The most astonishing thing about the worst Nazis is that they were incapable of perceiving their actions as monstrous atrocities and crimes. Given that context, this letter was hopeless from the start.
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People who don't deny such things would not be Nazis for long.
Interesting thought. It would imply that denying one's own wrongdoings is a necessary prerequisite for being actually evil.
I am wondering what it means in the context of the recent US election, where Trump denies that he did anything wrong on January 6 2021, where he denies that the numerous trials against him are legitimate, where he surrounds himself by people who are supporting him in these denials with a straight face.
It seems very dangerous to me. He has been building a cult of deniers around him for years. And now the most loyal of these deniers will end up running the government.
The reality is that narcissists are very fragile and can't handle reality, so they insist that everyone around them play roles the narcissist feels safe with (think of their kids or spouse) and that reality be a certain way.
It just came to mind that in studying IT security I read a criminolgy expert (not specific to IT), who said that criminals need a justification or rationalization; iirc examples include 'this big company steals from ordinary people', 'they won't miss it', etc.
Despite the Silicon Valley fantasy and the neo-alt-whatever attempt to condition people otherwise, humans are inherently moral. Sociopaths are very rare. Even criminals need a rationalization.
Look how much effort political leaders put into giving people a rationale, even awful people like Hitler, Stalin, etc.