This is not going to be an easy read and I apologize for that, but it’s important…

“The crematorium is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Under a garden there are two enormous cellars. One is where people undress and the other is the death chamber. People enter it naked and once about 3,000 are inside it is locked and they are gassed. After six or seven minutes of suffering they die.”

“The gas canisters were always delivered in a German Red Cross vehicle with two SS men. They then dropped the gas through openings – and half an hour later our work began. We dragged the bodies of those innocent women and children to the lift, which took them to the ovens.”

Those words were written by a Greek Jew, Marcel Nadjari. He was a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. He was among about 2,200 members of the Sonderkommando – Jewish slaves of the SS who had to escort fellow Jews to the gas chambers. Then they had to collect gold fillings and women’s hair, burn the bodies, and throw the ashes into a nearby river. They did all of that at gunpoint, forced to comply.

“After deportation trains arrived at the killing centers, guards ordered the deportees to get out and form a line. The victims then went through a selection process. Men were separated from women and children. A Nazi, usually an SS physician, looked quickly at each person to decide if he or she was healthy and strong enough for forced labor. This SS officer then pointed to the left or the right; victims did not know that individuals were being selected to live or die. Babies and young children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and the sick had little chance of surviving this first selection.

Those who had been selected to die were forced into gas vans or gas chambers. In order to prevent panic, camp guards told the victims that they were going to take showers to rid themselves of lice. The guards instructed them to turn over all their valuables and to undress. Then they were driven naked into the “showers.” A guard closed and locked the doors. In some killing centers, carbon monoxide was piped into the chamber. In others, camp guards threw “Zyklon B” pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous insecticide also used to kill rats and insects.

Usually within minutes after entering the gas chambers, everyone inside was dead from lack of oxygen. Under guard, prisoners were forced to haul the corpses to a nearby room, where they removed hair, gold teeth, and fillings. The bodies were burned in ovens in the crematoria or buried in mass graves.

Many people profited from the pillage of corpses. Camp guards stole some of the gold. The rest was melted down and deposited in an SS bank account. Private business firms bought and used the hair to make many products, including ship rope and mattresses.” – Holocaust Encyclopedia

My focus in this piece is not the victims. Today, I want to focus on the perpetrators. I want you to think about the people who committed these crimes. Not those forced to participate at the end of a gun, but the people holding the gun. How, I wonder, did an entire country devolve, morally, to a point where they could brutally murder thousands of people a day – every day?

These were once normal people. People with whom one would exchange greetings as they passed in the streets. They were bankers and builders, accountants, electricians, engineers. They were store clerks and store owners. They came from every walk of life. They went on picnics. They went to work. They went to church.

But in a very short period of time, those nice, normal people were brought to a morality so low, they could walk thousands of people into gas chambers and make jokes about the suffering all the while – or, at the very least, support those who did. Cruelty became normalized.

But how? It started with lies. At first, those people were just supporting the party, repeating the talking points. Yes, they were lying and they knew it, but they were conditioned to dismiss that “small” sin for the greater good – the glory of the party – so they did. Over time, the small, little trespasses and offenses became bigger and more aggressive. When their leader called for greater outrages, the people complied – for the party.

Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Krystalnacht, the night of the broken glass, was a pogrom against the Jews in 1938. Five short years, those same, “normal” people who might have doffed their hats in the street were attacking Jewish businesses and the people who owned them. The name of the event, Krystalnacht, refers to all of the glass in the streets after the rampage. The German government, at the time, looked on and took no action.

It was an open declaration of war against Jews. Eventually, the idea of holding a gun and shooting defenseless, innocent men, women, and children became normalized, necessary, even. By 1941, the so-called “Final Solution” was conceived and implemented. Much of the population of an entire nation went along. At first, people were murdered with bullets, man-to-man, woman, or child. But that became expensive and Nazi leadership wondered what kind of followers they were developing. What effect, they wondered, of all of that face-to-face, close-up killing?

I think about those people from time to time, the people who went along. What happened to them after the war? How did they go on? Even if they escaped prosecution for their crimes, how could they escape themselves? After what they did, knowingly, how did they look themselves in the mirror? How does one recover from murdering thousands of innocent people, every day of the week, every week of the year? How does one justify murdering millions for the sake of a talking point? Is it possible, did they ever stop seeing the faces of their victims?

I know that describing 1945 Auschwitz seems to have little relevance to today. It was, after all, the extreme of the Nazis. It represented a level of moral decay the world had not seen for decades. An entire nation, plunged into horror – on purpose, for the benefit of a few, small-minded, bitter and selfish men seemed impossible to repeat. It all started with casual lies, but was cultivated and nurtured until it grew into the worst ANY person could ever be, right? Maybe.

