历史与人物harpers.org编辑精选
谁会当纳粹？（1941）
Who Goes Nazi? (1941)
2016 — 2024，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是记者 Dorothy Thompson 1941 年发表于《哈泼斯》的经典思想实验：假设一场晚宴上聚集了形形色色的宾客，谁会变成纳粹？她逐一剖析宾客的性格与出身，提出决定性的不是阶级或智力，而是人格中某种怨恨与投机倾向。文章写于美国参战之前，至今仍被反复讨论。
为什么经久不衰：它把'谁会屈服于威权'这个永恒问题变成一场可代入的晚宴游戏，跨越八十多年仍能映照每个时代的政治与人性。
HN 评论精选
引用《平民如何变成屠夫》反驳：变纳粹的不是坏人，而是被体制免责的普通人
我明白作者的意思，但不太认同。多年前我读过《平民如何变成屠夫》（关于波兰最终解决方案中执行屠杀的预备警察营 101 的研究），那本书基于对当事人的访谈得出的结论更令我信服：不是'坏人会变纳粹'，而是普通人在一个免除其行为责任的体制下会变纳粹。'只是服从命令'是典型且诚实的回答。所以也许可以说：坏人递枪，但任何人被命令时都会扣动扳机。
skrap查看英文原文
I get what the author is getting at. Not sure I agree. Many years ago, I read "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland", which analyzes interviews with the actual men performing the slaughter of innocents at the end of the war. The conclusion that book drew was different than this article, and makes more sense to me — that it's not "mean people 'go nazi'", but ordinary people who 'go nazi', given a system which relieves them of responsibility for their actions. "Just following orders" was the typical & honest answer, if I recall. The men didn't feel they bore a moral duty to disobey, because these things just had to be done, or so they were told. So, if I can riff a bit on the article's themes... maybe mean people will hand you the gun, but anyone will pull the trigger, if they're told to do so.
以克罗地亚政客为例印证：投机者总能适应任何政权
文中的纳粹让我想起我所在的克罗地亚的政治阶层。社会主义一党制崩溃后，整个统治阶层分头加入各政党、参与整个政治光谱，仿佛什么都没发生。有些人成了狂热的反共分子，尽管他们本是旧政权的活跃分子。十年中右翼执政后，一些前民族主义者（更早之前是共产主义者）又把自己包装成基督教民主党人、欧洲派、干干净净的中间派。有些人天生适合任何政权——他们就是作者说的那种纳粹。
rospaya查看英文原文
The Nazis in the article remind me of the political class in Croatia, where I live. Once socialist one party rule collapsed, the whole ruling class divided itself into political parties and participated in the whole political spectrum, like nothing happened. Some of them became ardent anti-communists, despite being active parts of the old regime. After ten years of center-right rule, some even switched sides and former nationalists (and before that communists) rebranded themselves as Christian democrats, Europeans, clean shaven centrists. Some people are simply made for all regimes. They're the Nazis the author talks about.
批评文章本身带有'看面相断人'的傲慢，并补充作者的禁酒运动背景
这篇文章有种令人不适之处——那种你能看穿一个人的灵魂、断定他'如果可以就会当纳粹'的想法。说实话，它的语气让我想起德奥合并前那种德国人：在宴会上审视宾客面容以寻找犹太或罗姆血统的痕迹，还为自己的'敏锐眼光'沾沾自喜。顺带一提，作者 Thompson 二十多岁时是妇女选举权的激进活动家，而那场运动与禁酒运动深度交织……
Kattywumpus查看英文原文
There is something ugly about this piece, about the idea that you can see into someone's soul and just know that they'd be a Nazi if they could. To be honest, the tone of it reminds me of the stereotypical pre-Anschluss German who privately scrutinizes the faces of party guests for hints of Jewish or Roma heritage, and flatters himself for his keen eye in discerning their inferiority. For what it's worth, when the article’s author Dorothy Thompson was in her twenties, she was a fiery activist for women's suffrage, which was deeply intertwined with the temperance movement of that era. (Many temperance groups shared the same leadership as women's suffrage groups, and both shared a core idea that women were inherently less coarse and crude than men and that the burden fell on women to transform the debased, violent world men had created.) Thompson toured New York state giving barnburner speeches promoting women's suffrage, and promoting temperance figures as well, like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, a popular keynote speaker for the New York Woman Suffrage Party and prominent member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The W.C.T.U. is the political organization most responsible for bringing us the 18th Amendment prohibiting the production, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages in the United States. The Volstead Act passed to enforce Prohibition ultimately resulted in the deaths of thousands of U.S. citizens who were gunned down in the crossfire of speakeasy raids, or who drank liquor poisoned deliberately by the Feds. Not quite Nazism, but government agents murderously enforcing philosophies of moral purity are perhaps not so far away, either. All this was going on in 1919; Thompson moved to Europe in 1920, the year Prohibition came into effect, leaving behind the violence and chaos she'd helped bring to power. It's doubtful she wanted things to turn out quite the way they did. She meant to support only the good people and the good idea of women's suffrage, yet somehow some bad people and bad ideas came along for the ride. Indeed, some of the good people with the good ideas were also the bad people with bad ideas. There might be a better moral in this than the notion that Nazis are a separate breed of people we can know by second sight.
补充作者背景：首位被纳粹驱逐的美国记者，及其关于独裁者以'自己人'面目出现的名言
作者是 Dorothy Thompson，第一位被纳粹德国驱逐的记者。她还说过：'没有人能提前认出自己的独裁者。他从不以独裁为竞选纲领，总是把自己包装成国家意志的化身……当我们的独裁者出现时，他一定是'我们中的一员'，代表一切传统美国价值。没人会对他说'万岁'，但所有人会用一声民主的、羊群般的'好的，头儿！'来迎接他。'
hodwik查看英文原文
Written by Dorothy Thompson, first journalist kicked out of Nazi Germany. She also said: "No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say 'Heil' to him, nor will they call him 'Führer' or 'Duce.' But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"
以物理学家 Peierls 谈海森堡为例：身处体制中的人难以察觉滑坡的开始
我在伯明翰大学读研究生时（约 1982/83 年）听过 Peierls 的讲座，他谈到海森堡加入纳粹党的感受（1930 年代末必须入党才能继续在大学任教）。据我回忆，Peierls 并不责怪海森堡——那就是当时的现实。我由此想到：楔子薄到极点时，你怎么看得出它的末端？
keithpeter查看英文原文
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Peierls When I was a postgrad at Birmingham University, around 1982/3 ish we had a talk by Peierls. He discussed his feelings about Heisenberg joining the Nazi party (you had to join the Party to continue to be a University lecturer in the late 1930s - that was when Einsten resolved to leave Berlin). My recollection (reaching back 30+ years here folks) is that Peierls did not blame Heisenberg- it was how it was. Peierls recollected Heisenberg talking about 'white waistcoats' and people leaving who didn't have to leave, thus reducing the number of overseas jobs available to people who did have to leave (i.e. German Jewish academics). What I'm thinking here is; How do you see the end of the wedge when it is very thin?
指出文章写于暴行曝光之前更显洞察力，并关联刘易斯'内圈'演讲
这篇文章格外有趣，因为它写于美国参战之前、纳粹暴行的全貌尚不为人知之时。这让我想起 C.S. 刘易斯 1944 年关于'内圈'的演讲。
tcbawo查看英文原文
This article is especially interesting, given it was written before the the US entered the war and before the full extent of Nazi atrocities was known. I'm reminded of C.S Lewis's speech about the Inner Ring (1944): http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm
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