German Guilt, White Guilt and Thermidor

but guilt-tripping is such fun

David Cole is a naughty boy that doubts the Holocaust. Or at least the 6 million death count.

But, he writes, don’t go to Germany and tell the Germans that they aren’t as guilty as hell. Their Nazi guilt is part of who they are.

[P]ostwar German identity is centered around atonement. They’re the “good atoners.” That’s their shtick. Other nations, other peoples throughout history, from the highest Viking to the lowliest Choctaw, have waged wars and committed atrocities. But the Germans alone are repentant. It’s a point of pride.

Er, whatabout blacks and whites in America? I mean, slavery, old chap.

The continued failure of black America distresses many whites. And again, it’s not just conditioning. These whites are good (if naive) people who deplore past racial injustices and genuinely want to help blacks “get better,” and they’re too good at heart (and too naive) to entertain the notion that the problem might be intractable.

But the point is that no German dares to step up and say, enough of the Holocaust guilt already. And no white American dares to step up and say, enough of the white guilt already.

As to why: it’s a good question. I suspect that guilt is a basic trait of humans-as-social-animals. And obviously it is directly related to the notion of Original Sin. Original Sin originated, you may remember, when Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge. And she blamed a snake, the naughty girl.

If you ask me, it’s a scam. Were all Germans guilty in World War II? Well, they were guilty of keeping their heads down. During the entire period of Nazi rule you didn’t want to advertise your opposition to the Nazi regime. And since then, you don’t want to be caught saying that it’s all water over the dam.

We have the same culture in the US over slavery and oppression and white guilt. You better not say that the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s was final, and now let bygones by bygones and let’s all be Americans together.

So even now, with five black policemen allegedly killing a black motorist in a black majority city in Memphis, we still get the Washington Post finding black activists to blather on about white systemic racism.

And yet we all still cower in our bunkers, afraid to speak out, just like Germans during the Third Reich, and Germans ever since.

What will it take?

What it will take is another Thermidor, the day that the French Revolution ended in 1794 because people couldn’t take it any more.

But it wasn’t because The People couldn’t take it any more. Not at all. It was because the revolutionaries couldn’t take it any more. It wasn’t just the revolutionaries teaching the Austrian bitch a lesson. It wasn’t just extremist Jacobins versus moderate Girondins any more. The orgy of denunciations had got to the point where Jacobins were dividing and accusing and executing each other. And that was a bridge too far. So the Jacobins arrested Robespierre and executed him and everybody relaxed until Napoleon came along and led France to ruin.

I suspect that the end of the current Woke Reign of Terror will end the same way. Instead of the Woke canceling you and me it will escalate to Woke transgenders canceling feminist TERFs. And at some point, some Mr. Brooke deep in the Deep State will opine about things going too far.

But then, do we turn on our liberal friends and teach them a lesson, and make them feel guilty for two or three generations?

Please, no. All the liberals I know are just ordinary people that pick up the current “thing” by instinct. I don’t blame them for going along with the “thing.” That’s what humans do.

And the activists cashing in on the race “thing?” I wouldn’t even go after them. After all, they are just doing what they have been carefully taught. And in my opinion, unless you have read all the books, read them, learned them, and inwardly digested them, you are just going to go with the “thing.” And how many of us, apart from me, have “read all the books?”

Like the Germans. Like the Southern racists. Like the black racists. It’s who we are.