Is this how Jews felt in pre-Nazi Germany?

In My Humble Opinion
141

IOW, the recipe for the Rwandan genocide was

  1. The two groups live together more or less blended with some intermarriage but a lot of social separateness, at least partly driven by the large disparity in the groups’ collective economic and political power.

  2. Various self-appointed propagandists preach hate and fear of the less-powerful Other to one side, telling them the less-powerful Other is coming to destroy their way of life.

  3. Shadowy forces controlled by the authoritarian corrupt government aid and abet the fomenting of hate of the less-powerful Other.

  4. The hottest of the hotheads of the more powerful group, whipped into a frenzy by the previous two steps, start the random killing in the less-governed / more-wild areas of their country. Where, conveniently, the Other is a rather small and especially powerless percentage of the populace.

  5. The violence quickly spreads to the populous cities as the self-appointed propagandists loudly cheerlead, the official organs of the government turn a blind eye, and the sub rosa parts of the government actively participate.

We in the USA been at / past step 2 for about 20 years now. During the Trump administration we were starting step 3. Which has been stopped, at least at the Federal level, since 2020. Meanwhile individual Step 4 events happen about once every couple of weeks someplace in the USA, killing 5-20 Others per event. Because law enforcement is much more bottom-up than top-down in US governance, there’s still lots of room for local police / sheriffs to turn that blind eye.

It’s hard to say where we go from here. But it’s easy to see there are powerful forces which are now pushing us towards the later steps in the Rwandan “script”.

142

At my age, I think it would be the Cambodian genocide.

But yea, all genocides are horrific, by definition.

143

Of course German still uses über to say above (when we don’t say drüber, auf or darauf, among others). And we still say heil for heal (medicine), that is the right word. But we would not (well, I would not) name a public company like that: the connotation is all too clear. It is a dog-whistle: if you don’t feel it, you are not the audience. Good for you. With others I am not so sure of the intention. And I will now stop responding to this argument because it is not the interesting part of this thread.

144

Cambodia was certainly one of the scariest genocides of all time. They killed some massive fraction of their entire population. But there’s something about neighbors butchering neighbors in Rwanda that I find especially terrifying. And internet memes that echo the tools used to whip up that hatred scare the shit out of me.

145

(I hope the OP is okay comparing America today to other recent genocides.)

146

As a fellow German, I can absolutely confirm that “Uber” is a giant dog-whistle, immediately bringing “Deutschland über alles” and “Übermensch” to mind.

147

Do Germans object to the name of the car service? Or do they use the service anyway?

148

I translate that into English as Superman. Is DC comics secretly a Nazi dog whistle?

Are all German prepositions suspect?

149

It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t German and who doesn’t speak the language, but “Übermensch” is not only the translation of “Superman” (who we just call Superman), but it’s a distinct philosophical concept and term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche. The nazis took it from him and misrepresented the concept to mean that those they falsely called “Aryans” were the “Übermenschen” of the world, the master race. The word is tainted, like so much the nazis misused.

150

Most serious translators and scholars of Nietzsche, such as the German-born and -speaking Kaufmann, will translate it as “Overman” or similar , for that and other reasons.

151

When i studied Nietzsche, i think the English-language texts actually used “ubermensch”, for that reason. “Superman” has all the wrong connotations.

152

Sure, Übermensch is, but the claim here is because the word “Uber” is used in those contexts, it has no use outside those contexts.

So, as a German, is the word “Uber” illegal to use? Lots of nazi terminology is illegal in Germany, so I’m wondering if the German government feels that this is a hate filled preposition. If not illegal, is it rare and frowned upon in polite society?

Right, I get that people have chosen to translate it to things other than Superman, I’m just saying that that’s a literal translation as to what those words mean.

My point being that a preposition, even if that preposition is used in the title of a hate filled manifesto, doesn’t become a dog whistle.

I mean, people in this thread are asserting that a large company intentionally chose its name with the specific intent of appealing to nazis. That there can be no use of the word “uber” that is not associated with the Nazis. I don’t see how someone can come to that conclusion without having already chosen it as their starting point.

153

I disagree with this.

Is where it came up as I understand it. So not that the name was selected AS a dog whistle, but one without due caution for a company if it expected to do business internationally. Now others may have found it non-credible that they could do this without at least some hidden intent, but I think @Pardel-Lux’s comment reflects the more general intent of this side discussion.

154

Whatever the districts are in that map it isn’t counties. Arizona has only fifteen of them and there are a lot more areas delineated than that. I’m tempted to say precincts but I found a number that indicate only one vote counted; they are accounting for that deep blue speck in a sea of red or vice versa. I can’t imagine a precinct with that small a handful of voters in it.

155

Please don’t be silly, of course the word “über” used as preposition is completely harmless. It’s the connection to terms like “Deutschland über alles” and “Übermensch” which makes an American company using the German word as their name very suspect, because it connotates a feeling of superiority, and I think this is what they were going after (I don’t think they were intentionally going after the racial superiority the nazis got out of these terms, but they should have known better) . Maybe the creators of this name weren’t much versed in German history and only found it to be a cool word, but they should have done their research.

156

Deutschlanlied was adopted by the Weimar Republic in 1922 at the German national anthem is still used today but the third stanza,
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Für das deutsche Vaterland!

(Unity and Justice and Freedom
For the German Fatherland!)

is the one sung rather than the first,

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt

(Unity and Justice and Freedom
For the German Fatherland!)

157

Hah, that’s a coincidence: just the other day, I wrote a post about exactly the same topic in the “Most archaic anthem” thread:

158

This thread has taken an interesting journey from its starting point :wink:

159

It actually came up here.

I took that to mean that @Pardel-Lux was saying that they had done due diligence and chose the name anyway. Esp the part about the “Heil Taxi!” example.

I agree others seemed to think that there was intent, but I think that @Pardel-Lux also seemed to think so as well.

So, it’s harmless, unless connected to words and phrases that it is not connected to in this instance? I’m not sure that makes sense to me.

Well, yeah, that’s what is obvious. The word means better, over, super. It is an adjective that claims that the thing described is better than others. That’s terrible when you are saying that about people, it’s extremely common when you are saying it about companies.

You know what Acme or Zenith mean? They weren’t the names of the founders, they were chosen because they have connotations of being better or above their competition.

I doubt they hadn’t heard of the nazis. But you are correct, maybe they didn’t automatically assume that with the word “Uber” everyone would automatically think nazi. As it’s a company that seems to have grown pretty substantially, it does seem like the overwhelming majority of people haven’t either.

I think they were just trying to be cool with the modern tech crowd, as “Uber” is a word that means “great” or “super” among gamers and techies. It’s how one describes an awesome set of armor or weapon, it’s how someone describes a character’s elite skills. It has quite a number of connotations among those in tech, none of which have anything to do with nazis.

Now, a company that I would have thought should have changed its name is Volkswagen, as not only is “Volk” a word with nazi connotations, Volkswagen was a company that openly and directly supported the nazis.

160

But that’s exactly the point! The word “Volk” per se is just as harmless as “über”, just meaning “folk” or “people”, but used in a context that connects it to the (mis)use of the nazis it becomes problematic. I don’t know what’s so hard to get about it, this board has constantly been discussing words that convey multiple meanings that can rate from harmless to hateful, depending on context. Think of words like gay or queer. “Uber” in the context of a company implying superiority is such a word.