
How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler - DyslexicAtheist
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/?no-ist
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hackuser
The wishful search for normalcy seems to be a common phenomenon in the rise of
dictators. In addition to the way the media covered Hitler and Mussolini, as
described in the article, consider:

* In somewhat popular recent article (and probably the most important thing I've read on the subject; I can't recommend it strongly enough), "Autocracy: Rules for Survival",[0] a Russian author warns us: _Rule #2:_ Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. _Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama [conciliatory, cooperative] speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm._

* I saw a documentary recently about Hitler. At the time, before WWII started, there were periods of "normalcy" as the above article described - remember that people didn't know a massive war was coming, just as we don't know what is coming. Hitler repeatedly promised that he just needed to protect some ethnic Germans, or that he was 'satisfied' and didn't need to expand further. From the above-mentioned article:[0] _... the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it._

* The most famous example: Winston Churchill before the war advocated strongly and loudly for action against Hitler, and was a political outcast. Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister, partly on the basis that people agreed he could negotiate a deal with Hitler (which including abandoning entire nations to his mercies), and famously claimed to have made a deal he called "peace in our time" \- i.e., normalcy.

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[0] _Autocracy: Rules for Survival_ by Masha Gessen

[http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-
autoc...](http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-
rules-for-survival/) \- Highly recommended!

