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BMW
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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So lets stop to consider, regardless of that nazi memorabilia.
You live under a fascist dictatorial regime. There are very few options available for you to live a relatively uneventful life.
Either you're an open, true, supporter, a passive one or a dissimulated dicident. Yes, there are more options available, but lets take these as the most broad categories.
Now let us consider that your regime an enacted several acts of domestic, unprovoked violence, internal purges and other assorted brutal and unpredictable actions against social peace and stability, in order to cement its unquestionable power over an entire nation.
Then, that same regime advances to a state of war, where all resources and infrastructure are comandeered to bolster the military.
At some point, companies are put a very simple option: either they cooperate and remain active or they refuse and suffer the consequences, that at best can be simple nationalization and purge of the heads.
Considering all of this, BMW supporting Germany's war effort is understanble.
Do I agree with that decision? No. But do I understand it? Yes.
Cooperate and live or refuse and die? Not an hard choice, especially if a lot of money is put on the table.
cool nazi apologia
thats a lot of words for "companies dont care about anything except money"
we get it, they followed what the country's trends did regardless of the cost
To be fair, while everyone likes to think they'd be resisting nazi rule, most people, including you, would have most likely fallen in line and at least pretended to be pro-nazi.
Okay...?
Okay, so I am from a country where we got rid of a fascist government less than 50 years ago, thus ending 4 decades of dictatorship. The memory of those days are still quite fresh in our collective memory, regardless the new right wing zealots going to far lenghts to retell a very well and publicly documented history.
And that history is an history of repression, social stagnation and political persecussion. And denunciation.
KGB, the famous KGB, created a reputation for repression by brutality but here it was impossible to tell who you could trust. Your neighbour, your loved ones, that person you encountered every day on the bus, your coworkers... besides the very easy to spot and identify agents that could at random approach you on the street, question and drag you off to the nearest police station or detention center, with no expected time to return home, if ever.
It took, technically a military coup, an inside job, to take this repressive regime. Luckily, it was never their intention to instate a military junta and democracy was instead established.
People could either support, tolerate or endure the regime. There was no other options. Thousands conspired for decades and died in the process. The slightest suspicion and any one could end behind bars, deported to one of the colonies, where prison conditions were even worse, as if such thing could be possible or simply gone, occasionally dragged out of their house, in the middle of the night, in a very loud and public exibition of force for everyone to see and never to comment but by whispers.
That is how fascism, and by extension, any dictatorship enforces complacency.
Not many are willing to become heroes and even less survive to tell the tale. The notion that when dark times arise a great hero will come is an hollywood creation.
Okay, so the people at the top of that company were terrified for their lives too. Everyone complied or died. They chose to comply. Just like you would have.
Do I think the money earned during that time should be given to survivors and their families? Yes. Do I blame them for complying? No.
You conveniently omit the third group: the ones that perpetrate and take advantage of the narrative for their own gain.
If "we'd all be nazis", maybe we all deserve criticism. That's not a defense.
Thousands might be being murdered a day in death camps but at least the shareholders are happy.
You mean like Nike in Bangladesh, but without the wire fences and just through the use of police enforced and government backed brutality, when the workers tried to rally for better work conditions?
Awe, poor multi million dollar corporation had to support the Nazi war killing a shit ton of people or they would lose monies...
What do you think the Nazis did to people who refused to support them?
What do you think would happen if everyone didn't support them? You think it's okay to genocide if someone threatens you with a spanking?
No, I don't think it's okay. Yes, I know that if nobody supported them, the Nazis would have never risen to power in the first place.
But "corporation bad" doesn't mean it's always a matter of "I did this horrible thing to save a bit of money." Sometimes there are lives on the line.
Please do not equate concentration camps with a spanking either. You don't need to belittle the actual suffering they caused to make the valid point that cooperating with them is evil.
Oskar Schindler spent millions and most of his personal wealth to continue operating while saving as many jews as possible.
The leadership at BMW had many options available to them and instead chose to actively support genocide that they knew was happening. They used slave labor from the concentration camps. Leadership at BMW knew full well what was happening.
Yes, it is fully reasonable to expect people exploiting slave labor and actively contributing to a genocide to either do the right thing and do everything in their power to help the people being murdered, like Schindler, while risking their own lived.
Yeah. Are you trying to prove me wrong, or just provide additional information/opinion? I'm having trouble figuring it out, because it sounds like the former, but I'm not seeing much conflict in the information itself.
Thanks for the info, though. I hadn't known that they used slave labor. I was only reacting to the initial meme. Of course that is far less understandable than just having made vehicles for the Nazis in wartime economy.
It's also important to keep in mind that the leadership of the company today consists of probably 0 people who were part of the wartime BMW, and they do own up to their predecessors' misdeeds, so I don't think it's fair to blame today's BMW for it any more than it is to blame today's Germany.
I'd risk, with a good degree of comfort, that the negotiations would have been more along the lines of "serve your country and be paid for it or don't serve your country and go to a concentration camp and die a miserable death", the last part as subtext.
You do not negotiate with any sort of dictatorial regime. The regime holds all the cards, including the cards the other players think they have in hand.
BMW and, by extension, any company, be it small or large, cooperating with any regime is understandable. It's that or risk a terrible, more or less public, demise. That is why dictatorial regimes go to great lenghts to ensure companies and business owners favor by putting large quantities of money and/or resources in their hands.
Self preservation is easy to turn into greed.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the USA.
Heerily similar, isn't it?
Can't tell if that typo was intentional or not...
If we don’t hold corporations accountable for these types of things, they’ll be more likely to go along with it next time. All of the corporations that helped the Nazis should have been dissolved, had their assets liquidated, and used to pay reparations.
Could you be so kind and explain how would you ensure those who would be losing their livelyhoods survive? And their families?
We tend to peg a face to a company and demonize the whole from one person, like the tweeter debacle and that hair enhanced loon that bought it out of a whim, motivated by spite.
How many have lost their jobs already and how many more would lose them if the company was to be dissolved for punishment in their spread of false information (thus, aiding and abetting) that have led to the terrible losses and even worst for many?
Or perhaps Facebook, with their assistance with covering and gagging the genocide in Myanmar?
This doesn't mean I disagree with severely punishing these entities. Fine them in millions and billions, force them to break into competing entities, severely regulate and control their actions. But kill a company because, and in this particular case for BMW, they could cooperate or cease to exist, perhaps in horrendous ways?
That would make the punishment as bad or worst than the crime.
I don't agree with your dichotomy, but ignoring that for a second, saying "the punishment as bad or worse than the crime" makes it sound like you think someone losing their job is "as bad or worse" than genocide - maybe reconsider
Let's be clear here too. There was real dissent in Germany and the Nazis shipped those who fought back to camps first. These people just doing their jobs made their choice.