I’m just curious what people like Marco Rubio and Mark Zuckerberg, who are passively supportive of the installation of authoritarianism, would have learned at school about that period in Germany.
I’m asking this as that question and not as a leading question into a discussion on today’s politics.
What is the level of awareness the average American person in their 40s and 50s on how the Third Reich started?
Can’t tell if you only want answers from Americans in 40-50s, but I’ll offer mine anyway lol
I was raised upper middle class, and homeschooled until a private school my parents agreed with opened nearby. I learned about nazi Germany only in the sense that was wrong to punish people for what they looked like, what race they were, and what professions they had. Very little was said about the people who were punished for helping Jewish people, and nothing was said about how the typical citizen was treated. I was taken to a traveling Holocaust exhibit and told to never be racist because of the human lives lost.
You could say I was raised to think authoritarianism was correct, especially because “democracy allows stupid people to have a voice”. I was not allowed friends from other races or social classes as far as my parents could help. So I was taught “don’t be racist”, but at the same time was very strictly told I couldn’t have anything in common with anyone else that didn’t look and live like me.
That changed a bit when I met my best friend in high school, they are a first generation immigrant. I remember later, as 19 or 20 year old, I took a quiz on my preferred government type and was fucking floored when it said I was a fascist. My dad moonlighted for an enforcement agency for much of my life, so I guess I learned some fucked up things that way, but still it was a shock.
Anyway, I have had to do a lot of introspection and self education, and I’ll never be done learning and growing. I’m not a billionaire, so I’ve probably been a bit successful with that