that their deaths are to be celebrated. |
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@Remittancegirl Authoritarian followers, per Altermeyer's work.