12 votes

Would the German population more or less readily believe the Holocaust today as compared to 1945?

This is something I was thinking about. When I read about the end of the second world war, the thing which surprises me the most is how easily the German population accepted that their government really committed such atrocities (Yes, I used Holocaust in the title, but I mean any genocide commited).

I was wondering how it might go down in our current culture with the emergence of Fake News and alternative "facts"; our post-fact culture. Would they more readily dismiss it as a photoshopped image? Would the impact be mitigated by the meme-ification of genocide?

(To a mod: The title should say « more or less »)

2 comments

  1. alyaza
    Link
    considering that in the US currently, you have things that function very similarly to early concentration camps at the border and something like a third to half of the people in this country are...

    considering that in the US currently, you have things that function very similarly to early concentration camps at the border and something like a third to half of the people in this country are more concerned with the semantics of the terminology used to refer to those camps and making apologetics for their existence than consider or condemn the actual shit that goes on in them, i'm inclined to think you're already getting the answer to how this question plays out in modern times.

    8 votes
  2. Eva
    Link
    Given that presently, there's a sizeable portion of people who can't (or won't) tell the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps as to amplify current events, I don't think...

    Given that presently, there's a sizeable portion of people who can't (or won't) tell the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps as to amplify current events, I don't think so; people on average will always be more critical of their government's domestic actions (to the point of distortion) than what they're doing outside of it. It's likely they'd have come off even worse than they did.

    5 votes