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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 22nd, 2024

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  • Yup. I have a similar argument before. If one reads more about Hitler and the Nazis, they are actually not different to any of the standard third world dictators like Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi. The difference is that the Nazis were only more powerful because they inherited a working institution-- especially the Prussian-based military-- while third world countries had to start from scratch after decolonisation.

    The Nazis like other dictators are very inefficient. I am reading Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”. The book goes through the convoluted bureaucracy and logistics of the Holocaust. Different pen pushers and administrators arguing who should be able to use the trains for their own departmental needs. What struck me the most is that the Nazis wasted so much effort transporting so-called undesirables to concentration camps, when their own soldiers are struggling to get supplies and reinforcements to the frontlines!

    More importantly, as you correctly mentioned, Nazi Germany struggled to feed their own people. As a matter of fact, there is strong evidence that Hitler started the war in Europe to stave off the looming economic crisis, which his own economic minister warned him of, thanks to endless government spending particularly with the re-armement. That economic crisis had been warded (temporarily of course) by plundering the resources of their conquered territories.


  • Trump is very unpredictable on Ukraine. He said he will support Ukraine but who knows. But some say he will withdraw support from Taiwan, which is unlikely because he never had good relations with Xi and China. As for Israel-Palestine, we know where stands on that.

    For me as non-American, I am more concerned with geopolitics. I wish Trump would provide support to Ukraine. But if he doesn’t, at least he will stand against China. I understand many Americans are tired of over twenty years of hawkish foreign policies with corporate and imperialist agenda, but if Trump withdraws from Europe, at least he should pivot towards China. It balances out between complete isolationism and imperialism (I believe on a case by case basis of interventionism as part of just war theory, like the US entry into World War 2 and intervention on Yougoslavia).














  • It will take years for Lemmy to take off in much the same way as Reddit had slowly built up.

    As I and other mentioned before, the main downside of Lemmy is that the community you care about isn’t here (and frankly, I don’t know if they will even come here at all). Like, we don’t have AskHistorians here, and the Lemmy for your hometown or country is either quiet or just completely died. So, I end up having no choice but to return to Reddit to keep in touch with those communities. However, as someone who is privacy conscious since Reddit now sells your data to train AI, I try to log in to Reddit with Tor. But even with the Onion site of Reddit, it won’t let me log in at most times because of technical discrepancy with stupid captchas or something. Sometimes I could log in via Tor but most times I’m not able to.

    Anyhow, I would love Lemmy to take off as soon as possible but there is teething problem common in new communities. But the pessimistic side of me thinks it may not since so many people have become too invested in Reddit. And the latter intentionally hooked people in for the worst reasons.