How would you go Nazi?

I’m not in the UK right now – summer holidays – and for that, not for the first time in recent years, I’m grateful.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not deeply affected by the recent fascist riots back home. Especially when I think about friends and colleagues who don’t share my white male privilege. The real impact these events have on marginalised communities.

In the midst of this, the basic decency of the population shines through. A friend who works in a council where we support equality, diversity, and inclusion shared that over 500 people attended a staff network session last Friday, with many white allies present. (A big win for #HumanResources and #OrganisationalDevelopment)

It’s a reminder that, despite those who seek *very actively* to divide us, we remain far from truly split as a society.

But here’s a challenge: have we truly searched our hearts and asked, ‘How would I go Nazi?’

Dorothy Thompson’s celebrated 1941 Harper’s Magazine piece, ‘Who Goes Nazi?’ offers a chilling insight. The journalist and broadcaster met Hitler in 1931 and found him insecure, ill-poised, and lacking the qualities she expected in a leader. Her unflattering description contributed to her being expelled from Germany by the Nazis in 1934.

She later identified types of people who could fall into fascism:
Mr B – driven by power and status, opportunistic
Mr C – alienated intellectual, craves power and to avoid humiliation.
Young D – inconsiderate and vain
Mrs E – a masochist seeking a RETVRN to some imaged ‘better’ past
Mr G – an intellectualising apologist who always puts himself on the margins
Mr L – protection of wealth and status

Those who escaped her judgement did so due to moral principles, culture, empathy, happiness and security in themselves and their lives – the opposite of bitterness, grievance, desire for ‘power over’ or a clear place in the order, or outright fear and insecurity.

#Leadership and #Diversity should drive our actions, not our fears.

I think she missed the true conformist who would ‘fit in’, though the underlying pattern is an edge of self-hatred or misanthropy. And I know that the tension between conformity and alienation would be what would get me. I try to work against it constantly.

If your thought is, ‘well, I’d be a victim, not a perpetrator,’ then you’re likely still more vulnerable today than I am. You have my sympathy, and solidarity.
But it’s also worth considering – what hidden desires might lead even you down a dangerous path?

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Which type would you be, and how do you guard against it?

Read the PDF here: https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/D4E1FAQGiRWITsEogXw/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/0/1723499446069?e=1724284800&v=beta&t=QObgO_C3nU0hEA2eES5oKGbjbhXAnb6p3QFbvzwKVaE