You are also an average 1930's German

Nazi Germany was a disgrace to the human race, and the people involved needed to be punished, being the public threat that they were. However — vengeance must not be the focus, and here is why.

Us vs Them

As much as our generation likes to separate itself from the average 1930’s German, the fact is that there is no actual difference between “us” and “them”. Our genes did not mutate that much in 3-4 generations, and the Germans are not a separate species. In fact, given the same environment an average person today (e.g. you) would have been an average Nazi German, and the fact that you aren’t is due to random luck.

You happen to have the exact same human tendencies to hate. Relating already?

While vengeance helps us sleep at night, it does not help humanity in the long run. Time dictates that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even if we had a golden era of 1,000 great leaders straight — all you need is one bad apple. Humanity has the technological ability to break everything at once, and it doesn’t need a majority to do so (not that majorities are stupid-proof).

Effective Postmortem

Then what should we do? An effective postmortem is blameless as you don’t want to fix the situation, you want to fix the environment, as if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. So we need to focus on making sure it can’t go wrong.

We need to prevent the spreading of hate instead of punishing the haters, who are in fact random unlucky victims of the spread. One viable solution would be to strictly regulate the spread of hate through public platforms, such as: education institutions, social media, news networks, and even elected officials.

This is not unheard of — many countries and most well-known social media platforms already have such rules in place. This damages free speech, but in fact all societal rules hurt personal freedoms (rules are the opposite of freedoms), it’s a question of balance.

Punishment

So why punish? Punishment is a simplistic approach to societal problems — at its best it can prevent specific troublemakers from doing it again, and deter the rest from following suit. It also makes us feel better for a little while, but that doesn’t really help anything.

There are alternatives to punishment, like education and re-education which are more complex, but also more cost effective in the long run since functioning society members are so valuable.

Focusing on the punishment actually has a negative outcome — it martyrs and inflames supporters, both of which make the situation worse. This is especially true for communal crimes based on belief — it’s not like we’re going to round up all the believers.

Punishment must be the sidelines, an unfortunate last resort. It’s not the main story, not the real solution.