When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

Two days after Adolf Hitler became German Prime Minister, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer I took it to the radio waves. Before his radio broadcasts were cut off, he made his compatriots to their Fuller It may be common Verführeror the wrong leader. Bonhoeffer’s anti-nazism continued until the end of his life, when he was executed by the regime in 1945. July 20th, a plot to assassinate Hitler. Even during his imprisonment, he continued to think about the origins of the political enthusiasts who overtook Germany. The force of central importance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he concluded, but foolish.

“Folk is more of a good enemy than malice,” Bonhofer wrote in a letter to his conspirators on the 10th anniversary of Hitler’s joining Prime Minister’s officials. “We may protest evil. It can be exposed and prevented using force when necessary. Evil always has its own embryo of destruction, at least in that it remains in anxious. We are vulnerable to stupidity.” When provoked, “In contrast to malicious people, stupid people are completely self-satisfied, and easily annoyed, making them dangerous by attacking.”

Fighting stupidity in Bonhoeffer’s mind requires first understanding. What you foolish is “essentially it’s not an intellectual flaw, it’s a human flaw” can go down to virtually anyone. “In certain circumstances, people become foolish. And when certain figures and movements grab the attention of the public, it happens most prominently. “All the strong rise of the strong forces of power in the public realm, whether political or religious, infects most of humanity with foolishness,” he writes. This phenomenon can hardly occur without blindly obedient masses, so it appears that “one force requires the foolishness of the other.”

You can see Bonhoeffer’s Theory of foolishness It is explained in The bud video with illustrations aboveand you can learn more about the man himself from the documentary Bonhoeffer. Or, even better, read his collection, Letters and documents from prison. Although rooted in his time, culture and religion, his ideas are related to where humans follow the crowd. “The fact that stupid people are often stubborn should not blind us to the fact that he is not independent,” he writes. “In conversations with him, I feel essentially that people are not dealing with people at all, but rather that they are dealing with slogans, catchwords, etc. that own him.” Whatever surprises Bonhoeffer about our time, he will know exactly what we mean when we call stupid people “tools.”

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Based in Seoul Colin marshall Write and broadcasting stationTS about cities, languages, and culture. His projects include the Substack Newsletter Books about cities And the book The Stateless City: Walking through 21st century Los Angeles. Follow him on social networks previously known as Twitter @colinmarshall.