Something I’m sure of: if you had asked the German people to behave in that way in 1933, they would have been appalled at the suggestion. If you could have told them that by 1938, they would be actively attacking their neighbors and friends, their perceived opponents, in the streets, they would have guffawed and said you were an hyperbolic extremist. The idea of the Holocaust would have horrified them, back then, in the same way it horrifies civilized people today. But they didn’t STAY horrified. They were conditioned and led to it, inexorably.

Pointing out the dedication of MAGA to their own falsehoods, today, meets with the same derision, but it’s the same, entry-level moral defect that set the Germans on their horrifying path so many years ago. MAGA sees themselves as decent, honorable people. They’re only supporting the party. They KNOW they’re lying – and they know lying is a sin -but “it’s for the greater good.” Is it though?

A position that depends on lies for support, doesn’t deserve to be supported. MAGA talking points represent entry-level moral decay the world has not seen since the Nazis. An entire nation, plunging into horror – on purpose, for the benefit of a few, small-minded, bitter and selfish men. It all started with casual lies, but is being cultivated and nurtured until it grows into… what?

The last time huge swaths of a nation took to lying for political purposes, turning their backs on their own morality, there was no “greater good.” If I suggested to MAGA they could be easily led to commit similar atrocities today – up to and including killing people – they would guffaw and call me an hyperbolic extremist. They would – must – simply deny reality, especially since, in that reality, they already have.

Remember Covid-19? Human beings KNOW how to battle illness, even when we don’t yet know the details of the illness. You wash a lot. You “social distance.” You wear masks in an effort to protect people around you. But not MAGA. There were political points to be scored by refusing the masks. One’s popularity increased if they attended “Covid parties.”

Decent, still-civilized folks tried to explain to MAGA that they were putting people’s lives at risk with their frivolous attitudes. To MAGA, it was all a joke, a chance to deride “libtards.” They made fun of people wearing masks or later, who took the vaccine. They wore “neck gators” instead of proper masks, even after, or perhaps, because, it became known the neck gators actually spread the illness. People died by the thousands.

MAGA was conditioned to dismiss those victims and not think of them AS people. They reduced those human beings to their “comorbidities.” THAT let MAGA off the hook. In their minds, people weren’t dying because of MAGA unethical behavior. They were dying because they had comorbidities and, because they had comorbidities, they got what they deserved. It was their own fault for having asthma – or for being old.

“All we did was refuse masks,” said MAGA. “That’s not the same as physically attacking people.” That’s technically true, but it’s a rationality that exposes a moral decay deeper than mere lies, an easy disregard of human lives. It was a kind of passive killing; stubbornly refuse to do the ONLY thing available that might help – then watch people die. Standing by and watching people die is not the same as pulling a trigger. Blame the victims. Tease them for being victims. “We didn’t DO anything!”

But they did on January 6th, didn’t they? They actively attacked. They beat people with weapons, sprayed bear spray, crushed people in doors, broke glass and smashed fixtures. They killed people or so deeply traumatized them, they killed themselves. To this day, MAGA protects themselves, or tries to, with lies. I suspect some of them are ashamed of what they did, as evidenced by the fact that they deny their own actions. They downplay events, minimize conduct. But for many of them, they’re simply trying to deflect poor optics.

The deeper MAGA goes in defending themselves and/or their leader, the more loyal they’ll become to the movement. They have to. They know they’ve already committed some horrible crimes but they need to continue to see themselves as decent, honorable people. If they allow themselves to realize the transgressions they’ve already committed weren’t actually for the greater good, they would have to confess their complicity, their guilt.

Today’s piece is a warning. If you’re one of those waiting for MAGA to feel the effects of their choices and reject MAGA as a result, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. MAGA is not going to fall away no matter how bad things get. They can’t. They likely don’t realize it, but they’re already all in, fully committed. It would take only the tiniest of sparks to get the fire blazing.

Ironically, the relatively minor nightmares they’ve already committed have locked them in to future horrors. There’s already shame. If they didn’t do the things they’ve done for the right reasons, they’re guilty. So they’ll suffer any pain they need to suffer in order to stay, in their minds, on the right side of issues – “for the greater good.”

But if you’re MAGA, you’re already on the wrong side of the issues. If you don’t reconsider your loyalties and change paths, you WILL, one day, find yourself unable to look in the mirror. Lies and comforting stories can only get you so far. It doesn’t matter that you can pretend, to me, J6 was a peaceful love-fest. YOU KNOW what’s true! You can lie to me forever. You can NOT lie to yourself. Not for long, anyway.

The talking points were just the beginning. MAGA has already been conditioned to engage in violence, first passively, then, actively. Whatever else may be true, YOU will always know what YOU did. You’re living a life you’re going to want or need to hide from later. If you stay on this path, you will, sooner or later, participate in, perhaps celebrate, something far, far worse.

I’ll tell you this: the fix is simple – embrace truth. Stop with the “talking points.” The more dedicated you are to truth, the less likely you can be brought to atrocity. Don’t live a life you need to hide from. You can’t hide from yourself…