80 Years ago the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz and saved the prisoners that were still alive. The Auschwitz Memorial helps us to remember that the death camps of the Nazis were not the beginning of a process, but the product of a long strategy.
The existence of the camp was no secret to the allies. But against the outspoken will of the organised prisoners nether the gas chambers of Auschwitz not the train tracks to the camp were ever bombed.
Now we live in an age that provides Nazis with powerful new tools.
The Auschwitz Memorial writes on its Mastodon instance:
“Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence… to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.”
Most dictatorships do not start with a military coup. They start with fragmenting the society in worthy and unworthy. They destroy human rights by giving some others to hate, to despise.
They fragment a society till it crumbles.
Digital technologies are a useful tool for this strategy. So-called Social Media are not our tools to connect and to have fun. Commercial Social Media are not individualising us. Or bringing us together. That might be sometimes a lucky side-effect.
They are designed to make us addicted. By gamified methods.
They do not help us to become a happy individual.
They are designed to fragment societies, to make us dependent to there schemes, they turn us into desperate junkies. Always looking for our next hit.
They are running on strong emotion like hate.
All to make us buy products based on the data we provide about ourselfs by using their networks.
They play us using our emotions. They use commercial Social Media platforms to turn us against each other.
Instead of them.
The social media despair lets us think that it is too late.
It is not.
Resist.
You are not alone.
Build real networks.
Help and get help.
As long as we resist, as long as we help each other – there is hope.