Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Well, he said, “We will only take our seats if I can be chancellor, otherwise forget it. I’m not coming into any coalition.” So then the government falls again in January 1933. They have the election. The Nazi vote is down from where it was the previous summer, but this time they go, “Okay, Hitler can be chancellor, but we’ll manipulate him.” How wrong they were. He’s manipulating everyone. And then Hindenburg, who is the president, dies the following summer and he’s able to get rid of the presidency. There is no more president of Germany. There is just the führer, him and he gets rid of, he has, actually, Enabling act, which is where all other political parties are disbanded, and suddenly you’ve got a totalitarian state, just like that. I think there’s a lesson there. There’s many lessons there, but one of them is don’t let an extremist into government and assume you can control them. Yes, the arrogance of the existing politicians, you just completely screwed it up.…

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