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Have you read IBM and The Holocaust by the investigative journalist Edwin Black?
@resl
Don't know about the book but in my general reading/watching/studying the facts have been mentioned many times since the 80's.
Got some really bad reactions from people in-real-life who claim(ed) to be anti-Nazi (they go on about how "our side" defeated the Nazis) but they are upset when British & American companies/banks are mentioned as working with the Nazi regime.
@miguelpergamon Good to hear that from your experience there have at least been conversations about this kind of alliance. It has been humbling to me to realize how much there is I did not know about international financial and economic history between 1930 and now.
It's not that I am struggling to see finance-capitalists and the tech sector as controlling and acting as appendages of states and military powers -- thankfully I am past the illusion that they aren't -- but that I am struggling to process all of this particular information, as it is changing how I understand the timeline of major cultural changes in politics and the depth of the psychological hold of the performance of class, law, and property relations, if that makes sense.
To try to put it simply (and I apologize and/or thank you for interacting with me about this so I can try to communicate, because I am truly still in the midst of consolidating the particular information that is new to me) -- This history is showing me more than anything the importance of the free software and copyleft movements, and the importance of resisting tech monopolies at all costs. That feeling I used to have that "everyone uses [such and such software] so I must also use it" and "of course I didn't read the EULA, but no one does, so whatever. I click 'Accept' and install [this or that program] to do my job" is the feeling that the military industrial complex absolutely depends on to continue. The weapons industry will never be stopped until enough of us see without a doubt that we cannot be safe or free until everyone is safe and free, and we see it, and we are part of it.
The genocide in Gaza has been going on now... and in most African countries, for example, the people live in poverty and sickness, and are forced to "accept loans" from the rich countries running the IMF/World Bank... so then their land is stolen, their laws are written by dictators they did not choose, and their labor is exploited until they die... it is simply a prolonged, more covert genocide there too... and all of us people think money is that thing we need to get our hands on to be protected... but... it is the very thing that represents the control of the autocrats who print it and set its exchange value... I know I am stating the obvious as I often do, but I hope it is OK with you I do that.
I've been very focused on the Bretton Woods Conference as a pivotal moment when, as I saw it, chaotic circumstances landed the world in a place that then determined a certain superstructure at the level of international law/monetary policy. From what I am learning in this book, though, I am seeing now that the tech sector, especially with regards to automation and computing, has been effectively the greatest determinant of laws and wars since before the start of WWII, and only became moreso during and after WWII. The Bretton Woods Conference looks much more to me like the kind of meeting the head of IBM would have with the State Dept. to smooth over what had already been decided, because the consolidated power that allowed the tech to be developed then created the possibility of there being a single biggest player in the war games, so to speak. I'm probably rambling a bit... I want to put my thoughts into something concise and clear as soon as possible, but this kind of stream-of-consciousness conversation is what I find much more comfortable than trying to actually decide what not to write when getting things into words.
I will do my best though. In the meantime, I hope this length of reply is not off-putting.
The point you make about folks seeming incapable of grasping how WWII played out thanks to American and other Allied entities though is a big issue IMO too - That is, in a nutshelll, one of the biggest issues we are up against right now -- this passion about maintaining a sense of stability fully enables the corruption oppressing us all. It is not that history points to the Allied powers being "The bad guys" but it is that history shows us that the public was always in the dark about the fact that the military powers were playing together, using poor people's lives as pawns, and pretending to fight with each other over ideas, when ideas were just another tool to control the public sentiment. The US govt did really nothing to stop IBM from becoming a monopoly, and then saw its role in the Nazi regime as some kind of power for the US... There was a public-facing story that somehow kept the reality out of public scrutiny, but the detailed history of the events reveals the deception. The US govt was functionally an arm of the Third Reich, posing as an opponent of Hitler to the public while actively working for him where no one outside the THird Reich and IBM could see. Even within IBM, there were mechanisms to conceal and distance people from details so that every employee involved had more than enough cushioning to tell themselves they were on the right side of history...
The problem is that most people look at war as a story of courageous people defending their home/homeland but History always says war is usually a choice and usually for the purpose of seizing land, resources and gaining the advantage to secure that land & resources in order to seize more land & resources.
People have been a main resource before agricultural industrialisation (and nitrogen fertilisers); colonial history is about plantations, privateers (state piracy) on the seas and shipping resources back to the capital cities of empires. Companies like the Dutch and "British" East India Companies, the Hudson Bay Trading company give way to company owned towns which have close relationships with governments. The rubber-&-slavery empire of Belgium in the Congo supplied tyre manufacturers worldwide.
From that, we can see the direct relationship with the "work camps" of the Third Reich. Places run by businessmen with Nazi party membership. IGFarben, Auschwitz Birkenau & Monowitz, et cetera.
The pre-existing relationships with "Western" businesses can/do go back into the Nineteenth Century. German industry and invention was entirely integrated with the Anglosphere just as Japan was upto and after the First World War.
(The banking obligations of Imperial-Romanov Russia also continued beyond the Russian Revolution. And, its revolutionary government(s) traded with the West supplying the same pre-revolution luxury goods.)
