Something needs to change to stop the cycle of angry people who know they have no prospects falling for fascist propaganda about how they’re going to improve things. But the camps weren’t it. The movement to rid the government of all nazi affiliates in this way was slow and complicated. It disabled significant parts of the government which slowed down the economy, delayed important work like repairing infrastructure and thus made prospects even worse than they had to be for said disillusioned young men. Then the Soviets and the Brits and the U.S. all found some people too important to remove from their posts which left the Nazism in place and bred resentment about why some people were punished for their roles and others weren’t. The Soviets liked the camps the most, but because they believed in purifying the masses’ ideological beliefs. Which is papering over some of the practical policies therein.

What saved Germany from the masses of disillusioned men was actual opportunity and rising standards of living. What’s causing a ‘conservative’ resurgence there and in the U.S. and elsewhere is the backslide in those areas. The answer is improving people’s lives, or at least not worsening them. Admitting we need to change what is and isn’t considered ‘creating value’. Focus on caring for our young and elderly and caring less about how many physical hours you must waste standing or sitting or walking around somewhere because a middle manager likes owning your time. But if we want to leave oligarchs in place to toy with our health and happiness and then put ourselves in camps every so often that’s an option too I guess. I just feel as though that’s part of the cycle, not breaking the cycle.