历史与人物press.uchicago.edu编辑精选
他们以为自己自由
They Thought They Were Free (1955)
2020 — 2025，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
这是芝加哥大学出版社关于米尔顿·迈耶1955年著作《They Thought They Were Free》的页面。该书通过采访十名普通德国人，探讨纳粹政权如何被日常接受，以及普通人事后如何解释自己的顺从与沉默。
为什么经久不衰：它用普通人的自述揭示威权如何一步步日常化，提醒人们警惕渐进的习惯化，因此多年后仍反复被讨论。
HN 评论精选
书有价值但需读原书，注意断章取义和“民族性格”论述的局限。
我读过这本书，确实有意思。看人们如何误记战后年代很有意思。书里也有被大量断章取义的段落，以及很多关于“民族性格”的值得怀疑的内容。我强烈建议真正去读，理解它是什么、不是什么。我主要学到没有简单答案，人和政治运动当时和现在一样滑溜。但你可能有完全不同的收获。这是一本古怪但有趣的书。
moomin查看英文原文
I’ve read the book. It’s genuinely interesting. It’s very interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years. It also contains a) passages that are very much quoted out of context and b) an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. I highly recommend actually reading it and understanding what it is and isn’t. Mostly I learned that there’s no simple answers, but also that people and even political movements were just as slippery then as they are now. But you may come away with something completely different. It’s an odd but interesting book.
威权靠渐进步骤让人麻木，抵抗应在早期而非等待总爆发。
最令人不寒而栗的是：那个重大的震惊时刻——成千上万人会和你站在一起——永远不会到来。难就难在这里。如果整个政权最后最坏的行为紧接最初最小的行为而来，成千上万甚至数百万人会足够震惊——比如，如果1943年对犹太人的毒气屠杀紧接1933年非犹太商店橱窗上的“德国公司”贴纸而来。但当然不是这样发生的。中间有数百个小步骤，有些难以察觉，每一步都让你对下一步不那么震惊。C步并不比B步坏多少，如果你在B步没有站出来，为什么要在C步站出来？如此到D步。
panax查看英文原文
The most chilling part is "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D." Many wait for that single moment when the line is crossed for everyone to stand up and take (non-violent) action and speak out, but that moment never comes. That's not how this works. Authoritarianism rises gradually and relies on people looking away from it, unable to confront inconvenient truths. The time to speak out is early and not to wait for that moment for others to do so.
书中描述公众如何逐步习惯秘密决策与“国家安全”借口。
这里发生的是人们逐渐习惯，一点一点地，习惯于被意外治理；习惯于接受秘密商议的决定；习惯于相信局势太复杂，政府必须依据人民无法理解的信息行动，或者太危险，即使人民不理解也不能公开，因为国家安全。
beprogrammed查看英文原文
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security." Very good read, thanks for this.
类比纳粹需谨慎，不同社会轨迹不同，恐惧中易过度标签化。
分享这本书的语境很明显，但我想指出，美国当前分裂的双方很可能都会本能地把对方或其总统候选人认作这个场景里的希特勒。我这样说不是为了论证一方、双方或都不该做这种联想，而是说明：人们很容易抓住表面符号——尤其在恐惧弥漫时——滑入只会加深恐惧的标签化和叙事构建。人人都想读懂茶叶。二战后世界问“到底发生了什么”，做心理学研究、审视轶事寻找预警信号，这些并非无用。但现实是，没有两个社会或轨迹完全相同。希特勒之外永远不会有另一个希特勒。会有其他暴君、精神病患者、社会崩坏，但都不会和那一个完全相同。我们应非常小心不要透过那个透镜、凭粗略印象下结论。人脑很擅长眯着眼直到东西看起来对，尤其在恐惧或先入之见下。
throwaway23452查看英文原文
The context of this being shared is obvious, but I want to point out that both sides of the American divide right now would likely instinctively identify the other (or their presidential candidate) as the Hitler in this scenario. I say this not to argue that one, or both, or neither, has no reason to make that connection. I say this to illustrate that it's easy to look at superficial signifiers - especially when saturated in fear - and enter the slippery slope of characterization and narrative-building that only deepens said fear, furthering the cycle. Everyone wants to be able to read the tea-leaves. After World War 2 the world collectively asked itself, "what the hell just happened?" Psychological studies were performed to understand the mechanisms that could lead otherwise-decent people down such a horrifying path. Anecdotes were scrutinized for early warning signs that could have predicted what was to come. And I'm not saying that any of this was a waste. But the reality is that no two societies, or trajectories, are exactly the same. There never has been and never will be another Hitler aside from Hitler himself. There have been and will be other tyrants, other psychopaths, other societal downfalls, but none of them will be exactly the same as that one was. And we should be very careful about looking at things through that lens, drawing conclusions based on rough impressions. The human mind is very good at squinting until things look right, especially when fear or preconceived notions are involved. Be aware. Pay attention. There are real dangers to our society right now. But keep your head and don't succumb to blind pattern-matching. Stay focused on our society, and don't lump it in with a perceived archetype.
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