So, the symbiosis of the Allies & Axis should not be a surprise to anyone. The work done by John Maynard Keynes for the post-conflict period is still beyond my ability to process (although there seems to be a lot of input from him due to his ability, personality and personal relationships) but I would have thought that immediate post-war planning should never have been seen as a solution for World stability for forevermore into the future.
@miguelpergamon Re: Keynes, I talk a lot about him because the bones of a reasonable organizational structure for international accounting can be found in the proposal he wrote in 1942, but his original proposal was immediately seen as too radically egalitarian and he edited it to put the US and UK into autocratic positions within the structure. Still it was too egalitarian and transparent, so the Fed chose to build the orgs that essentially just dress up US autocracy as some kind of international, democratic org. So I point to his proposal because it is really the closest thing to a formal arrangement for an egalitarian international accounting org I've found, and that is what I think the left is missing so often, when, for example, critics of OWS asked protesters, "Do you even know what you are demanding?"
There is an alternative to the global MIC. The alternative is the public agreement that participation from everyone as equal citizens is a necessary fundament, and so the union of people is defined by its transparency and maintenance of equality among people. But such a transformation from current, longstanding international policies would immediately imply the halting of violent industries... the weapons manufacturing and warmongering. That is the essential barrier to our revolution. It is, like you said, that violent vertical habits are the norm. Their ubiquity is an addiction for those they serve. But it has been interesting to see how public sentiment was powerful, though not as powerful as it could have been, in pressuring the autocrats to behave ethically. It was not at all enough. But it was real -- it was pressure that had an impact. It can be powerful enough, with enough people and understanding and faith.
@resl
Eisenhower's speech about the dangers of the MIC and the need to restrain it (obviously meaning those people & corporations which promote & profit from an eternal wartime economy) is one of my inspirations. (Ike is also the reason I've not had a desire to ignore all Republicans.)
The large scale global warfare experiences of that generation (sometimes twice) did have an influence on post-war agreements, pacts and societal structures but the imperial instinct of those in power always wants to find enemies and foment enmity between people for the continuation of empire.
The largely socialist ethic of the British public at the end of WWII has been subsumed under repression of positive values over decades (in favour of nostalgia and a cult of Britishness) and a hypocritical xenophobic globalist insularism (those "leaders" who supported Brexit have multiple nationalities/passports).
US politics being controlled by the MAGA faction also has those contradictions of stating they want to look after their own people while also seeing the profiting by companies (that deliberately do harm (like United Health) in order to create shareholder value) as being ultimate expressions of individualism.
MAGA is intent on destroying the nation that created it, I've seen it described as "accelerationist", almost equivalent to those who have an evangelical desire/reasons to bring about war in the Middle East.
It's a gun culture, a torture & murder cult, a theft & deceit gang and a philosophy of delusion about personal/group supremacy.
I don't mind people talking (... or planning ...) revolution but the fixation on the end result (we will all be happy), should not ignore that the Means do not always justify the Ends. There is a lot of chat on fedi about the need for defensive and offensive training in the US. As there is open hostility (and a history of ongoing violence) by the right wing, I'll say that there is recognised legal precedent for oppressed groups to take action but that's usually a court judgment after the events (sometimes).
The situation in the European Economic Community (which is having many struggles with internal & external policies), however, is currently dependent on forming a common defence policy which will have Nuclear Arms policy at the fore (with the absence of the US) against Russia.
I don't have faith in politicians to solve this. And, the People really need to get off corporate social media in order to talk to each other!
I'm with you and I don't think I fall into the trap of thinking means justify ends, though I want to know more what you might mean by that in this context...
Perhaps relatedly, I would like if people started saying and thinking in terms of "transformation" since "revolution" seems to connote violence and revenge so much of the time, but until that takes I sometimes say revolution because I do mean conscious, serious, drastic change for near everyone and near everything.
@resl
I like the idea of societal transformation but "Revolution" does sound better as a call to action (... even if that action is a meeting ...).
Good thing about Kolektiva is the different opinions (such as mine) and personalities (working on mine) which have found a home on an ostensibly anarchist instance.
Elsewhere in the fediverse there are those labelled "Tankies" who commonly are identified as socialists/communists and will send the tanks in on anti-revolutionary elements (such as against students protesting); that's the kind of thinking (akin to Evangelists & Accelerationists) I am referring to as those who say "the ends justify the means".
Having said that, one of my favourite phrases comes from Douglas Adams :-
@miguelpergamon Isn't a tanky someone who think we need to form militia to violently overthrow the state?
Do you mean that tankies would suggest sending tanks to fight police if police were suppressing protests?
I've never heard the term evangelist used outside of the context of religion. I'll have to look up that term in this context! Accelerationists I have heard in the context of those hyper capitalist people, but I can see how it would apply to certain seemingly "left" ideas.
@resl
First I've heard "tankie" being applied to fighting the police.
"Trotskyite" is the term given to forming armies/militia to help bring about constant revolution (I think).
@resl ...but I REALLY need to and want to
@jake4480 The book is extensively cited and should be taken seriously.
