Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Well, look, that’s a fair debate to have, and it’d be interesting to see you two kind of talk about that. Or maybe not even debate it, but just have a conversation about that, that would be great. I think the broader point you’re making, I mean, there’s just a lot of trivialization of the World War II that happens in the West, in the United States especially. And that’s used by neocons by warmongers to sort of shift- I’ve done a bunch of Israel-Palestine debates, I don’t think I’ve ever done one where World War II wasn’t invoked. Well, I mean Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so you’re going to tell me it’s not okay. And immediately, if you just look at it like that, let’s say the official narrative is 100% true in World War II, let’s even say every aspect of the official narrative is really true. The lesson of World War II is that we should have gone to war sooner, which is essentially the dominant mainstream narrative that Chamberlain is the failure. That was the problem, the appeasement. Churchill was the solution. If only Chamberlain had been Churchill, or if only we had gone to war with Germany and whatever in 1933, it would’ve been better. Okay, let’s say all of that’s true. It still doesn’t follow from that, that therefore in every situation appeasement is wrong, and aggression is good. It doesn’t follow that, if that’s the only lesson of history. And that now it’s just okay to slaughter civilians. It’s okay to go to total war against a civilian population because this one time it was necessary. Bobby Kennedy said this to me again, somebody who I really do love and admire in many ways, and I’m glad he’s the health secretary. But I remember him evoking the Nazis and making a comparison between Hamas and the Nazis. And you’re like, “Dude, Hamas doesn’t even control Gaza really. The Nazis had most of Europe at one point. This is just not an apples to apples conversation. You can’t even compare the two in terms of what type of menace or threat they are to the world.” I mean, sure, maybe if Hamas had a lot of power, they’d use it in a bad way. But that’s true with some homeless guy on the street too, but he doesn’t have that power. So what are we talking about here? And so I do think that the way the World War II narrative is weaponized has been, even if World War II itself was necessary and just, the way that, that’s been weaponized over the years has led to just countless catastrophes. You know what I mean, I guess it’s just in some ways there might be something positive about the fact that everybody’s always called Hitler if they’re bad. You know what I mean? Because we make Hitler the face of what is evil eternally or something. He really does play the role of the devil in our society in a strange way. But there is Saddam was the next Hitler, and Gaddafi was the Hitler, and Bashar Assad was the next Hitler.…

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