But I also have reservations about Edwin Black as the messenger. There's enough damning evidence without essentially claiming that every bullet is tracked by a punch card number.
In other words, he turns and open and shut case into a mixed bag, sadly.
(cc: @resl )
@jake4480 @schmudde Yeah! I am not working and have a lot of time to read, so that is how I manage to do that. I need to write summaries of these books for others:
- The Global Minotaur
- IBM and The Holocaust
- The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
There is a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman that was also informative but interestingly I think my summary would be even more informative because the author was so deep in his own personal fantasy about how he saw himself and others and how he reconciled his job with his ethics that it gets almost distracting lol
But yeah, if I can just get myself to put in some work writing short essays, I can share the important points from the books so others don't HAVE to read the whole lengths of them to get the info I've gotten from them.
@jake4480 @schmudde I'd add to that list Debt: the First 5000 Years by David Graeber, but I have to re-read it before writing about it.
The particulars of history are ultimately indispensable of course and me giving summaries and mentioing a sampling of those points from another person's understanding of various records will only be a cue to read the books they wrote, but some of my friends know my politics and ethics well enough to benefit from hearing my takes, I think.
Naturally I feel I am a trustworthy source who can do some of the lengthier reading and report back about it, but that's because I can see a bit inside myself lol. So I have to communicate how my judgment works if I want others to be able to trust it the way I do. That is taking me forever.
@resl Oh yeah I’d love to read the Graeber book but will likely never get it high enough in the queue.
I’ve found writing book reviews really rewarding! I hope to read yours on Graeber. But I dont make enough time to write more than one or two a year - far less than the amount of reading I do.
For example, here’s the last one I wrote: https://schmud.de/books/i-could-tell-you-but-then.html
(cc: @jake4480 )
@resl well it has been a long time since I’ve read it. But as you referenced in “Confessions of a Hitman,” sometimes the author gets in the way of their own book.
The book’s references make it seem like a heavyweight social science text. But Black doesn’t really have a methodology. It’s more like a popsci Malcolm Gladwell book that’s trying to sell an idea rather than build on a canon that helps us understand the complex relationship between technology and society.
It is somewhat jumpy in what it cites when and would benefit from a more strictly chronological presentation of the records as well as from including images and better technical explanations of the various mechanics within the workflows of the Nazis but I thought the primary sources spoke for themselves re: the accuracy of Black's interpretation and overall argument 
I guess I do tend to try to pick up what someone is putting down so to speak so I can be easy to persuade sometimes if I'm not looking for problems. This compilation of letters and records seems pretty hard to interpret in any other way, though, right? I mean, other than at least basic agreement with Black's general point (that there was a crucially instrumental alliance between IBM (via Thomas Watson) and Hitler during the Holocaust).
@resl I agree. I think the evidence is clear. We learn about the famous camps in school/society. What the book makes clear is that there is a network of worksites and Berlin/Oranienburg essentially administrates this as a Human Resource problem. The major camps are only one part of the puzzle.
You simply cannot administer all this while fighting a war on two fronts without sophisticated automation and tracking. And IBM/Dehomag made it happen.
@ForeTeeThree @jake4480 Something about concrete detail makes me present. I have major depression, but from my experience, the concrete details deliver me from it while I am in the flow of them. If I were in the camps then, of course it would probably overwhelmingly depress me. If the text of the book meant primarily to transport me into the camps, it would probably also overwhelmingly depress me. That kind of empathic experience is why I struggle with focusing solely on the oppression of people.
This book transports me into the life of the investigator piecing together the records, and the records transport me into the minds of the businessmen, insofar as that's possible. There I know clearly I am not that way, and it assures me of who I am and my ethics.
That part-the minds of the businessmen-is depressing, or disturbing, in another way, but then seeing them from the eyes of the observer, piecing it together, and being where we are now, makes me feel empowered to trust my anticapitalist and anarchistic instincts against the military industrial complex and see the problem of it more clearly.
Sometimes I think from the imagined perspective of a "normy" I might meet, who I imagine perceiving me, if I shared that I am an anarchist and anticapitalist, as someone immature, detached from the cold realities of the necessity and maturity of capitalism and war. Reading this book makes me feel capable of dismissing that possibility as irrelevant in any case. It makes me focus instead on the fact that there are people dying for evil reasons, and that there are simply machines and formal ceremonies and letters mediating the disrespect and ending of those peoples' lives.
@resl @ForeTeeThree same on the major depression haha. I stopped reading and watching a lot of sci-fi for that reason, and I don't actively follow mainstream news, for my mental health. But I still see things via the underground, I prefer the reality of what's really going on, on the ground. I wrote about the damn news cycle last year around this time. It's brutal. https://spacetimetech.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/the-24-hour-news-cycle
@ForeTeeThree @jake4480 Thanks for the rec :)
@ForeTeeThree @resl oh wow I didn't read the Postman but I dug the movie. For that reason. I've seen it several times haha
@ForeTeeThree @resl it's really not bad. I mean.. it has Tom Petty in it. That's enough. hahaha
@resl not yet but it sounds interesting, i just put it on hold at the library!
️ @resl @Brad_Rosenheim No. But I should read it.